Le Gordon Wells
With the official coming into force of the Scottish Languages Act on St Andrew’s Day, it may be worth noting that Island Voices has been steadily gathering collections of recordings in Gaelic communities over past months and years. Not all of these have been separately publicised on the blog before now, so we’re pleased to announce that both the Stòras Beò and Shortcuts pages have been recently updated to incorporate newer recordings that had not yet been made when these collections were first placed online.
And in addition to Scottish languages, those with a “pan-Gaelic” interest should note in particular that the Irish content from Donegal, and particularly Galway, has been growing steadily of late, after making a slower start over Zoom during the pandemic, with engaging stories and songs in cosy domestic settings coming to the fore. These, plus additional Hebridean recordings in Scottish Gaelic can all be found now through added links on the Stòras Beò page, taking the current total number of recordings in this collection up to 68, all accompanied by wordlinked transcriptions.
Similarly, links to the recent conversation with Cathie Laing have also been added to the Shortcuts collection, so the total number of separate video clips on this page is now 52, each complemented with both YouTube subtitling and a Clilstore transcript.
No doubt debate will continue over whether or not “Gaeltacht” or “Area of Linguistic Significance” official designations can or will have effective impact on actual language practice in either Scotland or Ireland. In any event these recordings provide model resources for anyone seeking samples of grounded authentic speech in real-life action.
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Tadhail air Island Voices – Guthan nan Eilean