Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

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Sid Guttridge
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Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#1

Post by Sid Guttridge » 19 Feb 2022, 13:05

I was recently reading The Story of the Lovat Scouts 1900-1980 by Melville. This was a Territorial Army unit raised in the Islands and Highlands of north-west Scotland. The book says that its B Squadron had such a high proportion of Gaelic speakers that this was the language of instruction within it.

This set me to wondering whether any other British Army units or sub-units used Welsh within them for similar reasons?

Cornish was extinct, Manx was very niche and Irish Gaelic speakers were the most hostile to the British and all Irish citizens, so I presume these languages were not used.

Cheers,

Sid.

Aber
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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#2

Post by Aber » 20 Feb 2022, 13:19

Most likely is 158th Infantry Brigade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/158th_Inf ... _World_War

Three territorial battalions of Royal Welch Fusiliers raised in North Wales.

Reports of RWF using Welsh at the tactical level in Bosnia.


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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#3

Post by daveshoup2MD » 20 Feb 2022, 20:56

Sid Guttridge wrote:
19 Feb 2022, 13:05
I was recently reading The Story of the Lovat Scouts 1900-1980 by Melville. This was a Territorial Army unit raised in the Islands and Highlands of north-west Scotland. The book says that its B Squadron had such a high proportion of Gaelic speakers that this was the language of instruction within it.

This set me to wondering whether any other British Army units or sub-units used Welsh within them for similar reasons?

Cornish was extinct, Manx was very niche and Irish Gaelic speakers were the most hostile to the British and all Irish citizens, so I presume these languages were not used.

Cheers,

Sid.
Aber wrote:
20 Feb 2022, 13:19
Most likely is 158th Infantry Brigade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/158th_Inf ... _World_War

Three territorial battalions of Royal Welch Fusiliers raised in North Wales.

Reports of RWF using Welsh at the tactical level in Bosnia.
Kind of an interesting question - there are a few mentions on the Internet of the British (and by extension, Commonwealth/Empire/etc.) using obscure languages as a tool to secure radio (and presumably telephone) communications (Welsh in the British forces, Metis-speakers in the Canadian forces, etc.), akin to the (reasonably) well-known US "code talkers" who spoke various Native American languages for clear radio communications during the world wars.

Hindi and Arabic obviously not, but between various Gaelic dialects found in the UK and (presumably) some of the South Asian (or for that matter, African) languages from across the Empire, seems like it might have paid dividends if used on a wide scale.

Seems like it was considered but set aside; anyone aware of a history of British/Imperial/etc. military communications that explains the thinking?

May have just been a lack of time and resources in wartime, but on the other hand, seems like a capability that - if developed in peacetime - could have been useful; and certainly could have put the diversity of the Empire to work...

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Waleed Y. Majeed
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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#4

Post by Waleed Y. Majeed » 21 Feb 2022, 02:27

Seems the lessons from WW1 were forgotten in WW2, or known to the enemy by now and therefor outdated.
https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2015/04/ ... ern-front/

Waleed

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#5

Post by daveshoup2MD » 21 Feb 2022, 03:07

Waleed Y. Majeed wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 02:27
Seems the lessons from WW1 were forgotten in WW2, or known to the enemy by now and therefor outdated.
https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2015/04/ ... ern-front/

Waleed
Thanks for the link; even if known to the Germans, seems unlikely there would have been a lot of German Gaelic language students during the interwar period ... and even so, the usefulness of similar projects - even if using different languages, or in different theaters - seems likely.

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#6

Post by Sid Guttridge » 21 Feb 2022, 12:37

Hi Aber and daveshoup,

The Lovat Scouts example was one of local convenience within the battalion, rather than higher policy.

As there were far more Welsh speakers than Scots Gaelic speakers, you are probably right to look at the Royal Welch Fusiliers as the most likely candidates for use of a Celtic language within its battalions. Was there a Territorial unit from the same area of north Wales?

I presume that the Celtic languages were more likely to be found in local Home Guard units. This link (https://etheses.bham.ac.uk/id/eprint/65 ... y16PhD.pdf) says there is some documentary evidence of Welsh use in Home Guard units in North Wales but that it is, as yet, unstudied. The Welsh for Home Guard is apparently, Y Gwarchodlu Cartref, but whether this was used at the time or just in post-war Welsh-language material is unclear to me.

The author Compton Mackenzie, who wrote Whisky Galore and was an NCO in the Home Guard in the Hebrides, apparently makes reference to Scots Gaelic in his book Keep the Home Guard Turning.

One WWII Imperial peculiarity I found years ago was that a platoon of the British Honduras Battalion was entirely Spanish speaking.

The US concentrated many of its Cajun speakers (some apparently initially monoglots) in one battalion and I believe there was a heavily Spanish-speaking sub-unit of a Texas-raised division. The New Zealanders had a Maori battalion. So this niche activity was widespread across the English-speaking world.

I have also read that the UN found Irish peacekeeping troops particularly useful in the Congo because they could use Gaelic in clear to circumvent the necessity of coding and decoding messages.

Cheers,

Sid.

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#7

Post by Aber » 21 Feb 2022, 13:35

Sid Guttridge wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 12:37
As there were far more Welsh speakers than Scots Gaelic speakers, you are probably right to look at the Royal Welch Fusiliers as the most likely candidates for use of a Celtic language within its battalions. Was there a Territorial unit from the same area of north Wales?
From the wiki link composition of the brigade
The 158th Infantry Brigade was constituted as follows during the war:
4th (Denbighshire) Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (left 3 August 1944)
6th (Caernarvonshire and Anglesey) Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (left 3 August 1944)
7th (Merionethshire & Montgomeryshire) Battalion, Royal Welch Fusiliers (left 27 April 1945, rejoined 14 June 1945)
ie 3 Territorial battalions from North Wales

From the 1931 census Caernarfon, Anglesey and Merioneth were over 20% Welsh monglot, and 80-90% able to speak Welsh; Denbighshire and Montgomery were 40-50% able to speak Welsh. Therefore 6th Battalion would be the most likely to be Welsh speaking in practice.

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#8

Post by MikeMeech » 21 Feb 2022, 17:13

Waleed Y. Majeed wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 02:27
Seems the lessons from WW1 were forgotten in WW2, or known to the enemy by now and therefor outdated.
https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2015/04/ ... ern-front/

Waleed
Hi

Please note the date of this article, it is a 'joke' (also technically wrong for wireless telephony use during WW1).

Welsh or other Celtic languages were unlikely to be used much in many battalions as the war progressed as with conscription and expansion of the British Army meant that large numbers of English speaking conscripts were sent to regular and territorial units which would have diluted the 'local' nature of them.

This does not rule out the language use for particular reasons but it does for general command use.

Mike

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#9

Post by ljadw » 21 Feb 2022, 17:41

Sid Guttridge wrote:
19 Feb 2022, 13:05

and Irish Gaelic speakers were the most hostile to the British and all Irish citizens,

Cheers,

Sid.
Is there a proof for this questionable claim ?
There were many more English speaking people who were hostile to Britain than people who spoke Gaelic .
And, when people volunteered for the British army in WW 2, this did not mean automatically that they were pro-British .
Also in 1922 50 % of the new Irish army had served in the British army .And, a lot of them spoke Gaelic .
Thus : speaking Gaelic was not an obstacle for serving in the British army .

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#10

Post by Sheldrake » 21 Feb 2022, 17:52

daveshoup2MD wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 03:07
Waleed Y. Majeed wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 02:27
Seems the lessons from WW1 were forgotten in WW2, or known to the enemy by now and therefor outdated.
https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2015/04/ ... ern-front/

Waleed
Thanks for the link; even if known to the Germans, seems unlikely there would have been a lot of German Gaelic language students during the interwar period ... and even so, the usefulness of similar projects - even if using different languages, or in different theaters - seems likely.
I think it was a dangerous and complacent assumption that the Germans could not find speakers of obscure foreign languages. IRRC that "Rommel's intelligence officer" wrote about the British trying to use Urdu as secure speach - but the Germans did have a translator.

British officers have a fondness for beleiving that they could use concealed speach to avoid using code. We used to regularly have debriefs by signals intelligence on this subject and how easy it was to crack.

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#11

Post by daveshoup2MD » 21 Feb 2022, 18:05

Sid Guttridge wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 12:37
The US concentrated many of its Cajun speakers (some apparently initially monoglots) in one battalion and I believe there was a heavily Spanish-speaking sub-unit of a Texas-raised division.
The unit you're referring to in terms of French speakers was a federalized Louisiana NG infantry regiment, which had one battalion withdrawn and sent to FNA in 1942-43 for service for obvious reasons; it was then broken up and redesignated into several French-speaking MP companies, which went to Southern France with the 7th Army and 6th Army Group. That was an intentional use of bi-lingual American soldiers for civil affairs and related reasons where their language abilities would be useful dealing with Allied forces and civilian populations. Not the same as using minor languages for communications security. As far as bilingual Spanish speakers, that capability would be present in US troops from Puerto Rico and across the U.S. Southwest, but again, whatever utility that may have had in terms of dealing with Spanish speaking allies and civilians, that was also not really an asset in terms of communications security.

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#12

Post by daveshoup2MD » 21 Feb 2022, 18:14

Sheldrake wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 17:52
daveshoup2MD wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 03:07
Waleed Y. Majeed wrote:
21 Feb 2022, 02:27
Seems the lessons from WW1 were forgotten in WW2, or known to the enemy by now and therefor outdated.
https://www.deadlinenews.co.uk/2015/04/ ... ern-front/

Waleed
Thanks for the link; even if known to the Germans, seems unlikely there would have been a lot of German Gaelic language students during the interwar period ... and even so, the usefulness of similar projects - even if using different languages, or in different theaters - seems likely.
I think it was a dangerous and complacent assumption that the Germans could not find speakers of obscure foreign languages. IRRC that "Rommel's intelligence officer" wrote about the British trying to use Urdu as secure speach - but the Germans did have a translator.

British officers have a fondness for beleiving that they could use concealed speach to avoid using code. We used to regularly have debriefs by signals intelligence on this subject and how easy it was to crack.
Yeah, but Urdu isn't exactly an obscure language; today, there are some 100 million Urdu speakers. Today, there are ~170,000 people with some fluency in Navajo, as in the language spoken by the USMC code-talkers. The numbers were undoubtedly different in 1940, but presume the ratio was similar.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/languages/other/u ... acts.shtml

Figure any language with a BBC or VOA service is probably not obscure enough for these purposes. ;)

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#13

Post by Sid Guttridge » 21 Feb 2022, 21:51

Hi ljadw,

You ask if there is any evidence for, "and Irish Gaelic speakers were the most hostile to the British and all Irish citizens,"

Yes.

Cheers,

Sid

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#14

Post by ljadw » 22 Feb 2022, 09:00

And, what is this evidence ?
How can you prove that there is a causal relation between speaking Gaelic and being hostile to Britain ?
Are Gaelic speakers hostile to Britain or are Irish enemies of Britain speaking Gaelic ?
And, what do you mean with Gaelic speakers ?Are these people who speak only Gaelic, or people who are bilingual ?
I have given the example of the Irish army of 1922 where 50 % had first served Britain and was now serving Ireland .
If these 50 % spoke mainly Gaelic, this proves that speaking Gaelic was not an obstacle for serving Britain .
If they spoke mostly English, this proves that speaking English was not an obstacle for serving Ireland .
I like also to see the proofs for the claim that Irish people who spoke mostly Gaelic did not volunteer for the British army in WW 2 ,because they spoke Gaelic .

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Re: Celtic language use in the metropolitan British Army in WWII?

#15

Post by Sid Guttridge » 22 Feb 2022, 13:33

Hi ljadw,

I thought you'd never ask.

1) The 1919 revolt against British rule began largely around western Gaeltacht areas.

2) The party in the Irish Civil War opposed to partition were particularly concentrated around these same areas.

3) All Gaelic speaking areas were included in Southern Ireland by partition, including those in nine-county Ulster. There were almost no Gaelic speakers in Northern Ireland and no monoglot Gaelic speakers at all to recruit into the British Army in the remaining six counties in WWII.

Cheers,

Sid.

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