7th August 2026

Languages have long held a fascination for me. Indeed, I’ve often wondered where I’d have ended up if I’d placed the emphasis on languages rather than science when I chose my O Level subjects, followed by A Levels, followed by my first degree in Botany. Assuming at some stage I’d still have felt a call to Christian ministry, no doubt my route there would have been somewhat different, and thereafter the focus of my theological thinking and reflection would probably have led me along pathways other than the interface of faith and science. Or perhaps a more linguistically trained me might have dodged the pulpit altogether, ending up serving God in the everyday world of ‘secular’ work like most other Christians!

My bookshelves are littered with language courses I’ve tinkered with in anticipation of some new holiday destination, but I confess I’ve never really got very far with any of them, never pushed on to be able to read simple literature or to have anything like a proper conversation with a local. My latest foray is into Scottish Gaelic, the language of my ancestors, where the main struggle is with a spelling and phonetics system that challenges an Englishman whose background knowledge of school French, elementary Latin and New Testament Greek doesn’t greatly help.

So why bother, especially as fewer than 150,000 folk worldwide can speak or use Scottish Gaelic, and most of those are in the Outer Hebrides? Well, it must be something to do with exploring ancestral roots, but I’m still rather curious about the language pathway I never took and where it might have taken me.

Ken Stewart