Gaelic Community Shinty Sixes | |
17 January 2020 The game of the Gael and the language of the Gael meet as the Gaelic Community Sixes take place at Millburn Academy on Saturday 18 January 2020. Both Gaelic speakers and Gaelic learners battle it out in a tournament designed to encourage the use of Gaelic in shinty. The links between Gaelic and shinty have been developed and strengthened over the last 13 years by the work of Iomain Cholmcille and this continues with Saturday’s tournament, run by the organisation which also has responsibility for Alba, the Gaelic speakers international team. Sean MacLeod, Alba co-manager said: “Where-as our award winning Cupa Iomain na h-Òige provides a unique and vital Gaelic-medium shinty environment for our Gaelic speaking primary-age young people, Farpais nan Gaidheal - The Gaelic Community Sixes - is aimed at teenagers and adults looking to use and acquire Gaelic skills. “We welcome a mix of abilities at these tournaments, the refereeing is in Gaelic and the event is run primarily in Gaelic but the emphasis is on fun and shinty and hopefully people will go away enthused with enhanced Gaelic skills.” “As far as we know, this is the first DuoLingo Gaelic Sports tournament! We have loads of players involved tomorrow who have had their interest piqued by the language learning app and we hope that this can be a model for other sports to follow. There’s a big interest in Gaelic in the shinty community that we want to build on and with the Mod in Inverness in 2020 it's a great place to have our first tournament like this. Anybody who is learning on DuoLingo is welcome to come down and watch too. “We are still looking for clubs to get involved in our Iomain na Coimhearsnachd project, so if any clubs want to explore promoting Gaelic through shinty in their community, please get in touch via our Facebook page.” Iomain Cholmcille and Iomain na Coimhearsnachd receive funding support from Bòrd na Gàidhlig’s Taic Fhreumhan Coimhearsnachd Fund. The tournament takes place between noon and 4pm. |