Moray physics teacher who found ‘whole new life’ as Gaelic lecturer appointed to UNESCO committee
A Dutch mum’s “wild journey” from teaching secondary school physics to advising the United Nations about languages came after her Gaelic-learning “hobby” got “slightly out of hand”.
Ingeborg (Inge) Birnie, who lives in Knockando, moved to Moray from The Netherlands in the 1990s to study science at Moray College.
After graduating, she went on to teach physics at Milnes and Speyside High School.
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However, Inge also started taking Gaelic evening classes through Moray College - kickstarting a passion which would shape her life for nearly two decades.
Her efforts saw her awarded Gaelic learner of the year at the Oban Mod in 2009.
However, in the 15 years since, Inge has earned a degree and PhD in the language, along with teaching Gaelic and helping run a Gaelic-medium nursery, and is now a languages lecturer at the University of Strathclyde.
She has also been appointed to an influential committee helping to advise UNESCO about indigenous languages.
“It started with a hobby and got slightly out of hand,” Inge said.
“It feels really odd, like a whole different life.
“From being a physics teacher, I’m suddenly trying to tell myself: ‘Oh yeah, that’s fine, I’m at a UNESCO meeting.’
“I’m speaking to people from the UN about my work, to people that represent indigenous peoples within the White House, and countries across the world.
“I’m getting used to spending quite a lot of time at airports.”
The mum said her lecturing job at Strathclyde involves “teaching teachers how to teach languages”.
However, she said the life-changing decision to start learning Gaelic could easily have never happened.
“To my shame, I just did it because it was an option,” Inge said.
“It could have been French.
“I didn’t know anything about the history or politics of it, I didn’t know any other Gaelic speakers.”
Deciding to step back from life as a secondary teacher and pursue Gaelic was a “leap of faith”, Inge added.
“When I gave up my job as a teacher at Moray Council, it was a leap of faith.
“I just thought to myself: ‘It will somehow work out’.
“It has been a rollercoaster of changes.
“And now I’m doing something completely different.”
Despite the massive differences between the topics of science and languages, the lecturer said her “scientific” approach might have helped her become an expert in Gaelic.
She added: “One of the reasons that I got on with Gaelic was because I approached it quite scientifically.
“I just thought to myself: ‘These are the rules.’
“So I made tables with all the rules in it.
“I found it easier to learn than English.
“Maybe it did help me approach the language learning in a different way, or maybe I just got lucky and something just clicked.”
Inge also said that, despite the public sometimes doubting the relevance of Gaelic to Moray, the area has some significant connections with the language.
“I think people don’t feel connected to it,” she said.
“Often it is about the money that’s being spent on it, and I totally get that, because it is a tough time.
“But Gaelic also belongs to Moray.
“It’s part of our cultural heritage and it’s worth learning about and preserving.”
Inge added that the language was a helpful way to understand the history and geography of the local area.
“A lot of the place names came from Gaelic and actually do explain a lot about the places,” she said.
“Knockando means the market hill, because it is equidistant between Forres, Grantown and Elgin and it’s where people went to sell things.
“Whereas Aberlour means mouth of the River Lour.
“It tells you where we came from, what the place used to be like.
“I think, if people understand that, they can get a sense of the place and the culture.”
She also denied there was any contradiction between protecting Doric and Gaelic, and that Speyside had its own dialect of Gaelic until the 1960s and 1970s.
“Gaelic was still strong there until the 1960s and 1970s, but the coastal places have always been more Doric,” Inge added.
“There is definitely no conflict between them.
“Moray sits, really, on that boundary of the two languages, its the bit that people don’t quite know what to do with.
“Speyside had its own specific dialect of Gaelic, it is slightly different.
“All the people who speak it as a first language are all very, very elderly or have died.
“But even it was just spoken in the home to other speakers and was not in school or anything like that.
“It’s a part of history people have forgotten about.”
