Growing use of Gaelic is a positive sign for business

GAELIC is being used to promote firms even when most of the staff do not speak the language, a study has found.

A review of the use of bilingual signs discovered that they are being increasingly adopted by companies as a way of raising their profile.

The findings will be presented to members of the Scottish Parliament’s cross party group on Gaelic, at Holyrood today.

They show that in the past seven years £250,000 has been spent on bilingual signs for private firms and other bodies in the Highlands and Islands with about 1.3 million people seeing the language in daily use as a result. This is in addition to signs used by public agencies and on the roads.

But in 60 per cent of cases, organisations and businesses supporting the scheme have no Gaelic-speaking staff.

A scheme, operated by development body Comunn na Gàidhlig (CnaG) and supported by Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE), provides 60 per cent of the costs, up to £2,000, to businesses and community groups to install bilingual signage or marketing materials.

CnaG, which has provided £94,000, says among the 150 firms using Gaelic were a bakery in Ullapool, a candle company in Skye and a driving centre and a vets practice in Inverness. The five Scottish ski centres also use Gaelic in their signs.

Tesco in Inverness and the new Sainsbury store in Nairn already use Gaelic signage, and a forthcoming Asda in Inverness has indicated it will also do so.

Tom Matthew of Reference economic consultants said most of the assisted organisations were not particularly “Gaelic” in nature. “Less than half have staff or volunteers who have the language. Most organisations make no use of Gaelic in their dealings with the general public.”

He said the main motivation for using Gaelic was a desire to support the language while also raising the profile of the company.

“People tended to think using Gaelic signs would give them something different, help them stand out from the crowd and give them a bit of an edge over their rivals.”

He said the increase in customers for firms using bilingual signs come mainly from Gaelic speakers and tourists.

Mr Matthew said there had been very little negative reaction to the use of Gaelic from customers or staff, with more than 50 per cent of organisations saying they had positive feedback. A total of 91 per cent of firms felt that bilingual signage represented a good use of their resources.

Donald MacNeill, chief executive of CnaG, said demand for help has not decreased despite the level of support falling from 70 per cent to 60 per cent in an effort to fund more projects from the available budget.

He said: “If you look at the number of organisations supported, and then the number of customers they have on an annual basis, it’s possible to say that over 1.3 million customers a year are exposed to Gaelic via this signage scheme.

“Perhaps that’s an overly simplified conclusion, but however you look at these figures it’s clear that this scheme does bring Gaelic to hundreds of thousands of folk, and does indeed raise the profile of the language.”

John Watt, HIE’s director of strengthening communities, said: “We are convinced that Gaelic is at the very heart of communities across this area, but also that we should take advantage of the economic opportunities it offers.”