“Tha fhios aig a h-uile Gàidheal cò e.” Tha Tormod a’ bruidhinn air a shinnsireachd fhèin, air taobh athar agus air taobh a mhàthar, agus ciamar a bha na ceanglaichean seo cudromach is e na ghille òg ann an Glaschu, Loch Abar agus Beinn na Faoghla. Tha cuimhne aige air a sheanair taobh athar, fear a ghlèidh duais seinn aig Cruinneachadh na h-Eaglaise Brice ann an 1878, is e a’ teagasg òrain dha. ‘S ann às Uibhist a Tuath a bha a sheanmhair taobh a mhàthar a chaidh a dh’fhuireach ann an Glaschu, far nach do thog i a-riamh a’ Bheurla, agus i beò ann an coimhearsnachd Gàidhlig baile mòr Ghlaschu. Tha Tormod a’ meòrachadh air cò ris a bha ceanglaichean eadar na coimhearsnachdan coltach bho dhiofar thaobhan nuair a bha e òg.

“Every Gael knows who he is.” Norman talks about his genealogy, on both sides of the family, and how these family networks played an important part in his early upbringing in Glasgow, Lochaber, and Benbecula. He has clear memories of his paternal grandfather teaching him songs, a man who himself won a prize for Gaelic singing at the Falkirk Tryst of 1878. His maternal grandmother, meanwhile, migrated to Glasgow from North Uist and never learned to speak English, functioning socially just within the Gaelic-speaking community of Glasgow of that time. Norman reflects on how community relations were experienced from different perspectives in his childhood.

A full transcript of this conversation is available here on Clilstore. (The Unit Info tab also enables access to Google Translate.)

The “Saoghal Thormoid” project is a collaboration between Soillse, the inter-university research partnership which funded the recordings through its Small Research Fund, and Guthan nan Eilean (Island Voices).

Update: All recordings in both the “Saoghal Thormoid” and “Sgeulachdan Thormoid” collections are now available on the “Norman Maclean” page.

Chan eil na beachdan aig com-pàirtichean ann an rannsachadh Shoillse a’ comharrachadh beachd oifigeil sam bith aig Soillse fhèin.

Views expressed by participants in Soillse research do not reflect any official opinion of the Soillse partnership. 

On consecutive days in the last week of April Gordon Wells recorded a series of Gaelic conversations with famed writer and entertainer Norman Maclean, in which Norman spoke reflectively of his memories and impressions of Gaelic life in Glasgow and the Hebrides from the middle of the Twentieth Century up to the present day.

The five videos, ranging between 35 and 55 minutes in length, will soon be posted online starting on Monday, 7th November. Word for word transcriptions will be made available simultaneously on Clilstore, enabling instant one-click vocabulary checking for Gaelic learners*. All in all there are 27,000 words and over three and a half hours of listening material in this collection, forming a unique new resource for serious study by learners and researchers. But Norman is a master raconteur, and there are plenty songs, jokes, and stories along the way. So, while it’s certainly an education, entertainment galore is also guaranteed for the more casual listener!

Over the week the conversations ranged over a wide variety of topics. In broad terms, however, each day had a different central focus:

Monday	Sinnsireachd
Tuesday	Foghlam
Wednesday	Coimhearsnachdan
Thursday	Cruthachalachd
Friday	Gàidhlig

For the latest information on the release dates for these videos you can subscribe for e-mail notifications in the side panel, or try following Island Voices on Facebook.

The “Saoghal Thormoid” project is a collaboration between Soillse, the inter-university research partnership which supported the recordings through its Small Research Fund, and Guthan nan Eilean (Island Voices). All recordings are free to access.

Update: All recordings in both the “Saoghal Thormoid” and “Sgeulachdan Thormoid” collections are now available on the “Norman Maclean” page.

*Clilstore also provides links to automatic Google Translate versions via the “unit info” tab. While machine translation from Gaelic to English is still at a very rudimentary stage, these versions can give at least an impression of the gist of the conversations for those viewers who have yet to start learning the language of Eden…