In Russian, with Love

The Island Voices Facebook page took flight recently when we posted this picture of this stunningly simple but beautiful piece of “environmental art”. Carefully constructed out of scallop shells, the enormous lettering spells out дианочка я тебя люблю (Diana, I love you) on a patch of green at Poll nan Crann in Benbecula, conveniently under the flight path of outgoing or incoming aircraft.

If you haven’t already visited, please take a look at our Facebook page to see the excited discussion that ensued as folk tried to figure out the story behind the mystery message. In the end it turns out to be a heart-warming testament to the strength of a mother’s love. And it broke all viewing records for posts on the Facebook page…

We followed it up a few days later with this somewhat cornier picture of our own, depicting a “cross-cultural romance” between two seals.

The challenge to readers (and/or listeners…) was to figure out the name of the Gaelic-speaking seal. In the multi-media spirit of the Island VOICES project we even provided a link to let non-readers hear a synthesised pronunciation of шесии лексии via Google Translate – http://alturl.com/qqnnt. It took about a day before Jamie Wallace came up with the answer – Seasaidh Leagsaidh! If you like language games like this, why not follow the Facebook page with a “like”? There could be more to come…