It has been announced that Bord na Gaidhlig is spending £250,000 on setting up a Gaelic version of the social networking site, Facebook – mygaelic.com. The site is to be online by the end of this month and is said to have been two years in development by Glasgow-based Gillian Thompson. The site will have an instant translation to English for non-Gaelic speakers.

Naturally the initiative has attracted a fair amount of controversy. Some critics focus on the cost – which is frankly, extremely high. (The site had better be good.) Some point to existing market leaders in the social networking genre – Facebook itself and Myspace – both of whom already have Gaelic users.

What is the function of Bord na Gaidhlig? Is it to promote and develop the use of the Gaelic language and culture? What else?

How does creating an online ghetto do that? Surely the presence of gaelic linguists amongst people of other tongues in multicultural networks like Facebook and Myspace is infinitely more promotional than sequestering Gaelic speakers away in thier own online corner?

How many people, bumping into a Gaelic spaker’s page in Facebook and arrested by a photograph, or a video that looks like fun, or some clearly lively chitchat, will not be drawn to understand the language? How many people, though, will visit a linguistic ghetto? Would you?

And the site title ‘ mygaelic’ is infantilising.

In the end, Gaelic speakers and promoters of the Gaelic language – so much a part of Scots culture – have a decision to make:

• to bring their culture into everyday engagement with the wider world
• or to stay apart and hope to grow their community in apartness

This will be interesting for Argyll, given its own centrality to the Gaelic heritage.

NOTE: For Argyll pub;ished a furter item o this issue, raising issues of possible conflict of interest.