Gaelic blogger Des Scholes from Nairn contacted the Highland News Group to point out the store in Inverness is in the Gaelic heartland and should be representing the local tongue.

He commented: "It has not gone unnoticed in the Gaelic community that these self-service tills provide customers with advice in six languages, including Welsh, but not in Gaelic.

"Bòrd na Gàidhlig need to get their act together on this quickly and put pressure on Markies and other retail stores.

"It would be a drop in the ocean to them considering the money they make day in day out from their Gaelic customers.

"There is constant criticism of the money being spent on the language but this surely is one example of promoting the language at no expense to the public purse."

Mr Scholes, whose English language blog on Nairn was voted 93rd in the top 100 blogs in the country last year by consultancy service UKnetmonitor, added: "We will see a lot more of this type of technology coming into every part of our daily life in the future and there has to be a place for Gaelic, especially in stores in the Highland Capital.

"They're taking cash from Gaelic speakers and the many learners in Inverness, they should play fair."

A spokeswoman for Marks and Spencer explained the tills are all standardised across the country, but said Gaelic could possibly be introduced.

She said: "All self-service tills in the UK have the same six languages and they are not determined on a local level.

"The languages are English, French, German, Spanish, Welsh and Polish.

"We haven't had any customer demand for Gaelic, but now it has been raised it's something we could look at."

Matthew Bourke, sales executive with Protouch UK, a company in Camberley in Surrey which supplies self-service tills to the retail sector, said it would not be difficult to add Gaelic to the tills.

"We do hardware and software systems and you can get whatever language you want by touching the flag of that country. It's not complicated and basically we would get someone to record the messages in Gaelic and put them into the system."

Bòrd na Gàidhlig spokesman Hugh Dan McLennan welcomed the news that Marks and Spencer would be happy to look at the issue.

"Marks and Spencer are quite right - it is down to customer demand," he said. "But if they have done it for the Welsh and Poles they can do it for us as well.

"If M&S are willing to speak about it, we are quite prepared to follow it up.

"We have had other examples of this from multinational brands who are certainly open to persuasion.

"The Royal Bank of Scotland had difficulty accepting cheques written in Gaelic because they had no process and they have now put that in place.

"We are doing a lot of work with Scotrail about branding of trains but that can't be done overnight."

Mr McLennan added: "If people have issues like this they should raise it first with Bòrd na Gàidhlig and we will follow it up rather than them having a pop at us."

d.wilson@highland-news.co.uk

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