Hello
, I'm Carrie. I live in the Easter Ross area in Scotland and started learning gaelic a few weeks ago using the Memrise website. I think the course I'm doing is based on the 'Learn Scottish Gaelic in 12 Weeks' book, and I have a feeling I'm about to reach the point where I'll have to start paying to continue (correct me if I'm wrong!), but for the moment I'm enjoying learning this way and I'm finding it's sticking quite well. I've been watching BBC Alba quite a lot, but I think I'll probably benefit now from 'talking' to some other gaelic speakers (even if only online for the moment).I thought about learning gaelic for quite a while, but I never quite got round to taking the plunge. My granny was from Lewis and was a gaelic speaker, but it was never passed on to my mum, who for some reason has always really disliked the language. I've been reading a lot of books over the last year or so about the history of this area and the rest of the Highlands (the book Soil and Soul by Alastair Mcintosh was a real turning point), and it's finally dawned on me just what we've lost by losing our language. Because I really feel now as though this is 'my' language, and I've been disinherited from it. I recently heard the phrase 'Scottish cringe' for the first time, and I'm beginning to realise that this is really an issue in the Highlands still. We're brought up being told our accent is wrong, and our phrases are wrong, and I realise now that I've been guilty of being embarrassed by my accent and trying to change it into a more 'acceptable' form of Scottish accent (mostly by really over-pronouncing my Ts). There are very few older folk left in my family now, but suddenly their old words and broad Highland accent seem like a dying thing to cherish and record and revive if at all possible.
I'm determined to recover my lost culture and language, and this seems like a good place to start