Tag Archives: highlands

A bheil Gàidhlig agaibh? Do you speak Gaelic?  Would you like to learn? Are you interested in Gaelic language and culture?

If so, read on.

Four years ago, I started learning Gaelic on Duolingo after my son bullied me into it.  Since then, I have completed the online introductory course at Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, Scotland’s Gaelic College and have just started on the next course. I spent a week at the college on Skye in the Summer being taught by a very funny German, Michael Klevenhaus, who has a real passion for finding traditional Gaelic melodies in Beethoven’s work. There’s even a BBC Alba documentary about it which, sadly, is no longer on the iPlayer.

The course was brilliant and very well paced.  Michael would do a heavy grammar session and then get the Tesco website up and get you to say how much things cost, or ask you the date. He had us making up stories in Gaelic a line at a time.

We also had to sing two songs at the ceilidh on the last evening.  One was a pretty rowdy drinking song but the second was quite emotional. Michael has written Gaelic words to Ode to Joy, the European anthem that is very close to our hearts as liberals.

I initially started learning to support my son. I did not expect to fall in love with the language. I mean, how on earth can you not when (one of) the words for bluebell translates to “cuckoo’s shoe”?

It’s connected me to my heritage in a way that I didn’t expect and made me understand so much more about my family. My Granny’s parents were born around about the time as the 1872 Education Act, a major part of which was to suppress the language. Children were belted in school for speaking it and all education was carried out in English.  Gaelic Medium Education was only reintroduced in the 80s.

So my Granny grew up in a culture where there was a deep sense of shame about speaking Gaelic. We discovered from census records that her dad had Gaelic, and conflicting information about her mum but she didn’t. However, I now realise that she spoke English in a very Gaelic way.

Language suppression is never a good thing and the work that is being done now to keep the language alive is vital to preserve an important part of our Scottish identity.  I think that there are some things we could do better in making the language a lot more audible as well as visible and getting it out there into communities.  The new award winning  Kilbeg development near Sabhal Mòr Ostaig on Skye aims to be a community where Gaelic is regenerated and we need to see how that works out and if it can be extended.

I will confess to being relatively indifferent to Gaelic until my first visit  to Wales in about 2012, seeing how Welsh was embedded everywhere, that changed my mind. In 2016, I went to Welsh Conference and was really amazed to see Welsh speakers and headphones with for translation between the two languages.

Gaelic was once spoken virtually everywhere in Scotland except Caithness and East Lothian. There are, according to a BBC Alba documentary about the Fife Coastal Path, more Gaelic place names in Fife than in the Isle of Lewis.

There’s a lot to think about how we ensure that Gaelic not only survives but grows in the future. This matters to so many of the communities to represent. Angus Macdonald recently asked a question about it at a House of Commons committee. The point he made about Gaelic being essential to the economic development of rural communities in the Highlands is a good one. Watch below.