The Scottish Funding Council has announced some pound;225,000 over three years to the Skye-based college Sabhal Mor Ostaig to support its Gaelic dictionary project, Faclair na Gaidhlig.

The project is a collaboration between the college and the universities of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Strathclyde. Its aim is to produce an electronic, historical dictionary of Scottish Gaelic.

The dictionary will be based on evidence from the language and aims to be an authoritative record of the language and culture. It will also meet the language needs of the 21st century by providing a baseline resource for smaller bilingual and monolingual dictionaries, a thesaurus and language learning materials.

The project is jointly funded with Bord na Gaidhlig, which will provide pound;75,000 each year for three years.