Because most people seem to skip the most important points when I write ‘sa Ghàidhlig about the so-called sad state of our language, I'm going to stress the following points, again, but in English.

Telling a community that their language is on the brink of extinction without providing any solutions is counter-productive, and does little to address the core issue, i.e. that fewer people use their language on a day-to-day basis.

It is also alarmist to the point where it's getting easy to ignore; we've heard the question ‘am faigh a' Ghàidhlig bàs’ (will Gaelic die) so many times now (I think we all remember Niall MacLeòd's 1878 poem) that speakers simply don't care anymore.

Native speakers find themselves in a situation where the language is a mode of communication, nothing more or less. If it cannot be used as such, the speakers will switch to another language, and not think about it that much.

It sounds harsh, but it's true.

Those of us who come to the language as heritage speakers, or learners, often attach a lot more essentialist emotions to the language, and assume that these emotions will be shared by native speakers en masse. This is not the case.

A language is, in many ways, a treasure trove. A micro-cosmos of sorts. Losing a language means losing a lot of what it means to be a member of a specific community. However, as long as we only treat it as a key to the past, it will continue to seem irrelevant to the present.

I am a speaker of a language with something between 400-800 speakers. Of those speakers, many only know set phrases. I'm still not willing to say that our language is dying, because it's a counter-productive approach to keeping it alive.

I know far too well how hard it is to keep a language alive, and I often feel like an island in the middle of a sea of Swedish. I work as a translator as well, and in the past two years, I've seen two language keepers die. We're down to single digits when it comes to translators.

If you want to talk about a language on the brink of death, I guess South Saami would fit the bill, but I refuse to fall for said rhetoric, as it's only bringing us down and causing depression.

How am I ever going to enjoy speaking a language I feel like I have to speak or else be complicit in its death?

How am I ever not going to feel like a failure if not everything I do is for the betterment of said language?

We create anxiety and depression by telling people that a language will die if we don't save it, especially if said language is an important part of a person's identity. It is not fair, and we *need* to drastically move away from this rhetoric.

One of the key problems I face when it comes to South Saami is that many parents want to give the language to their children, but because of historical reasons, self-doubt and having grown up hearing how complicated our language is, they're not willing to learn it themselves.

They're afraid of getting laughed at, because they have internalised the idea that they should have been able to speak the language from birth, lest they want to be seen as flawed or "fake", and consequently they fight for their children, and dismiss themselves from the equation.

This, sadly, is one of the easiest ways to ensure that the language dies. If you tell your child to reclaim a language but don't take the time to do it yourself, you're, subconsciously, passing on all the problematic feelings you've got to your child.

It's easy to say that a language is important, but if you don't follow along, and show that you mean it by trying to speak the language yourself, your child is not going to believe you.

What is worse, they might even start to resent the language if you don't try to learn it.

Don't tell them that it's important to save e.g. Gaelic - you're basically filling them with existential dread and they won't do it - and forget about future jobs.

A language is useful if you can use it *now*, not if you could potentially use it at a later point in your life.

A child couldn't care less about future career options when they're 14.

If the only arguments we have can be summed up as "but it's our heritage" or "you'll be able to earn money in the future" you're missing the now, and ultimately a lot of what makes a language organic.

As a teacher of South Saami, I think it's important to listen to what my students want to learn, not what I think they ought to learn to become productive language warriors™. If they want to learn how to ask someone out, then that's important to them, so teach it.

What we really need, in order to keep a language alive, is a radical change of approach. We need places where the language gets to be the norm, not an option, and where speaking it is rewarded, not just with money, but with efforts that make living in a place attractive.

Among the Saami, the language is, for many reasons, strongest among reindeer herding families. This is because we've, for better or worse, told ourselves that this is a trade where no other language is as precise, and thus it's vital to know.

In Scotland, you have crofting, fishing, Harris Tweed, whisky, and many other industries where Gaelic not only is more precise than English, but should be treated as an asset.

Fund these industries. Make sure that they thrive.

However, if you make it impossible for young people to continue to live in Gaelic speaking areas, because of housing costs and a lack of other opportunities, it doesn't matter if you've sent them to GME or told them how "important" Gaelic is.

"Saving Gaelic" (which once again shifts the focus from using it, and thus is a horrible term) can only be done if we make sure that speakers can live, raise families and work through the medium of Gaelic.

It's not going to happen overnight, but Gaelic has apparently been dying for the past 142 years so chances are we'll manage to reverse the trend if we stop treating this solely as a question of language revitalisation and start treating it as a form of community revival instead.