![\"Unmute\"](\"https:\/\/www.northpost.co.uk\/uhi\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/05\/unmute.png\")
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Who remembers we once mooted a MOOT?<\/p>\n
Well, the idea of an Island Voices “Multilingual Open Online Teach-in” is now no longer, um, moot<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0– for want of a better word. \u201cChan ann a h-uile latha a bhios m\u00f2d<\/strong><\/a> aig Mac an T\u00f2isich\u201d, mar a chanas iad, (\u201cIt\u2019s not every day Mackintosh throws a party\u201d \u2013 loosely) but its time has come.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve recently placed a whole series of \u201cTalking Points with Norman Maclean<\/a>\u201d recordings on our YouTube channel, built on a merging of materials and ideas from the Soillse\/UHI Language Sciences Institute projects Mediating Multilingualism<\/a> and Saoghal Thormoid<\/a>. In the last few weeks of the funded period for\u00a0Mediating Multilingualism, linguists in universities in Scotland, India, and Jamaica discussed topics of common interest with UK-based community language speakers, stimulated by brief extracts from the final session of\u00a0Saoghal Thormoid. And these discussions are now available to view.<\/p>\n It’s an experimental format, mixing subtitled Gaelic recordings with live English debate. The topics are sociolinguistic, covering Language Endangerment (Gaelic Trajectory?<\/a>), Language Hierarchies (English Ascendancy?<\/a>), and Language Contact (Bilingual Balance?<\/a>). And they may raise just as many questions as answers, if not more. Just the thing then for the enquiring mind, and quite in the spirit of the \u201cTeach-in\u201d philosophy described in our 2019 post<\/a>! In the end, we didn\u2019t set up a separate online forum then, and we won\u2019t now. There are perfectly good comment and reply functions on YouTube and here on WordPress for any questions readers or listeners may have.<\/p>\n But to help provide a degree of focus or sense of direction \u2013 without closing down the options for diverging lines of thought and enquiry \u2013 we\u2019ve put together a special \u201cbox set\u201d International Island Voices MOOT<\/a> playlist on YouTube that brings together the Talking Points material with some other key videos from our overall body of work which underpin and exemplify our multilingual approach.<\/p>\n By the way, we knitted some 2-minute Norman Maclean “highlights” into the recorded discussions, as an aide memoire for the longer extracts that were being discussed. If you want a quick taste of a topic, we’ve extracted them here, and you can take a quick look at any of them now, before choosing which full discussion to dive into for the wider treatment.<\/p>\n“Talking Points” with Tormod<\/h2>\n
YouTube Playlist<\/h2>\n
Previews<\/h2>\n