Comhairle na Gàidhlig is involved in many activities, both large and small scale, in pursuit of our goal of creating an environment that makes Nova Scotia a place where Gaelic language, culture, and communities thrive. Below are highlights of just a few of our most recent endeavours.

Total Immersion Plus (TIP)
Total Immersion Plus (TIP) is a language program based on kinetic movement and oral repetition; touching the culture is key to transmitting it. Experts say it takes roughly 200 hours of this type of instruction to become functional in a language. Since its introduction to Nova Scotia in the fall of 2003, the methodology has been enthusiastically embraced, with several groups around the province initiating TIP programs.

The council facilitated a visit by Finlay MacLeod, TIP developer and member of CNSA, the Gaelic Pre-school Council of Scotland, in May 2005. He instructed more than twenty people using this method, including five potential tutors. A two-day strategy planning workshop was held the following December. More than thirty community members and organizations collaborated on a vision of how TIP should be implemented in the province. Comhairle na Gàidhlig hopes to launch Bonn na Beinneadh (The Foot of the Mountain), a TIP Planning Committee, in 2006.

Cainnt mo Mhàthar (My Mother’s Language)
With the number of Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia at an all-time low, this project’s focus is to record native speakers, capturing idiomatic, everyday Gaelic. This material will form a primary resource for those designing and teaching Gaelic in Nova Scotia, especially through TIP. Teaching manuals and electronic learning resources (CDs, DVDs, etc.) will be created. Representatives of the University of Edinburgh, the University of California-Berkley, the University College Dublin, and the University of Hawaii are all on-going collaborators. Cainnt mo Mhàthar is a long-term, ongoing project.

MacTalla and Failte
Shunpiking Magazine partners with Comhairle na Gàidhlig each May to produce MacTalla and Failte. The purpose is to educate and advocate to a large audience, showing the passion and creativity of local Gaels, and placing the challenges of language retention within a national and international scope.

Eilean nan Og
In 1999, spurred to action by an editorial in the magazine Am Braighe, an anonymous donor provided the initial financial support for the development of a Gaelic youth apprenticeship program. Offers an interconnected approach to teaching and presenting Gaelic language, music, song, and dance to teenagers. The two-week program, offered each August at the Nova Scotia Highland Village with leader Mary Jane Lamond, provides youth ages 14 to 18 with a paid learning opportunity to develop heritage language and cultural skills, as well as a social foundation.