Le Gordon Wells
“Guth nan Siarach” (or “Voice of the Westside”) is the name of a new Gaelic community group in Lewis, set up in response to the 2020 publication of the Soillse research book, “The Gaelic Crisis in the Vernacular Community”.
Members of this group recently attended an online Soillse workshop on “New Insights on the Vernacular Gaelic Communities in the Islands”, led by Professor Conchúr Ó Giollagáin. It was a refreshing opportunity for community members to take part in discussion with interested academics from a range of universities, both within the Soillse network and from outwith Scotland.
Some days after the event, Guth nan Siarach members met again on Zoom to record their thoughts, questions, and ideas after hearing Prof Ó Giollagáin’s presentation and taking part in the subsequent discussion. We’re very grateful at Guthan nan Eilean that Jane, Maggie, Christine, Catriona, and Calum were willing to share their thoughts with us.
“Mother tongue” issues are often very close to the heart, and it can take confidence, courage, and no little skill to talk about them openly and with consideration, especially when the language in question has been on the receiving end of prolonged disadvantageous treatment. It’s a privilege to hear the group talk among themselves about issues of concern. We look forward to hearing more in the near future!
We recommend finding the time to watch the full discussion. The contributions are varied, thoughtful, and expressed in good Lewis Gaelic. And thanks to the Gaelic Speech Recognition research team, we’ve added CC Gaelic subtitling, which you can turn on or off as you please – and which will also enable Google translation into other languages:
But if your time is short, you can get a taste of the meeting from these “criomagan”. (CC subtitling also available on this clip.)
And here’s Prof Ó Giollagáin’s presentation:
Tadhail air Island Voices – Guthan nan Eilean
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Rövid dokumentumfilm a Ceòlas skót-gael zenei nyári iskoláról, melyet a Skócia Nyugat Szigeteihez, a Külső Hebrdákhoz tartozó Dél-Uiston rendeznek meg minden évben.
Μια ταινία μικρού μήκους για το κέντρο ημέρας Craigard στο Lochmaddy, στα Δυτικά Νησιά της Σκωτίας. Πρόκειται για ένα μέρος, όπου πολλά άτομα περνούν δημιουργικά και ευχάριστα το χρόνο τους.
Valentini still works for the same group, offering support in public relations, and has been involved in various other European projects. She’s always enjoyed this work because of the opportunities it’s offered to meet people of other cultures, who speak other languages, and who have other ways of thinking.
Twitter hashtags do not normally attract much attention from Island Voices, far less participation or amplification. Firestorms and pile-ons are not our normal digital habitat. Rather, our natural inclination is more towards common sense than confected indignation or online mass hysteria. But every now and then, one catches the eye – 
It’s this additionality that balanced bilingualism, or indeed multilingualism, confers that Island Voices has been promoting from the start. A project founded upon transnational European co-operation is never going to accept a characterisation of its linguistic roots as somehow blinkered or introspective, or that it is motivated by selfish concerns for “cosa nostra” alone. Island Voices would not even have started, with its roots going back to the POOLS project of 2005-2007, without the support of European funding and partners from many different language backgrounds. We hope our response has been, and continues to be, appropriately reciprocal too, for example through our