Cumail ar Cànan // Keeping our Language
We have just finalised our new Gaelic Development Plan, and we’ve chosen Cumail ar Cànan as the new name for our Gaelic Development work. Our goal is to encourage the use of Gaelic as much as we can – not just in the Trust but throughout Tiree.
To do that, we have been trying some new things like publishing regular simple stories in An Tirisdeach, and making films! We want to try even more ideas and we’d love as many people to join in as possible!
If you have other ideas of things we can do, please let us know!
What we’re up to
WhatsApp Community
We are setting up a WhatsApp community for Gaelic in Tiree. It will have channels for:
Homework Help
- If you have a child in GME, you can post a question in this group and one of our Gaelic speakers will do their best to help
Events
- Some of our conversation circles can be a bit ad hoc what with Donald Meek flying in… This way we can get word out quickly if an evening pops up, or something else is doing something folks might be interested in.
Resources
- Found something Gaelic-related that other people might find useful? Fire it in!
We’re hoping other channels will pop up naturally, but these felt like a good place to start. Follow this link to join – https://chat.whatsapp.com/LOzLm4hAjHzKRaywTYYWPT
Fundraising!
We want to raise money to support our Gaelic Development work, and we also want to get more Gaelic seen about the place, so we’re experimenting with some merchandise!
A few bits and pieces will be available to buy at the Community Gaelic Day on the 1st of March. We then plan to make it available online and in the visitor centre.
We are deliberately using words which are quite particular to Tiree and we would love your feedback!
Videos and Reels
One of the hardest things for many of us is to open our mouths and speak – but the more we do it, the easier it gets. So, as part of the project we will be trying to show as many people as possible speaking and using Gaelic on our social media and in our projects.
Our Thursday, “How do you say?” are being put onto Facebook, but we are also putting them onto YouTube as shorts.
We are hoping to be able to offer audio and video of a variety of Gaelic stories over the coming months.
Events
The Quiz and Bingo have been well supported, and we hope to be able to do more of this type of event.
We are also hoping to show more films in Gaelic.
If there are events you would like us to set up, come and have a chat!
Classes
Whilst we understand the importance of helping people to learn Gaelic from scratch, the first priority is to try and retain of much as we can of our existing community Gaelic, and dialect. For that reason we are focussing on conversation circles for fluent speaker, advanced learners, and people who have heads full of Gaelic but might not feel confident speaking.
We’re not forgetting about those who want to start learning and we hope to be able to find funding to pay someone to run classes for learners in the course of the year.
Expanding the Gaelic History Trail
By the start of the season, the trail will be fully online, and expanded! We hope that by using it, visitors will become more aware of the history and language of Tiree.
Signage
As part of our newly updated Gaelic Development plan, we would love to work with local businesses to add Gaelic to their signage.
We are hoping to source funding for it, so if you are a business that is interested in adding a bit of Gaelic, please give Rhoda a shout.