Exclusive:Interview: Kate Forbes on Gaelic in An t-Eilean, Fourth Wing and Outlander
Only a small handful of Scots speak the language - but Gaelic is capturing people’s imaginations across film, TV and books.
Last week saw the first episode of An t-Eilean/The Island, the first major blockbuster television series in Gaelic, costing £1 million an episode to make.
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Hide AdNext week the third instalment in Rebecca Yarros’s Fourth Wing fantasy book series is published, drawing inspiration from the language with Gaelic names and words.
For the past decade Outlander has been widely praised for its use of Gaelic and for bringing the Celtic language to hundreds of millions across the world.
Scotland on Sunday sat down with Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes to talk about the increasing use of Gaelic in popular culture, and what the future is for the language in Scotland.
Ms Forbes herself is fluent in Gaelic and went to a Gaelic school growing up, and last year was appointed as the Scottish Government’s first Gaelic secretary.
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Hide AdShe is hailing An t-Eilean as a “landmark” for Gaelic television and is hoping the BBC Alba series will pave the way for the language on the national and international stage.


An t-Eilean is a four-part drama following PC Kat Crichton, who is assigned to investigate a murder on Harris in the Outer Hebrides.
Ms Forbes said: “I am of the generation that first benefitted from Gaelic medium education, and my generation has taken the language that we either learned at school or inherited from our parents and have become really creative with it.
“There’s been Outlander and now An t-Eilean, which is the first major Gaelic production.
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“MG Alba and other Gaelic content creators have done wonderful things in the past, but this financially is on a whole new level in terms of investment.
“It’s brilliant and it’s a real landmark moment for Gaelic television.”
She added: “What’s more is the level of interest, particularly in Europe, in terms of distribution.
“There’s a lot of people who consume foreign language films generally, so now they have an opportunity to watch Gaelic TV.
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Hide Ad“So it’s a landmark financially, but it’s also a landmark too in terms of the level of interest.”
So could this new series spark a craze of ‘Gaelic Noir’ films? Ms Forbes said: “It’s certainly possible - MG Alba have really delivered on a shoestring and had success because they care passionately and they’re hugely ambitious.”
It is not just films capturing people’s imagination with Gaelic - it is also used in the popular fantasy book series Fourth Wing, which has sold over 2.3 million copies worldwide.
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Hide AdThe series follows Violet Sorrengail, who attends a war college to learn how to ride dragons - the dragons in the books, and the college the characters attend, are named in Gaelic.
However author Rebecca Yarros was previously criticised by Gaelic speakers on TikTok for disrespecting the language after she mispronounced the words in an interview and referred to the language as [Irish] Gaelic.
TikToker Ceartguleabhar said: “It is genuinely laughable that American fantasy authors can get away with using minority languages in such a disrespectful way, sprinkling Gaelic words to add some spice to a fantasy book.


“Celtic languages deserve respect, especially from American authors who co-opt them.”
Her video has been viewed over 5.2 million times.
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Hide AdMs Forbes said the language cannot be used as a “novelty” if it is to thrive.
She said: “I do find it difficult when Gaelic is viewed as a novelty or just viewed as historic, because in my own constituency (Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch) and in other parts of Scotland, it’s a mother tongue and a language of daily use.
“I spoke to a lady just a few days ago in her 80s and you could see her actively translating in her mind from English to Gaelic and then translating back before answering.
“That was far more common when I was growing up and it’s becoming rarer.
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Hide Ad“That’s what makes a language alive and will lead to it surviving, not treating it like a novelty in a museum or to add a bit of colour to fantasy books.
“But that’s not to knock it, because it brings it to a whole new audience, and I would be very interested to find out how many speakers of Gaelic have learned it as a result of coming across it through art, culture and literature.”
Listen to The Steamie politics podcast: How worried should the Scottish Tories be about Reform UK? Plus, Kate Forbes on the future of Gaelic
But is next for the Gaelic language in Scotland? According to the latest census figures almost 70,000 people are speaking it, but it is declining in the traditional Gaelic heartlands of Scotland.
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Hide AdMs Forbes learned to speak Gaelic at school - she says her grandparents spoke the language, but her parents did not.
She said: “The focus has very much been on Gaelic medium education alongside some of the cultural investment in BBC Alba to reach a new generation.
“What I want to do with the government’s languages bill is make sure we don’t neglect traditional Gaelic speaking communities.
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“The bill will designate areas where there is still a high density of Gaelic speakers, so where 20 per cent of the area or the community are Gaelic speakers, as an area of linguistic significance with all the support that entails for infrastructure, job creation and education.
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Hide Ad“That’s because in the census figures we saw an overall increase in the number of Gaelic speakers but a decline in the more traditional areas.
“In the Western Isles, for example, it’s the first time where the number of Gaelic speakers has reduced to below 50 per cent, which should be a cause for concern because a language only thrives when it is a living, active language.”
Previously Ms Forbes voiced support for reserving housing developments for Gaelic speakers, and while she would not recommit to that support she did acknowledge there could be housing solutions to protecting the language.
She told Scotland on Sunday: “There’s no doubt that housing is one of the most important ways of retaining a population or reversing depopulation and is one of the issues that is affecting these traditional communities.
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Hide Ad“Highland Council is working with potential sellers to look at whether they’re willing to sell the house to the local authority first, and there’s also been success with the Communities Housing Trust putting a rural burden on a property, which means that when a house is sold, it can be sold in the first instance locally.
“So that is a way of ensuring that the local population can access housing without a buyer with perhaps more cash who wishes to use it for a holiday home getting in there first.”
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