Guthan nan Eilean

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 months, years, and indeed couple of decades. Not all of these have been separately publicised on the blog before now, so

North Uist resident Cathie Laing talks to Island Voices co-ordinator and fellow Aire air Sunnd participant, Gordon Wells. As with other longer conversations we’ve recorded, we’ve divided this one into two halves initially, which we present first unfiltered and unsubtitled. For the benefit of learners or non-speakers of Gaelic we’ve also cut these recordings up

The Collaborative Interdisciplinary & Applied Linguistic Links initiative (CIALL) based in the Language Sciences Institute of the University of the Highlands and Islands has been able to support a number of Island Voices small projects, particularly under the Extensions title, with help from the Scottish Funding Council over the past couple of years. You can

Noèlia Díaz-Vicedo is the third member of the multilingual poetic partnership pulled together by Martin MacIntyre for his “A’ ruith eadar dà dhràgon” collection of poems in four languages, in which she provides the Catalan input alongside Ifor ap Glyn’s Welsh to complement Martin’s Gaelic and English. Noèlia is a member of the Association of

The CIALL-supported Island Voices presence at NATECLA 2025 has paid immediate dividends, in the form of a new Farsi version of the “Multilingual Memories: Birmingham 1984” film looking back 40 years at the Industrial Language Training Service. Evidently it struck a chord with conference participant Parnaz Pourshakibaee, who showed immediate interest in the theme, and

The Island Voices “Capture and Curation” approach is highly productive of new material in new languages to add to the original Hebridean focus on Gaelic and English, and it sometimes takes us to places where community language connections with our home territory may not always be immediately obvious. As we fill out new gaps which

The sonorous verse of Duncan Ban MacIntyre can now be heard on your phone any time you visit the Scottish Poetry Rose Garden in Glasgow’s Queen’s Park. Friends of Queen’s Park invited Alan Riach and Allan MacDonald to mark his 300th anniversary last year, and they provided a remarkable open air music and poetry double

Cur síos ag Seán Ó Con Ceanainn, as an Móinteach, Baile Chláir na Gaillimhe, ar an iománaíocht (na camógaí) agus ar an bpeil; ar bazaar na Faiche Móire an áit a casadh a bhean chéile air aimsir rástaí na Gaillimhe; a gcéad ghluaisteán, Baby Austin, i 1956, agus haicní spárálach a gcomharsan; sábháilt agus díol

The Island Voices project is featured in the new book “Foundational approaches to Celtic Linguistics“, through a chapter on the late Norman Maclean by Gordon Wells. This volume is a first venture into current issues in Celtic linguistics for the free open access academic publisher, Language Science Press. From the editors’ preface: Gordon Wells’ chapter

The recently completed Island Voices project “Multilingual Memories: Birmingham 1984” was on prominent display at this year’s annual conference of NATECLA, the National Association for Teaching English and Other Community Languages to Adults, held in Birmingham on 27th and 28th June. Project representatives Harmesh Manghra (first on left) and Sardul Dhesi (second from right) are