BBC Alba

I have interrogated a mate from the Orkney Islands, and he has confirmed that the locals say "Gah-lic" and that "Gay-lic" is the Irish version.

However, he did say that there are only a handful of people who actually speak it where he is, as it's mainly spoken in the Western Isles and parts of the west coast.

To set the record straight on 'gay-lic' or 'gah-lic'. In English you would refer to it as Scots Gaelic (pron: gay-lic) However, if you were actually speaking the language yourself you would say you were speaking Gaidhlig (pron: gah-lic).

That's odd. I've never heard that before.

I'm from Ireland and we usually call our language simply "Irish". Some people refer to it as Gaelic (Gay-lic) and sometimes Gaeilge. I've only ever heard of the Scottish equivalent being called Gal-lic.

I've heard the language spoken in Scotland referred to as both "Gal-lic", and "Scots Gay-lic".

Getting us back on topic ...
Don't forget it starts tonight

I hear those idents are quite interesting.

Choo choo!

I'm intrigued enough to catch the proper launch of this.

It's probably better that I know almost nothing about the pres due to this being more of a specialist channel - other 'higher-key' launches with sneak previews tend to take half the fun out of seeing things debut on-screen, I'd say.

There's a rather nice loop of time-lapse shots of Scotland at the moment. (No doubt largely parts of the country that don't speak Gaelic, but never mind).

On air in about 10 minutes, and then live from Skye at 9.05pm.

There's a schedule at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcalba/programmes/schedules

Less than 8 minutes to go - even if the presentation isn't noteworthy, at least I can say with confidence that I enjoyed the timelapse loop during the countdown! It's been very nice.

Well? What's it like?!

Whenever they switch from live links to standard junctions, I guess we'll start to see. The only sighting of an ident thus far has been a BBC1 Scotland mirror globe closedown - shown on a TV set within the current programme!

No technical gremlins so far mind you, which is a good sign. Everything seems to be going smoothly.