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Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages. This branch includes also the Irish and Manx languages. It is distinct from the Brythonic branch, which includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Scottish, Manx and Irish Gaelic are all descended from Old Irish. The language is often described as Scottish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, or Gàidhlig to avoid confusion with the other two Goidelic languages. Outside of Scotland, it is occasionally also called Scottish or Scots, a usage dating back over 1,500 years, for example Old English Scottas. This usage is uncommon in Scotland because since the 16th century the word Scots has by-and-large been used to describe (Lowland) Scots, which developed from the northern form of early Middle English. In Scottish English, Gaelic is pronounced ; outside of Scotland, it is usually .
History
Current distribution in Scotland
Orthography
Vowels Gaelic vowels have a grave accent, with the letters à, è, ì, ò, ù. The acute accent is sometimes seen in texts, with é and ó standing out, but generally, all vowels have a grave accent now. Diphthongs Consonants Most letters are pronounced similarly to other European languages. The broad consonants t and d and often n have a dental articulation (as in Irish and the Romance and Slavic languages) in contrast to the alveolar articulation common in English and other Germanic languages). Non-palatal r is an alveolar trill (like Italian r or Spanish rr.) The "voiced" stops b, d, g are not voiced at all in Gaelic, but are rather voiceless unaspirated. The "voiceless" stops p, t, c are voiceless and strongly aspirated (postaspirated in initial position, preaspirated in medial/final position). Gaelic shares this property with Icelandic. In some Gaelic dialects, stops at the beginning of a stressed syllable become voiced when they follow a nasal consonant, for example: taigh 'a house' is but an taigh 'the house' is ; cf. also tombaca 'tobacco' . The lenited consonants have special pronunciations: bh and mh are ; ch is or ; dh, gh is or ; th is , , or silent; ph is . Lenition of l n r is not shown in writing. fh is almost always silent, with only the following three exceptions: fhèin, fhathast, and fhuair, where it is pronounced as . | class="wikitable" |+ A table of consonants with pronunciations in IPA ! colspan="3" | Radical ! colspan="3" | Lenited |- ! Orthography ! Broad ! Slender ! Orthography ! Broad ! Slender |- | b || || || bh || || |- | c || || || ch || || |- | d || || There are a few general features worth noting. tarbh (bull) — Alba (Scotland) — . duine (a man) — an duine agad (your man) — Grammar Scottish Gaelic is an inflected language. Nouns indicate their relationships with a number of grammatical cases (nominative, vocative, genitive, and 'dative', so-termed in traditional grammars better - 'post-prepositional' case), and verbs are conjugated to indicate tense (simple tenses are past and future; compound tenses are continuous present, past, and future), mood (indicative, imperative, subjunctive), and voice (active, passive). Gaelic shares with other Celtic languages a number of interesting grammatical features: tha taigh agam — I have a house (lit. a house is at me) an cat aig Iain — John's cat (lit. the cat at John) "Tha taigh leam" -- I own a house (lit., "Is house with me.) "Tha an cat sin le Iain." - Iain owns that cat (lit., "Is the cat *that* with Iain.") tha i bòidheach — she's beautiful tha ise bòidheach — she Grammatical emphasis carries over into other situations: an taigh aicese — her house chuirinn-sa — I would put na mo bheachd-sa — in my opinion tha mise sgìth — I am tired is mise Eòghann — I am Ewan. It is, however, possible to use tha to say that one thing is another thing by turning it into a property: tha mi nam Albannach — I am a Scot (lit. I am in my Scot) Is e Albannach a th' annam — I am a Scot (lit. it's a Scot that's in me). Another way to think of the difference between tha and is is that tha describes temporary states: "Tha mi sgith" -- I am tired. (or, lit. "Am I tired.") "Tha an duine reamhair" -- The man is fat. (or, lit., "Is the man fat.") Whereas, is describes more permanent conditions -- that is, states of being that are intrinsic: 'S e taigh beag a' th'ann. -- It's a small house. (or lit., "Is it house small that is in it.") TENSE Tense (past, present, future) is marked in Gaelic by a number of ways. Simple past tense in regular verbs is indicated by lenition of the initial consonant: The verb bruidhinn (pronounced means "speak", but bhruidhinn mi (pronounced ) means "I spoke." For the English speaker learning Gaelic, it is sometimes difficult to learn to listen to the beginning of a word for its time indicator rather than the end (in English, the end of a verb is marked with an -ed to indicate past tense). Unlike English, Gaelic allows for the inflexion of a verb to indicate future tense independent of a helping verb. Bruidhinnidh mi = I will speak. Gaelic also as an alternate form of the future tense that uses a helping verb, the future tense of the verb "to be": Bidh mi a' bruidhinn = I will speak POSSESSIVE PRONOUNS Gaelic uses possessive pronouns (my, your, their, etc.) differently than English. In Gaelic, possessive pronouns are used mostly to indicate "ownership" or "possession" of body parts or family -- that is, things or relationships that are permanent. Thus, one would say mo chas = my leg do cheann = your head a màthair = her mother But to refer to non-permanent "possession," one uses the preposition "aig," as described above: an taigh aige = his house (the house at him) an leabhar agam = my book (the book at me) Articles Gaelic has a definite article but no indefinite article: an taigh — 'the house', taigh — '(a) house' The form of the (definite) article depends on the number, gender, case of the noun. The following table shows the basic paradigm, but the article is given in an abstract form. The superscript "+L" indicates that the following word is lenited. The actual realization of the capitalized forms in the paradigm above depends on the initial sound of the following word, as explained in the following tables: The following examples show how the definite article is used with several classes of nouns, depending on the first one or two letters. Masculine noun paradigms Feminine noun paradigms Official recognition After centuries of persecution, prejudice and neglect, Gaelic has now achieved a degree of official recognition with the passage of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005. As well as being taught in schools, including some in which it is the medium of instruction, it is also used by the local council in the Western Isles, Comhairle nan Eilean Siar. The BBC also operates a Gaelic language radio station Radio nan Gàidheal (which regularly transmits joint broadcasts with its Republic of Ireland counterpart Raidió na Gaeltachta), and there are also television programmes in the language on the BBC and on the independent commercial channels, usually subtitled in English. The ITV franchisee in the north of Scotland, Grampian Television, has a studio in Stornoway. Viewers of Freeview a non-subscription digital TV service can receive channel, TeleG, which broadcasts for an hour every evening. A full Gaelic language TV service, however, similar to S4C in Wales and TG4 in Ireland, has been under consideration. As in Wales, the showing of programmes in the language as opt-outs on the main channels has been regarded as inadequate for the 58,552 who speak it, and as an annoyance to some of the English or Scots speaking 5,003,459 who do not. In fact, this annoyance may be largely assumed: the evidence is that at least one Gaelic television programme produced by the BBC attains viewing figures in excess of the number of Gaelic speakers that could view it in Scotland. No complaints are being received by the BBC about Gaelic-language television programmes on BBC TV channels, perhaps because subtitling them in English makes them equally accessible to non-Gaelic speakers. Bilingual road signs (in both Gaelic and English) are gradually being introduced throughout the Gaelic-speaking regions in the Highlands and elsewhere across the nation. In many cases, this has simply meant re-adopting the traditional spelling of a name. The Ordnance Survey has acted in recent years to correct many of the mistakes that appear on maps. They announced in 2004 that they intended to make amends for a century of Gaelic ignorance and set up a committee to determine the correct forms of Gaelic place names for their maps. Historically, Gaelic has not received the same degree of official recognition from the UK Government as Welsh. With the advent of devolution, however, Scottish matters have finally begun to receive greater attention, and the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was confirmed by the Scottish Parliament on 21 April 2005. The key provisions of the Act are: Following a consultation period, in which the government received many submissions, the majority of which asked that the bill be strengthened, a revised bill was published with the main improvement that the guidance of the Bòrd is now statutory (rather than advisory). In the committee stages in the Scottish Parliament, there was much debate over whether Gaelic should be given 'equal validity' with English. Due to Executive concerns about resourcing implications if this wording was used, the Education Committee settled on the concept of equal respect. It is still not clear if the ambiguity of this wording will provide sufficient legal force to backup the demands of Gaelic speakers against the whims of local councils. The Act was passed by the Scottish Parliament unanimously, with support from all sectors of the Scottish political spectrum on the 21st of April 2005. The Education Act of 1872, which completely ignored Gaelic, and led to generations of Gaels being forbidden to speak their native language in the classroom, is now recognised as having dealt a major blow to the language. People still living can recall being beaten for speaking Gaelic in school. The first solely Gaelic-medium secondary school, Sgoil Ghàidhlig Ghlaschu, was opened at Woodside in Glasgow in 2006 (several Gaelic-medium primary schools and partially Gaelic-medium secondary schools also exist). In Nova Scotia, there are somewhere between 500 and 1,000 native speakers, most of them now elderly. In May 2004, the Provincial government announced the funding of an initiative to support the language and its culture within the province. In Prince Edward Island, the Colonel Gray High School is now offering two courses in Gaelic, an introductory and an advanced course, both language and history are taught in these classes. This is the first recorded time that Gaelic has ever been taught as an official course on Prince Edward Island. The UK government has ratified the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages in respect of Gaelic. The Columba Initiative, also known as Iomairt Cholm Cille, is a body that seeks to promote links between speakers of Scottish Gaelic and Irish. Church In the Western Isles, the isles of Lewis, Harris and North Uist have a Presbyterian majority (largely Church of Scotland - Eaglais na h-Alba in Gaelic, Free Church of Scotland and Free Presbyterian Church of Scotland.) The isles of South Uist and Barra have a Catholic majority. All these churches have Gaelic-speaking congregations throughout the Western Isles. There are Gaelic-speaking congregations in the Church of Scotland, mainly in the Highlands and Islands, but also in Edinburgh and Glasgow. Notable city congregations with regular services in Gaelic are St Columba's Church, Glasgow and Greyfriars Tolbooth & Highland Kirk, Edinburgh. Leabhar Sheirbheisean - a shorter Gaelic version of the English-language Book of Common Order - was published in 1996 by the Church of Scotland, ISBN 0-907624-12-X. The relationship between the Church and Gaelic has not always been an easy one. The widespread use of English in worship has often been suggested as one of the historic reasons for Gaelic's decline. Whilst the Church of Scotland is supportive today, there is, however, an increasing difficulty in being able to find Gaelic-speaking ministers. Place names The following are names of either Gaelic origin or of other origin with their Gaelic translation: Aberdeen — Obar Dheathain Aviemore - an Aghaidh Mòr Ayr - Inbhair Air Balloch - Bealach Brechin - Breichin ClydeBank - Bruach Chluaidh Cumbernauld - Cumar nan Alt Dingwall - Inbhir Pheofharain Dornoch - Dòrnach Dumfries — Dùn Phris Dumbarton - Dùn Breatann Dunblane - Dùn Bhlàthain Dunbartonshire - Siorrachd Dhùn Bhreatainn Dundee — Dùn Dèagh Dunfermline - Dùn Phàrlain Dunkeld - Dùn Chailleann Duntocher - Dùn Tòchair Edinburgh — Dùn Èideann Elgin - Eilginn Forres - Farrais Fort Augustus — Cille Chumein Fortrose - A' Chananaich Fort William — An Gearasdan Glasgow — Glaschu Gleneagles - Gleann na h-Eaglais Inverness — Inbhir Nis Kilmarnock - Cill Mhearnaig Lismore - Liosmòr Paisley — Pàislig Perth — Peairt Rosemarkie - Ros Maircnidh St Andrews - Cill Rìmhinn Scone - Sgàin Stirling — Sruighlea Stornoway — Steòrnabhagh Whithorn - Taigh Mhàrtainn (also, formerly, Rosnat and Futarna) Personal names Gaelic has a number of personal names, such as Ailean, Aonghas, Dòmhnall, Donnchadh, Coinneach, Murchadh, for which there are traditional forms in English (Alan, Angus, Donald, Duncan, Kenneth, Murdo). There are also distinctly Scottish Gaelic forms of names that belong to the common European stock of given names, such as: Iain (John), Alasdair (Alexander), Uilleam (William), Caitrìona (Catherine), Cairistìona (Christina), Anna (Ann), Màiri (Mary), Seamus (James). Some names have come into Gaelic from Old Norse, for example: Somhairle ( < Somarliðr), Tormod (< Þórmóðr), Torcuil (< Þórkell, Þórketill), Ìomhair (Ívarr). These are conventionally rendered in English as Sorley (or, historically, Somerled), Norman, Torquil, and Iver (or Evander). There are other, traditional, Gaelic names which have no direct equivalents in English: Oighrig, which is normally rendered as Euphemia (Effie) or Henrietta (Etta) (formerly also as Henny or even as Harriet), or, Diorbhal, which is "matched" with Dorothy, simply on the basis of a certain similarity in spelling; Gormul, for which there is nothing similar in English, and it is rendered as 'Gormelia' or even 'Dorothy'; Beathag, which is "matched" with Becky (> Rebecca) and even Betsy, or Sophie. Many of these are now regarded as old-fashioned, and are no longer used (which is, of course, a feature common to many cultures: names go out of fashion). As there is only a relatively small pool of traditional Gaelic names from which to choose, some families within the Gaelic-speaking communities have in recent years made a conscious decision when naming their children to seek out names that are used within the wider English-speaking world. These names do not, of course, have an equivalent in Gaelic. What effect that practice (if it becomes popular) might have on the language remains to be seen. At this stage (2005), it is clear that some native Gaelic-speakers are willing to break with tradition. Opinion on this practice is divided; whilst some would argue that they are thereby weakening their link with their linguistic and cultural heritage, others take the opposing view that Gaelic, as with any other language, must retain a degree of flexibility and adaptability if it is to survive in the modern world at all. The well-known name Hamish, and the recently established Mhairi (pronounced ) come from the Gaelic for, respectively, James, and Mary, but derive from the form of the names as they appear in the vocative case: Seumas (James) (nom.) → Sheumais (voc.), and, Màiri (Mary) (nom.) → Mhàiri (voc.). The most common class of Gaelic surnames are, of course, those beginning with mac (Gaelic for son), such as MacGillEathain (MacLean). The female form is nic (Gaelic for daughter), so Catherine MacPhee is properly called in Gaelic, Caitrìona Nic a' Phì. Several colours give rise to common Scottish surnames: bàn (Bain - white), ruadh (Roy - red), dubh (Dow - black), donn (Dunn - brown), buidhe (Bowie - yellow). Loanwords The majority of Scottish Gaelic's vocabulary is native Celtic. There are a large number of borrowings from Latin, (muinntir, Didòmhnaich), ancient Greek, especially in the religious domain (eaglais, Bìoball from Ekklesia and Biblia), Norse (eilean, sgeir), Hebrew (Sàbaid, Aba) and Lowland Scots (briogais, aidh). In common with other Indo-European languages, the neologisms which are coined for modern concepts are typically based on Greek or Latin, although written in Gaelic orthography; television, for instance, becomes telebhisean (cian-dhealbh could also be used), and computer becomes coimpiùtar (aireamhadair, bocsa-fiosa or bocsa-sgrìobhaidh could also be used). Although native speakers frequently use an English word for which there is a perfectly good Gaelic equivalent, they will, without thinking, simply adopt the English word and use it, applying the rules of Gaelic grammar, as the situation requires. With verbs, for instance, they will simply add the verbal suffix (-eadh, or, in Lewis, -igeadh, as in, Tha mi a' watcheadh (Lewis, watchigeadh) an telly (I am watching the television) (instead of "Tha mi a' coimhead air a' chian-dhealbh"). This was remarked upon by the minister who compiled the account covering the parish of Stornoway in the New Statistical Account of Scotland, published over 170 years ago. However, as Gaelic medium education grows in popularity, a newer generation of literate Gaels is becoming more familiar with modern Gaelic vocabulary. Going in the other direction, Scottish Gaelic has influenced the Scots language (gob) and English, particularly Scottish Standard English. Loanwords include: whisky, slogan, brogue, jilt, clan, strontium (from Strontian), trousers, as well as familiar elements of Scottish geography like ben (beinn), glen (gleann) and loch. Irish Gaelic has also influenced Lowland Scots and English in Scotland, but it is not always easy to distinguish its influence from that of the Scottish variety. See List of English words of Scottish Gaelic origin Source: An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, Alexander MacBain. Common Scottish Gaelic words and phrases with Irish Gaelic equivalents See also Resources | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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