Scottish Gaelic to be added to online learning service

Scottish Gaelic is to be introduced on a free online language learning service with more than 300 million users.

Duolingo was launched in 2011 by Luis von Ahn, a Guatemalan immigrant in the US city of Pittsburgh, and now has more than 90 languages on its online service.

Users learn new languages with various games, including typing words or phrases, matching grammar and also speaking or listening to sentences to earn “crowns” and progress their knowledge through a number of levels.

Each element is collated in an “incubator”, and artificial intelligence is used to match users’ level of learning and knowledge.

At the Royal National Mod in Glasgow yesterday, it was announced Scottish Gaelic – which has just under 60,000 speakers in Scotland, according to the 2011 Census – will be added to Duolingo in the coming months.

Martin Baillie (Martainn Mac a’ Bhaillidh) applied and was invited to contribute to the course, which will be available on iOS and Android apps as well as the Duolingo website.

The architect, from Skye, said: “The contributors build the course from the ground up, so quite a lot of work had been done on what words you’ll introduce at each stage and how you build on those words to create sentences.

“The stage we’re at just now – although there’s plenty of everything to do – is trying to primarily get recordings for sentences we have on the course, so we’re looking for people with excellent accents and clear pronunciation to record so there’s audio that goes with the course.”