Funding Council provides vital resource for Gaelic language revival

The Scottish Funding Council (SFC) is to speed up the development of a ground-breaking, authoritative and comprehensive Scottish Gaelic dictionary with a £2 million funding package. The dictionary will be a fundamental, freely-accessible online resource for the language basing its analysis on a collection of written work of around 30 million words which is being compiled at the University of Glasgow under the auspices of its Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic/Corpas na Gàidhlig project, directed by Professor Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh. The package will fund five corpus assistants and one IT systems developer at the University of Glasgow over the next 5 years. Professor Ó Maolalaigh said: "This dictionary will be an educational tool that meets the needs of all users from those working in Celtic and Gaelic Studies, students, teachers and parents in Gaelic-medium education to everyday Gaelic speakers. "It will also improve opportunities for research in linguistics and Scottish history and culture. It is a fantastic announcement and one that will greatly assist in the development of the language." The project is of international importance and use and has been welcomed by academics in Celtic studies from America (notably Harvard and UCLA), Australia, Germany, Poland, France, and also by the Oxford English Dictionary. The dictionary will fully document the Gaelic language and its history by tracing the development of each word from its earliest written form to the present day, and will help to raise the profile of the Gaelic language and heritage.