Scottish Gaelic

choi

Andrew Lownie, Afoot in Two Worlds. Stewart was brought up like the man-child in Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim.' His father was a D-Day veteran whose greatest insult was 'boring.'  Wall Street Journal, Nov 23, 2016
http://www.wsj.com/articles/a-mo ... f-arabia-1479857446
(book review on Rory Stewart, The Marches;  A borderland journey between England and Scotland. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2016)

Quote:

"His [Rory Stewart's] latest book * * * is ostensibly about two walks [or marches -- see next sentence on wordplay] in recent years closer to home—one following Hadrian's Wall, and the other tracing the 380-mile route from his home in Cumbria on the English-Scottish border  to Broich, his family's home for seven generations on the edge of the Scottish Highlands. * * * The title [of the book] is a play on words—the Marches are areas on either side of the Scottish and English border

"He wryly remarks upon seeing a sign in Scottish Gaelic that reads 'Welcome to Scotland / Fàilte gu Alba': 'The people who lived on this spot today, like 99 per cent of Scots, spoke English. Over the last 2,000 years, people here had spoken Cumbrian Welsh, Latin, Northumbrian, Norman French, and Borders English, but they had never spoken Scottish Gaelic and they had never called this place Alba. . . . Only 58,000 people in Scotland out of 5 million spoke Scottish Gaelic in 2012; almost as many spoke Polish; and there were twice as many people in Scotland of South Asian descent.' [reviewer quoting the book] Yet the sign is in Gaelic.

Note:
(a) There is no need need to read the rest of the text.

(b)
(i) Rory Stewart
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory_Stewart
(1973- ; birth name: Roderick James Nugent 'Rory' Stewart; Member of Parliament 2010- )
(ii) Rory
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rory

(c) Rory "Stewart was brought up like the man-child in Rudyard Kipling's 'Kim.' "
(i) man-child (n; plural men–children): "a male child : SON"
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/man-child
(ii) Kim (novel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_(novel)#Plot_summary
(Kimball O'Hara)

(d) About quotation 1.
(i) Cumbria
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cumbria

is a county (county town: Carlisle) which was created in 1974 from Cumberland (a county that no longer exists) and other lands.
(ii)
(A) march (territorial entity)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_(territorial_entity)
(section 1 Etymology)
(B) march (n): "a border region :  FRONTIER; especially :  a district originally set up to defend a boundary —usually used in plural <the Welsh marches>"
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/march

(e) "Alba is the Scottish Gaelic name for Scotland."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alba
(i) Compare: alba in Latin (noun feminine: white; adjective: feminine form of albus (adjective masculine; "white"), Spanish (feminine form of albo (adjective masculine; "white" -- Spanish noun feminine alba means "dawn," not "white")
(ii) Actress Jessica Alba (her real name) had "paternal grandparents [hence her father], who were born in California, were both the children of Mexican immigrants."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_Alba