Kenny Murdo (Rev Ferguson) and his sister Christine are in conversation with Coinneach MacÌomhair in this video from Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre a’ Bhac, with memories of Sràid a’ Bhac, Bùth Bellann and their careers. This “Clilstore treatment” provides an online wordlinked transcript with the video embedded. You can get a translation of any word you don’t know by clicking on it: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11883
“Over a hundred years old yet still sharp as ever, it was a great privilege to chat with Mrs Rena Maciver.”
Another fascinating conversation from Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre a’ Bhac given the Clilstore treatment: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11872
Island Voices just struck lucky on a visit to Glasgow, witnessing and recording this free and open bilingual event put on by the Friends of Queens Park to mark the 300th anniversary of the birth of Duncan Ban MacIntyre – Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir. The occasion was blessed by the renowned performing talents of Alan Riach and Allan MacDonald in both Gaelic and English, and a large and appreciative audience.
While poetry has not featured hugely in Island Voices recordings to date, that is about to change, with conversations with, and recitals from, various contemporary writers currently in the works, and not just in Gaelic or English. These will be in video form, as we maintain our focus on the Primacy of Speech, a fundamental tenet of linguistic analysis that may be easily forgotten, or brushed over, in times of near-universal literacy. How appropriate then that Donnchadh Bàn is currently being commemorated, a non-writer of Gaelic, but great composer of remarkable poetry.
This event kicked off with Allan MacDonald “singing on the pipes”. The video contains selected snippets to give a taste of the proceedings. Enjoy the voices of these accomplished artists!
Island Voices re-posts another video from Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre a’ Bhac on the Clilstore platform, as part of the University of the Highlands and Islands CIALL initiative.
“Coinneach visited Catriona MacCarthur (Catriona Dhuirl), who is in her 90s, although she certainly doesn’t look it. She recalls the days of her youth and being brought up in Coll, reminiscing about people and pastimes, community life and some of the effects which WWII had on her generation.”
You can watch the video while reading the wordlinked transcript in this Clilstore unit: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11854
March opens with the further extension of our CIALL-supported collaborative work with Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre a’ Bhac through the creation of another wordlinked transcript on the Clilstore platform, this time based on their video of Coinneach MacÌomhair in conversation with Donnie Macaulay. Donnie Macaulay is the son of the late Rev Murdo Macaulay, who was the minister of Back Free Church between 1956 and 1975.
It’s another fascinating recording of naturally spoken Gaelic, full of stories and treasured reminiscences. And now the Clilstore treatment offers enhanced access to Gaelic learners, and any others who may also like to see written Gaelic alongside the spoken word.
Here’s the link: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11851
We’ve previously drawn attention to some of the fascinating YouTube videos coming out of Comann Eachdraidh Sgìre Bhac, and to the fact that a number of the Gaelic ones have now been enhanced with optional same language subtitling (which can also be auto-translated into numerous other languages, including English).
Of course, once the subtitling has been done, that also forms a base on which other platforms can be built – such as a learner-friendly “Clilstore” unit. This is an online tool which creates a new webpage with the video embedded alongside a scrollable text, so you can look at and listen to the video while at the same time following the transcript in real time. Plus, there’s a special trick which allows learners to click on any word they don’t know and immediately gain access to a dictionary translation of it.
So here, with support from the University of the Highlands and Islands’ “CIALL” initiative, is another example of the Clilstore software being put to use with a community-produced recording about School Memories from Sgoil a’ Bhac, with Coinneach MacÌomhair in conversation with some of his former classmates.
Clilstore Unit 11818 – “School Memories”: https://clilstore.eu/cs/11818
There are numerous points of interest in the newly published Volume 40 – the 2024 issue – of “Scottish Studies”. Notably, this open access journal of the School of Scottish Studies at the University of Edinburgh has now gone fully online. Virginia Blankenhorn, the editor, gives a good account of the various reasons why this makes sense:
“In addition to saving trees, there are considerable advantages to online publication which we believe more than compensate for the lack of a printed volume. First and foremost, reduced costs will make it possible to publish more frequently – at least once every eighteen months to start with. Second, digital publication will allow easy access from the content of an article to other online resources. An author writing about song, for example, will be able to supply hyperlinks to sung performances available online, thereby allowing readers to hear the songs themselves – a gift to readers unable to read musical notation, and an added benefit to those who do, but who understand how much information such notation typically leaves out. Finally – and, as editor, I deeply appreciate this feature – digital publication will allow errors to be easily and silently corrected as soon as eagle-eyed readers point them out.”
From the Island Voices standpoint, the point about the multimedia affordances of online publication makes particularly good sense, supporting our consistent stance on the primacy of speech. The notation of language, as with music, is an often inadequate and only approximate substitute for the real thing!
So we are, of course, doubly delighted that Virginia also found space for an interview with Gordon Wells about the Island Voices project in a piece on “Digital Developments in Scottish Studies“, alongside parallel contributions from Will Lamb (Edinburgh) and Natasha Sumner (Harvard). Okay, it’s presented here in written format – but with plenty of live links and URLs in the footnotes. Ceum air cheum…!
Our hearty thanks are due to the journal and its editor for finding a space for Guthan nan Eilean in the world of Scottish Studies!
“Coherent language protection and promotion initiatives are of vital relevance to minority-language survival. Whilst economic, geographic, demographic, and socio-political factors are crucial to successful language protection and promotion at a macro level, positive factors influencing the primary aspects of language vitality, i.e., acquisition, socialisation, ethnolinguistic identity, and praxis, are crucial at a micro level.
This paper aims to present a new conceptual framework by which we can interpret the various social elements contributing to minority-language social dynamics. Four phases of socialisation (primary, secondary, civic reinforcement, and processes of collective coherence) are indicated in the social dynamic, and the influence and interaction of key groups of social participants (identified as minority; majoritarian; tangential and neo-cultures) on the outplay of the dynamic in society are demonstrated. The analysis underlying this new conceptualisation examines: a) the implications of minority-language promotion with insufficient language protection, and b) the influence of the minority-language policy and planning framework on the social dynamics of the minority group. It is contended in the paper that minority language protection is more likely to be successful when it adequately aligns and addresses the core aspects of the actual reality of minority social dynamics.”
You can click on the poster above to find live links for this talk by the Director of the UHI Language Sciences institute, or join here.
UPDATE: The recording of the talk is now available via the news page of the Language Sciences Institute: Talk on Minority Language Protection.
We’ll continue our review of previous Gaelic recordings into the winter months, given the popularity of our autumn social media season. But we’re going to start the New Year with something a little bit different – and warmer – while sticking with the Gaelic unifying theme. We’ll kick off with some earlier films made “in the style of” or “about” Island Voices, before returning to more classics from the original series.
Island Voices in fact owes its inception to the stimulus provided by the EU’s Leonardo funded POOLS project of 2005-2007. It was through that successful partnership that the Guthan nan Eilean idea came into being – and won the 2007 European Language Label. POOLS turned out to be just the first of many follow-up projects that built on the original theme, with Island Voices linked to many of them.
POOLS-2 (2009-2011) was an early example, again with a video production element included, which enabled us to link with other European islands like Cyprus and Malta. In these demo clips from a 2010 video workshop in Nicosia, the fundamental learning point is made that serviceable video-making need not be the exclusive preserve of industry professionals. And in language teaching terms, it can be a highly productive process, with multilingual knock-on benefits potentially within reach in return for the initial creative input.
These videos were put together as a demo for language teachers interested in the use of ICT in language teaching. Participants spent a morning taking pictures. The following day, after pooling their resources, they each edited together their own short film, using this demo as an exemplar.
They were recently “rediscovered”, and the Gaelic version has now been additionally equipped with the learning assisting enhancements that have since become available – including the now standard Clilstore transcript (Unit 11794), plus optional YouTube subtitles (that can further be auto-translated through the Settings Wheel).
A bheil Portagailis agad, neo am bu toil leat beagan ionnsachadh?!
Tionndadh Gàidhlig:
English version:
We’ll place direct YouTube links to more Gaelic films on a similar outward-looking and multilingual theme on Facebook and Twitter in days to come…
As we move from 2023 to 2024, Island Voices’ “coming of age” since the project was first mooted 18 years ago in 2005 has already been marked. Followers on Facebook or Twitter will also have noticed our recent “autumn season” of retrospective re-postings of some of our earlier videos from the original Series One and Two. It’s been heartening to see the sudden bursts in YouTube metrics as we re-draw attention to examples of our earliest work, peaking with close to 1200 hits in one single day in November.
A quick analysis of Facebook “likes” (including other positive reactions) may also be instructive, for example in comparing the sixteen videos that form the Gaelic section of Series Two Outdoors, as each was separately highlighted from 2nd November into early December. With overall positive reactions just on our own page totalling over 1,000 during this period – averaging about 63 per video – there was an interesting split between the introductory “teacher talk” documentaries and the “authentic speech” interviews with community members. The documentaries averaged 35 “likes” whereas the interviews pulled in over a mean 79 per video, with the top three scoring 253, 197, and 97 positive reactions respectively, all with senior community members who, sadly, have now passed on since making their recordings.
In a previous (2020) post on “Gaelic virality” we compared hit rates on WordPress, following Facebook shares, between local Hebridean and more widely dispersed Gaelic interest groups (including learners). But this time we simply posted directly on our own Facebook page and shared just with the Scottish Gaelic Duolingo page in each case. It’s a matter of some interest, even with this narrower sharing strategy, that the top three most actively liked interviews were with older generation speakers, who themselves received relatively little schooling but acquired their Gaelic through community transmission. This comparative popularity makes perfect sense when aligned with academic findings which favour a “retro-vernacular” model for language analysis and indeed teaching purposes.
So, moving into 2024 the project remains firmly committed to its strong Gaelic community focus. And, while the former link to Sabhal Mòr Ostaig is now dissolved, following the closure of Soillse, we maintain academic relationships, particularly with the UHI Language Sciences Institute, through co-operation with its CIALL project (Collaborative, Interdisciplinary & Applied Linguistic Links). This will enable us to keep on supporting existing Gaelic-related work at community level (such as the Aire air Sunnd wellbeing project with Comann Eachdraidh Uibhist a Tuath) and explore new recording avenues too (for example in relation to Taighean Tughaidh with Cnoc Soilleir and UHI archaeological colleagues).
Tommy Macdonald (centre-right) shows the ruin of Neil Maceachan’s house to UHI researchers
At the same time, we look forward to further developing our wider mutually supportive links with Other Tongues beyond our Hebridean shores, for example in other Scottish island chains, or indeed in other maritime areas, whether Mediterranean or Caribbean… Watch this space!
Back in 2005 Island Voices started off with a specific language teaching focus which later widened out. CIALL, by contrast, set out a broader vision from the start when developing its working rationale in 2023, stressing the importance of language use outside formal learning contexts. Here’s a key section:
‘The reality of the ever-growing global Language Shift phenomenon is that speakers of a threatened language switch to another one for societally conditioned reasons other than declining linguistic competence alone. It follows that responses which focus on formal, largely ab initio language learning without addressing broader issues around constricted language use outside the classroom cannot by themselves adequately slow the impetus towards continued and eventually completed shift. A holed bucket, if not repaired, will always empty, no matter how much fresh water is poured in.’
As a “language capture and curation” project Island Voices has always sought to present the snatches of speech it records in a firmly grounded social and community context. We certainly don’t claim to supply all the necessary patches to properly staunch the ongoing decline in the use of Gaelic, or any other language, but the CIALL critique above sits nicely with the Island Voices mission and points to a shared agenda – for 2024 and beyond – that can contribute to that cause.
To borrow a phrase: “Tha sin a’ dèanamh ciall!”
Gur math a thèid leinn uile sa bhliadhn’ ùr.