For all these reasons we are driven to look beyond the zero-sum thinking often associated with a monolingual mindset. If paying Paul does not entail robbing Peter, then putting it another way, taking care of Paul\u2019s needs does not necessitate neglecting Peter\u2019s. If the choice is recognised as false, then it should be possible to focus attention on either Peter or Paul as occasion demands without laying oneself open to a charge of \u201cdivisiveness\u201d. Quite the contrary, in a situation where Peter\u2019s own wellbeing is ultimately dependent on that of Paul, ignoring Paul\u2019s evident distress will do Peter no good at all.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s quite a long pre-emptive preamble to the point of this post, which is to display some striking figures on visits to this site from the first three days of October. Regular visitors will have noted that recently we have been featuring different contributors to the UHI-led St\u00f2ras Be\u00f2 nan G\u00e0idheal<\/a> project on the first day of each month. The St\u00f2ras Be\u00f2 materials are a set of long-form video-recorded discussions between fluent speakers of Gaelic talking about their lives. As natural conversations they are intrinsically interesting. And beyond that, as examples of authentic speech they have many add-on applications for speakers, learners and researchers of Gaelic, including support for the current Gaelic Speech Recognition<\/a> project being led by Edinburgh University, and planned contribution to the Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic<\/a> created by Glasgow University.<\/p>\n Posting first here on WordPress, the central website around which our various social media channels orbit, it\u2019s normal practice for Island Voices to place links on our Twitter account and Facebook page on following days as a way of encouraging new and returning visitors to visit this site. This month it was the turn of D\u00f2mhnall Caol<\/a> (Donald MacDonald) from Baleshare to be featured.<\/p>\n The following figure shows the WordPress analytics for October 1st-3rd, with some annotations indicative of differential responses from what might be loosely defined as \u201cnetworked\u201d and \u201cislands-based\u201d Facebook interest groups.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the timeline in more detail:<\/p>\n 01\/10\/20<\/strong><\/p>\n The WordPress post \u201cSt\u00f2ras Be\u00f2: D\u00f2mhnall<\/a>\u201d was shared from the FB page to three prominent Gaelic interest groups: G\u00e0idhlig na h-Alba \u262f Scottish Gaelic<\/a>, G\u00e0idhlig na h-Alba ~ Scottish Gaelic<\/a>, and Scottish Gaelic Speakers Unite!<\/a>. On that day these groups had a combined total membership of 12232<\/strong> (with a probability of significant crossmembership).<\/p>\n By the end of the day there had been 98<\/strong> recorded visits to the WordPress site.<\/p>\n This, as would be expected on the first day of a new post, is a significantly higher figure (around 2.5 times<\/strong>) than the daily average of about 40 WordPress visits up until that point in 2020.<\/p>\n 02\/10\/20<\/strong><\/p>\n The same WordPress post \u201cSt\u00f2ras Be\u00f2: D\u00f2mhnall<\/a>\u201d was shared 24 hours later from the FB page to two Uist-focused pages\/groups: North Uist Appreciation Society \u2013 NUAS<\/a> (page), and South Uist\/Uibhist a Deas Appreciation Society<\/a> \u2013 SUAS (group). The total on that day for page-followers and group-members was 12020<\/strong> (with a probability of significant crossmembership).<\/p>\n By the end of the day there had been 822<\/strong> visits to WordPress, more than 20 times<\/strong> the daily average for the year.<\/p>\n 03\/10\/20<\/strong><\/p>\n Following spontaneous sharing of the previous month\u2019s post \u201cSt\u00f2ras Be\u00f2: Aonghas<\/a>\u201d as a follow-up by NUAS, it was then also posted in the SUAS group.<\/p>\n By the end of the day there had been 667<\/strong> visits to WordPress, more than 16 times<\/strong> the daily average.<\/p>\n ————–<\/p>\n Of course, a strict warning should be issued against any bald assertion, based on just these figures, that Facebook followers who have an island connection are multiple times more likely to take an active interest in a post on Gaelic than those whose interest in the language does not have this geographic link. This is just a snapshot in time with no control for all sorts of variables too numerous to list in a blogpost. Nevertheless, it surely points to some kind of effect, which will probably be explicable \u2013 at least in part \u2013 by reference to the significant importance of a geographical community connection to Gaelic, as it is used in the islands, in stimulating online engagement with it.<\/p>\n If that basic point is conceded, then any indication that the islands\u2019 connection with Gaelic is in serious trouble, for which the recent \u201cGaelic Crisis<\/a>\u201d report provides ample quantitative evidence, surely deserves close attention, including from those speakers and other well-wishers whose connection is remote or \u201cvirtual\u201d. Certainly, there is little sign from this small snapshot that any hope of fully compensatory numbers of new speakers emerging from geographically displaced and dispersed networks is likely to be easily fulfilled.<\/p>\n From an Island Voices point of view, we can at least take comfort from the indication that our positive \u201cinsular focus\u201d is appreciated by the local community, while maintaining our commitment to inclusively showcasing these islands\u2019 unique linguistic character and versatility on a worldwide stage. It would surely be zero-sum thinking, of a kind Gaelic advocates routinely reject, to view the recent urgent \u201ccall to arms\u201d to inject new energy into Gaelic revival efforts at island community level as some kind of competitive threat to more dispersed interests. The one should feed the other.<\/p>\n The MSP for the Western Isles has announced a series of online meetings for various island communities to discuss ways forward for Gaelic in coming days. The link is here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What\u2019s a Gaelic community? A lot of social media screentime has been spent on this question. Frequently, the discussion centres on the comparative treatment of those who have a dispersed or \u201cnetwork\u201d connection with Gaelic \u2013 whether in an urban mainland \u201cdiaspora\u201d setting, or indeed in a largely internet-mediated \u201cvirtual\u201d sense \u2013 and those who … Continue reading Gaelic virality: a snapshot<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-community","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4664\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/wpvisitstats.jpg\")