You can also become part of the mygaelic community by signing up as a member. Your profile allows you to share information with others about yourself, and make new friends from all over the world. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a learner, a fluent speaker, or someone with an interest in the language and culture, you’ll find a home at mygaelic.com. Learners can ask for help from more fluent speakers, like minded souls can meet and greet in Gaelic, or you can simply have a browse and see who you know. The site’s social network doesn’t stop there. If you run or are a member of a Gaelic group, or if you represent a Gaelic organisation, you can create your own user group and invite people to join. Or you can simply create a group for you and your friends. The user group allows you to communicate with other group members, letting them know about the latest news, events and other information concerning your group. User groups are a great way to spread the word about your organisation: whether it be a new Gaelic course, the release of a new album, or your next meeting. Each group can also have its own events calendar which keeps members up to date with events.

The site also includes a comprehensive Gaelic events calendar, which can be viewed by all visitors to the site. This calendar is fed by information from the administrators and the public, and it also picks up on events from the group calendars.

The target audience of the site is:

1. People aged 16 – 45+ who do not have Gaelic
2. People aged 16 – 45+ who are learning Gaelic
3. People aged 16 – 45+ who are fluent in Gaelic

In order to help cater for the needs of all three of these target groups, there are three versions of the site which can be accessed:

• English • Simple Gaelic • Gaelic

You will see at the top of the page that you can choose one of these three options to view the site. This tool will assist learners as they progress, allowing them to revert to English or Simple Gaelic if they require help as they learn.

Users who are not logged on as members can view all the information pages of the portal, and will be able to view the global events calendar.

Users who are logged in – those who have signed up for an account

You, or any user, can create your own account which gives you access to a number of interactive tools. Once registered, you can add and find friends, send and receive messages, and take part in discussions. As a member, you can also submit your own writings and content, and store bits and pieces from the portal which you can view in your own personal phrasebook. You can also create your own groups and join other groups which you are interested in.

What is the main purpose of mygaelic.com?

The site aims to encourage its target audience – people aged 16 – 45+ within Scotland with or without Gaelic – to engage with Gaelic and its culture. The portal provides a breadth of information relating to Gaelic, and helps you find out about organisations and resources which can help and support you as you find out more about Gaelic, and as you learn the language itself. As you explore the site, you will learn more and more about Gaelic and in time start to add your own voice and thoughts to mygaelic.com. Through your profile and discussion boards you can interact with other members, who share your interest in the language, or music, or any other range of topics. If you are an advanced learner or fluent, you are encouraged to become a moderator of certain boards to help beginners as they take their first steps to engage with and embrace Gaelic.

There are also sections on the site which encourage users to upload their own writings, or a song which relates to Gaelic culture perhaps, or an image which they feel is appropriate. Submissions are accepted in Gaelic or English, and if suitable, will be displayed on the appropriate version of the site.

How can you learn Gaelic with mygaelic.com?

There is a dedicated section of the website which deals with learning Gaelic. At the moment, this section give help and advice on learning Gaelic, and gives you reasons to learn Gaelic. You will also find support, pointers to where you can learn Gaelic, and testimonies from successful learners and from learning advocates.

As the site evolves, the intention is to provide formal lessons in the Gaelic Learning section which will progress from beginner to intermediate. These lessons will include phonetic text and audio, and may include videos with samples of the spoken language. There will also be colourful and fun lessons for children. They will include animations, audio and text, as well as a range of games which will encourage the children to pick up words and phrases, without it feeling like hard work.

How will the site benefit organisations?

Organisations involved in Gaelic will appear in the relevant sections of the portal along with a link to their own website. Organisations can also become a mygaelic.com sponsor which will give them a more prominent presence on the site, and allow them to impart additional information to users. All groups and organisations can also create their own user group as part of mygaelic.com’s social network, which they can use to highlight information about their group, or send emails to group members. In essence, you can create your own network as part of mygaelic, which you can use to connect your organisation with other mygaelic.com users. Each group can also set up their own events calendar which in turn feeds your events into the main portal calendar.

Is there a means to publicise Gaelic Events?

One of the key elements of the portal is a constantly-updated events calendar which relies on entries by the administrator and news of events which it picks up from the various group calendars on mygaelic.com. If you have an event you can contact mygaelic.com with information and it will be included in the calendar if deemed appropriate. When viewing the calendar you can view events by category, giving you a handy filter to find exactly the type of event you are interested in. And by clicking on an event you can view more detailed information on what it entails.

Some other features:

Competitions

The portal runs a series of regular competitions with various prizes up for grabs. You may be asked to answer a multiple choice teaser, or provide a short or a longer answer to a question: all of these are set by the site administrators who will seek to challenge your wits!

Up for discussion

Each group can set up discussion boards to allow them to talk about the latest hot topics within their group.

Updates

Members of mygaelic.com will receive updates on all the latest news and events via their mygaelic.com inbox. It’s a great way to keep people up to date with various key announcements on the site and the Gaelic world.

Members’ List

Once a member of mygaelic.com you can contact other members, who can in turn contact you. This is true of those you have given friend status and those you have not yet made your friends. There are two types of groups you can create: a Public Group (anyone can join) and a Private Group (the group creator can grant you membership). Anyone can create a Private Group and invite people to join or create a Public Group which anyone can join.

Group Search

If someone wants to search for a group with the site search engine, they can simply input the group name or some information about the group and they should be able to find the group, if it is a mygaelic group. If you search the events calendar or a discussion board search, again you will be given relevant results from the public groups, and from any private groups of which you are a member.

User Account

The key plank of the site’s interactive features are the user accounts. Once a member, you can use your profile, messaging system, and an array of other features to manage and enhance your experience at mygaelic.com.

Profile

With your profile, you create an online presence which allows others to interact with you, once they too are members. The fields you will be asked to fill in will not reveal any private information about you, and the amount of information you include is totally up to you. When filling in the various fields, you are encouraged to engage with Gaelic, and to try and use some of the sample phrases we include as options. For instance, each member has a status (i.e. happy, sad, on holidays, etc which can be shown in Gaelic: Tha mi sgìth / I am tired, for example). When confirming your profile’s status, you can use one of the Gaelic samples, or input your own.

Users can also upload a photo or image to represent them on the site, your very own avatar. And each member can indicate their level of competence in Gaelic as part of their profile (e.g. beginner, intermediate, advanced or fluent). This helps people to identify the language abilities of other users, so that they can interact with them appropriately: for example a learner might want to approach a fluent speaker for some help with a phrase and so on.

My Phrasebook

Each member will have their own phrasebook. This handy tool allows users to store snippets of text from the site or other user content. The phrasebook stores the phrase/text, the translation and any audio clips the user would like to upload in association with it. You can print off the phrasebook in its entirety, and it allows you over time to build up your own personalised notebook to help with your use and understanding of Gaelic.