Anyhow, I am still studying Gàidhlig and whilst my attendance for term 2 was unfortunately only about 40-50% I’m still holding my own :)

At this stage there is a similar pattern to my Gaelic studying experience as there was (is) to my Japanese experience and in both I think that patchy attendance is most likely the cause.. that is that I am managing to understand the grammar concepts, I can read and write (obviously with many dictionary references) and I’m slowly getting my tongue around some of the pronunciation.. but my comprehension of spoken Gaelic is still very weak.

Hopefully I’ll manage a sustained run of attendance to classes this term and start to improve upon this (2/2 so far!).

So, I thought I’d share my homework for this week whilst I work on it. We are learning about past tense and present tense verb conjugation/construction and in class we answered the following Ceistean with positive responses, the homework is to construct the negative responses to the questions.

I missed the class in term two where this was discussed and as such don’t have explanatory handout so will have to actually work through this one on my tenuous understanding of the grammar rules.

* dèan is one of ten irregular verbs in Gaelic and doesn’t follow the regular conjugation rules, in this case the past tense form of dèan is rinn and the future tense positive form ni.

Questions in Gaelic appear to frequently be about coffee and cake (possibly more reflective of our tutor) and as I don’t like, make or eat either my, conversations tend to be somewhat shorter than the rest of the classes :).

In this week’s notes I am going to type out the reading for our homework assignment in whole and will underline points of interest for discussion afterwards.

If you’ve read my previous posts you will probably understand the reaction of shock and awe that I experienced when I opened the document, with my handy abaìr! dictionary in tow though I went to work translating it.

I made a number of mistakes but I’ll try and explain why as I go along. I’m not going to provide a translation for the whole piece (because I’m a bit evil) as no-one wants to read a blog post of that length!

Mo sgeulachd!

Is mise Ann agus tha mi à Leodhas ach a’fuireach ann am Musselburgh. Tha flat ùr agam an sin agus tha e bun os cionn an drasda! Rugadh agus thogadh mi ann an Garrabost ann an Leodhas. Cha robh ach timcheall air fichead taigh ann nuair a bha mi òg.

Bha mi a’fuireach ann an taigh criot comhla rì m’athair, mo mhàthair, agus dithis pheathraichean. ‘Se Alison agus Doreen a th’orra. Tha iadsan a’fuireach ann an Leodhas fhathast, agus tha Alison a’fuireach ann an Garrabost fhathast! Tha iad posda agus tha nighean aig Doreen agus dithis nighean aig Alison – chan eil balaich idir anns an teaghlach – tha dithis nighean agamsa cuideachd!

Nuair a bha mi seachd deug bha mi a’dol gu Obar Dheathain gu an Oiltigh… ach, obh, obh ‘s beag orm Obar Dheathain!! Bha mi a’dol dhachaidh an dèidh trì seachdainean!

Aig ochd deug bha mi a’dol gu Glaschu agus ‘s mòr orm Glaschu! Tha mo nighean, Rebecca a nis a’fuireach ann an Glaschu!

Tha m’athair a nis ceithir fichead ‘sa còig agus mo mhàthair tri fichead ‘sa còig deug. Bidh iad trang gach latha agus tha iad gu math! Bidh mi a’dol gu Leodhas anns an Dubhlachd airson ceilidh air an teaghlach!

Nueair a bha mo chlann nighean òg bha iad toilichte ann an Leodhas ag obair air an criot comhla rì m’athair!

Tha aon nighean agam a’fuireach ann am Musselburgh agus an nighean eile ann an Glaschu!

This is the story of Ann’s family and there are a few tricky phrases in there if you haven’t heard them explained or had any context supplied.

For example, when I tried to translate ‘s beag orm and ‘s mòr orm all I knew was that beag means ‘small’ and mòr means ‘big’ so since they were in relation to places (Aberdeen and Glasgow) I figured that they would perhaps relate to either the size of the city or the duration of time there.. so I guessed at either ‘Aberdeen is too small’ or ‘I stayed in Aberdeen briefly’ and the opposite for Glasgow.

I was mistaken, though in fairness I wasn’t far off. As it happens ‘s beag orm is a colloqualism meaning ‘I hate it’ and conversely ‘s mòr orm means ‘I love it’ so Ann hates Aberdeen and loves Glasgow. Not sure what there is to hate about Aberdeen but then I only lived there for seven years not the three weeks that Ann managed :P.

Another clause I found interesting and I think would have struggled to translate if I wasn’t Scottish is chan eil ach which means (in this context) ‘There wasn’t but (20 houses when I lived there)’ this is perhaps seldom used nowadays but is a standard Scottish turn of phrase.

Otherwise the rest of the underlined words are just new vocabulary:

* We learned before that to ask someone their name you would say Cò thusa? which literally means ‘who are you?’ however there is an alternate way which means ‘what is your name?’ and this is dè an t-ainm a th’ort? The response to this question is ‘se <name> (an t-ainm) a tha orm (abbreviated to a th’orm). The form of orm is changed dependant on the personal pronoun, so in this case th’orra is used for ‘they’.

** I find the pronunciation of this word fairly amusing, it is a good example of how complicated Gaelic spelling can be compared to its pronunciation, though often the reverse is true too. Fhathast is basically pronounced ‘haast’ as the ‘f’ isn’t pronounced when lenited and ‘th’ is also not pronounced mid-word.

We also touched upon dithis again which is the counter for two people and just like it’s relative dà (two) it’s a fickle creature. Dithis means ‘twosome’ which is a noun and therefore when followed by a second noun (as it always would be) the second noun doesn’t take a plural. This is due to the second noun taking the genitive case and reverting back to the singular form. That’s what I wrote down, I do not claim to understand it!

Finally, when talking about a dead person in Gaelic, much like other languages such as Japanese you generally aren’t as direct as referring to them as dead. Rather you tend to say they are not alive, chan eil iad beò. Alternatively, if you are prone to religion you might use caochail which means expired (specifically relating to people). If you are talking about animals or plants you would use marbh.

This week’s lesson was focussed around a homework piece which the class had discussed during the previous week’s lesson and been utterly confused. I was sent the piece to attempt as homework however, without any of the context they had discussed and boy did I make a lot of mistakes!

I’ll discuss the homework in my follow up notes article and it as it related to family and counters for people I’ll write about that here. I presume that this was the content of much of week 7 and possibly even week 6 anyway so it will bridge the lesson gap somewhat for me.

An teaghlach – The Family

The crux of the lesson was on the use of different possessive pronouns and how they change the reference to members of a family, but first a vocabulary list of said family members:

Note that with regards to the in-laws, male family members don’t lenite cèile but female family members do lenite chèile.

This is relatively simple, well pronunciation aside at least.

Next we’ll look at the different personal pronouns:

Immediately you should spot an issue, the pronouns for both his and her are the same! However, possessive pronouns mo (my) do (your) and a (his) are followed by lenition. All others are not, thus allowing us to distinguish between a masculine and a feminine pronoun.

In the case of Athair (father) the pronoun is abbreviated as the word starts with a vowel so mo athair becomes m’athair, do athair becomes d’athair etc. In order to avoid confusion between his and her father, her father becomes a h-àthair.

Next, let’s look at counters for people (only applied to people) which cover between two and ten people, I believe that any greater then you just use the normal number (happy to be corrected!).

Finally, we looked over numbers again by way of a rest!

As mentioned before, Gaels count in units of twenty which isn’t overly tricky but tired minds find even the simplest tasks difficult so again this was a point of confusion.

On top of the numbers we previously heard we learned ceud (hundred), mìle (thousand) and millean (million), the first two being very familiar from the phrase ceud mìle fàilte meaning ‘a hundred thousand welcomes.’

We were told that you can either say numbers following an English style of just reading out the number as you see it.. so one hundred and fifty eight could be read as ceud dà fichead ‘sa ochd deug (one hundred two twenties and eighteen) or full-fat Gaelic which would be seachd fichead ‘sa ochd deug.

Reading years was slightly different as you read the first part as hundreds and the second as it is, so 1919 would be naoi deug ceud ‘sa naoi deug although that looks far simpler than the extensive discussion that was had around it in class.

As always, we finished with a song though thankfully we didn’t have to sing along as I would have objected to doing so. It was a Gaelic salm (psalm) and I would have been silent on the grounds of atheism.

However, unbeknownst to me this is a famous style of singing in Gaelic and would have been .. difficult.. for us to replicate.

This style of singing has a presenter sing the lyrics then the rest of the choir jump in to repeat, using whatever tune they fancy.

I’ll apologise now as it just sounds like a bunch of drunks trying to sing along at karaoke in an echo chamber as far as I’m concerned but each to their own :).

Salm 72

This won’t be a sizeable post as the majority of what we covered in lesson 5 was directly related to time and is covered in the full lesson post but there were a few vocabulary and grammar points that I noted during the class.

The Gaelic word for ‘and’ is agus as we all know, but once you start studying the language you’ll notice lots of abbreviations and in this case when you see ‘s in a sentence it is the shortened form for agus.

We’ve seen before when describing what we did that verbs, or more accurately verbal nouns, such as ag’ ol (to drink) or a’ sgrìobhadh (to write) are preceded by ag’ or a’ which unsurprisingly has an associated rule which thankfully in this case is very simple: if the verbal noun starts with a vowel you use ag’ and if it starts with a consonant you use a’.

Other than those few grammar points, we learned some more vocabulary:

That’s all folks, short and sweet this week. Even shorter and sweeter for the next two weeks as I missed those classes due to jury duty!

It turns out that time and numbers in general are a bit of a head-scratcher for the wide-eyed beginner Gaelic student and due to considerable confusion during the previous week’s class (which I missed) we focussed largely on both topics again this week. (Note: I’m writing this 3 weeks after the class, so apologies if this merely adds to the confusion!).

An Uair – The Time

We went over time in my last lesson post so I’ll try to avoid any repetition, however I left off wondering how to tell the time when it was x amount of minutes past or to the hour (rather than half past, quarter to etc.) and I can give some examples of this now:

Sìmplidh, no? The main cause of confusion is down to the number two and the rules surrounding it in Gaelic. I’ll try to explain as best I can!

As I’ve mentioned in a previous post dà is considered as one unit rather, it refers to a couple and therefore it doesn’t take a plural.

Additionally, if dà is followed by a vowel then it becomes the lenited dhà this is because vowels cannot be lenited.

There is apparently nothing that dà likes more than to lenite the following word but in the case of words starting with ‘sg’, ‘sm’, ‘sp’ or ‘st’ these cannot be lenited. Everything else is fair game it seems.

Another confusion is that if there is a noun following a ‘teen then the word order becomes curious. The noun in these cases would go between the defining number and the ‘teen itself, for example, dà mhoinaid dheug is 12 minutes (2 minute teen) and note the double lenition.. dagnammed dà!

Just like in English the word for ‘hour’ or ‘o’clock’ can be dropped except when it’s eleven or twelve o’clock, then uair must be included.

Got all that, seems relatively straight forward now that its written down, doesn’t it?

Additional notes relating to time is that ‘past’ or ‘after’ is an deidh and ‘to’ or ‘before’ is gu. The ‘sa and ‘san seen prior to mhadainn and oidhche are abbreviations of anns a’ and anns an both meaning ‘in the’.

If being specific about time is a little too complex (and it is!) then you can use either timchael air .. which means ‘approximately’ or faisg air.. which means ‘close to’ followed by the approximate time.

Time may seem like a simple topic but it took our class two weeks to sort of get our heads around it, partially of course as counting in Gaelic is new to us, partially because this is all new vocabulary but largely because for such a simple process there are several gotchas involved that completely undermine your confidence just when you think you have it nailed.

So for some light relief! This week’s song is Fear A’ Bhàta (The Boatman) which is a beautiful song with a eerily familiar tune which I can’t quite place. Enjoy!

So this week I have to keep a diary in Gaelic for a week with at least two sentences in past tense.

Here goes! Hold on to your hats! With my beginner’s knowledge of Gaelic and my insomnia-ridden, work-driven dull week this promises to be a roller-coaster of a journey. Most likely a roller-coaster which is closed for maintenance.

Diardaoin

Bha mi ag obair gu trang aig an taigh. Bha mi a’sgriobhadh am blog mu a’ Iapan. Chan robh mi anns an sgoil-Gàidhlig ‘san amnoch. Bha mi glè sgìth!

I worked hard from home. I wrote a blog post about Japan. I didn’t go to my Gaelic class in the evening. I was VERY tired.

Dihaoine

Bha mi ag obair aig an taigh. Bha mi a’ sgrìobhadh am blog a’ Gàidhlig.

I worked from home. I wrote a Gaelic blog post.

Disathurna

Bha mi a’ snàmh anns a’ mhadainn. Bha mi anns an taigh-bìdh seapanais feasgar. Bha dinneir agus leanntan glè bhlasta. Bha mi toilichte.

I went swimming in the morning. In the evening I went to a Japanese restaurant. Dinner and beers were delicious. I was happy.

Là na Sàbaid

Bha mi a’ ceannach. Cheannaich mi bolgain (no bolganan), càl, feòil agus uinneanan. Bha mi ag obraich air làrach-lìn feasgar.

I went shopping. I bought lighbulbs (or (alternative plural) lightbulbs, cabbage, meat and onions. I worked on a website in the evening.

Diluain

Bha mi ag obair aig an taigh (Tha mi obraich air do cheann fhéin). Chan robh mi cadal. Bha mi glè sgìth!

I worked from home (I am self-employed). I didn’t sleep. I was very tired.

Dimàirt

Bha mi ag obair aig an taigh o leth uair as dèidh ceithir anns a’ mhadainn. Bha mi seachd sgìth.

I worked from home from half past four in the morning. I was extremely tired.

Diciadain

Cha robh mi ag obair. Bha mi a’ snàmh anns a’ mhadainn.

I wasn’t working. I went swimming in the morning.

There we go, as promised all of the excitement of a completely immobile roller coaster.

Nevertheless my tutor advised that “We did lots of revision on past and future tense…and started ‘the time’!”, so that’s what we are going to do!

An Uair – The Time

As well as the two A4 sides of class notes, I’l refer to Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks to pad things out a little bit.

To ask what time it is you say dè an uair a tha e? where e has previously been used as the personal pronoun ‘he’ in this case it refers to ‘it’, I suspect that will not always be the case in this devious language and that i will be used in the case of feminine nouns. We shall see.

To say ‘it is ..’ therefore is simply ‘tha e ..‘ followed by one of the following:

Note that aon (one) isn’t used for one o’clock but is for eleven o’clock, apparently in Cape Breton Gaelic it can be used in the former case.

Also 3-10 o’clock uses the plural form of uair which is uairean and also though I’m not sure why deug from eleven o’clock is lenited to become dheug in twelve o’clock.

Just like in English the time clause can be modified to include further information such as in the morning, half past etc.

Useful vocabulary:

Examples:

Note that when quarter/half past/to are used the word for o’clock is dropped, just like in English. At this stage I’m unsure how the time would be modified by say 5 minutes or 23 minutes etc. More examples of how to say time in Gaelic (as well as all of the Celtic languages) can be found on this Omniglot page .

A`cunntadh – Counting

Other than time and revision on tenses, I’m not sure what else was covered in class but let’s have a look at numbers. We’ve previously looked at 1-10 and 11-19.. so let’s look at 20+.

Interesting, no? So numbers are counted in sets of twenty, and that set of twenty is in itself modified to bring the next set, which means in order to even say the correct number you need to be reasonably numerate.

Deug translates into ‘teen’ and it seems like it is always lenited when following dhà (two). Also aon is lenited from twenty-one upwards apparently. I would suspect due to their non-inclusion in the list that numbers 3-9 are never lenited.

Finally, as always we have the weekly song, Màiri Ruadh A’dannsa an Nochd by Arthur Cormack.

The title translates to Red-haired Mairi will be dancing tonight. It’s quite upbeat but there is only one version on youtube to share here and the accoustics aren’t great, sorry!

Firstly, a wee colloquialism that I missed from last week’s lesson which is idir, idir, idir which translates to ‘at all, at all, at all’ and should always be said in full, triplicate form. This is apparently appended to the end of a negative mood sentence as emphasis, such as chan eil mi toilichte idir, idir, idir – I am not happy, at all, at all, at all!

On a similar theme this week we learned Obh, obh! and mo chreach sa thanaig! – Obh, obh apparently doesn’t really translate into English but I’d say it may be representative of a mix between ‘meh’ and ‘grrrr!’ but it should normally precede a clause that explains its use such as mo chreach sa thanaig! which literally translates to ‘my destruction has arrived’ or more naturally ‘Good God!’. I like this :D

If wet isn’t accurate or descriptive enough for you, as often it isn’t in Scotland then you can precede fluich with bog which literally means ‘bogging’ as in ‘bogging wet’ or ‘soaking wet’.

As well as the grammar points which I went over in Càite Bheil Thu A’ Fuireach? – Lesson 3 we learned to count from 11-19 and the days of the week.

Numbers (constructed by pre-10 number with 10 appended):

With regards to the days, each of them carries some meaning, some more interesting than others.

• Diluan – Monday – from the French for the day Lundi
• Dimàirt – Tuesday – again from the French Mardi
• Diciadin – Wednesday – means Day of the1st fast – traditionaly Gaels would fast twice a week, apparently
• Diardoain – Thursday – meaning the day between two fasts!
• Dihaoine – Friday – the Day of the 2nd fast
• Disathairne – Saturday – referring to Saturn
• Didòmhnaich – Sunday – meaning God’s Day which was generally used by Catholics, OR
• Là na Sàbaid – Sunday – meaning the Sabbath which was generally used by Protestants

The second Sunday option is apparently more commonly used but either works.

Finally, a little bit about Murdo MacFarlane the writer of this week’s song. Murdo hails from Lewis, as does our tutor and he was well known around the island, in particular her father knew him pretty well. Murdo apparently was a great songwriter but a miserable man :)

Our tutor’s father was a bus driver and drove a school bus into Stornoway every morning and every morning, dressed in a blue boiler suit, Murdo MacFarlane would jump onto the school bus into Stornoway so that he wouldn’t have to pay the far on a normal bus!

This week’s song Cànan nan Gàidheal was written as a lament of the foreseeable death of the Gaelic language as all Murdo saw in front of him was the decline of the language. Thankfully, efforts have been made to keep Gaelic alive and the number of people in my class alone are testament to the success of these efforts.

As I mentioned in the main post, I like this song, the lyrics really speak to me and sum up why I felt the need to learn the language of my predecessors.

Lyrics in English:

The first new grammar concept we learned was in response to the question Càite bheil thu a’ fuireach? which means where are you living? (as opposed to Cò às a tha thu? – where are you from?)

The response to this question varies depending on the structure and/or spelling of the location of residence and there are three variations:

1. If the location is proceeded by a definite article such as The States (united and of America) which is Na Stàitean then the location is preceded by anns – Tha mi a’ fuireach anns Na Stàitean.
2. If the place name begins with B, F, M or P and there is no definite article such as Barra which is Barraigh then the location preceded by ann am – Tha mi a’ fuireach ann am Barraigh.
3. If the place name begins with any other letter other than B, F, M or P and there is no definite article such as Edinburgh which is Dùn Eideann then the location is preceded by ann an – Tha mi a’ fuireach ann an Dùn Eideann.

Simple (simplidh), right?

By way of a wee non-recorded pronunciation guide:

• anns – like ounce but swap the ce for an s.. ouns
• ann – same as above but without the s
• am – you think you have this one don’t you? it’s pronounced im like Tim without the Tennents
• an – in like in without adding or subtracting any letters or sounds.

Next up, TENSES!

This isn’t as difficult as you might think, Gaelic is actually pretty logical in some regards (not its spelling to pronunciation mapping) and there are really just two tenses, PAST and FUTURE/HABITUAL.

I think I understood that right anyway, present tense is only really represented by the verb ‘to be/do’ and isn’t in itself really a tense.. yup, that sounds wrong but I am fairly certain that is what I was told. The tutor definitely said only two tenses even though there are apparently three. If you know different or can confirm this then please do comment below.

In any case, there are two NEW tenses.

PAST TENSE

Sentence structure is as before but with different questions words, positive and negative responses to what we’ve learned so far.

Questions:

The positive response to An robh? is Bha – Bha mi, bha thu, bha iad etc.

The negative response to An robh? is Chan robh – Chan robh mi, chan robh thu, chan robh iad etc.

Examples:

FUTURE TENSE/HABITUAL

This tense not only represents what will happen in the future but also an activity that is carried out regularly.

Once again, sentence structure is as before but with different questions words, positive and negative responses to what we’ve learned so far.

Questions:

The positive response to Am bi? is Bidh – Bidh mi, bidh thu, bidh iad etc.

The negative response to Am bi? is Chan bhi – Chan bhi mi, chan bhi thu, chan bhi iad etc.

Examples:

Yes, I do like whisky, why do you ask?

Of course, no lesson would be complete without our weekly song and this time I actually really like it, much better pace than the previous two. Cànan Nan Gàidheal – The language of the Gael written by Murdo MacFarlane from Lewis.

Firstly, the word “cat” in Gaelic is cat and that’s because the word “cat” in English comes for the Gaelic for “cat” which is cat. I may have dragged that out a little, the original sentence was too short to be particularly interesting.

Tha is a very frustrating useful word, it is the affirmative answer to a question starting with a bheil which loosely means “are” and therefore tha loosely means “am” as such it can appear to mean “yes” but it doesn’t. However, it can also mean “there is” or “there are” when using prepositional statements/questions which end with the preposition+pronoun combinations such as agam, agad or aice. I am fairly certain in future lessons we are going to discover that it harbours even more meanings!

Towards the end of the class, in pairs we played through a waiter & customer scenario to practice phrases such as Dè tha thu ag iarraidh? (What would you like to order?) and Tha mi ag iarraidh … (I would like …). At which point we learned neach-frithealaidh which means “waiting person” but which is never practically used in Gaelic.

My usual (2 weeks in a row) partner is also an absolute beginner so we swapped partners and I was with a lovely lady whose parents both spoke Islay Gaelic and so she is familiar with some of the language. We ran through the following conversation a few times, swapping roles on each iteration:

My learned partner was very complimentary on my pronunciation (just being polite I’m sure) and asked if I wanted to try the conversation without referring to the script. To this I replied “No, I most certainly do not want to try that” and after a little gentle persuasion we did anyway. I played Iain.. and I did it, I only fucking did it! Went through the whole conversation without once referring to the script.. chuffed, I am!

Interesting phrases/vocab picked up during this lesson

* duilich doesn’t just mean sorry, it also means sad and/or difficult.. the sentence tha mi duilich can mean any of the three.

** in this week’s miserable song Gràidh Geal Mo Chridh’ the final line in the final verse goes ‘S thug thu ghruag bhàrr mo chìnn which is translated in the notes as “My hair is thinned” referring to the woman’s physical state since her love left her. However, according to our tutor from Lewis ghruag doesn’t mean “hair”, it means “wig” so her translation was “you took the wig from atop my head” which added a little amusement to a depressing song!

Lastly, it occurred to me during this class that I really need to get a Gaelic<->English dictionary but apparently there aren’t any good ones! The most recommended was one called ‘Abair: Gaelic-English, English-Gaelic Dictionary’ which cost about £4.95 to buy new, but there are questions over whether or not it is still printed. I’ve found a few copies online varying from around £20 to £2,£499.50 (honestly!) which suggests that perhaps they are indeed limited in supply. I’ll maybe have to trawl around some old second hand bookshops!

I had a quick look online earlier too and found a couple of useful links:

• Scottish-Gaelic learner’s materials on the Internet
• Faclair online Gaelic-English dictionary
• BBC ALBA: Beag air Bheag
• Gaelic4Parents

The latter three actually all came from the first link and I haven’t explored them for long but I think they could be very useful resources for furthering my Gaelic knowledge.

This week started with a little bit of revision of week 1, with the emphasis on little! However, the majority of the class had been practicing and had completed the revision exercises for homework so we were deiseil (ready) to crack on. Crack on we did!

We began with a review of personal pronouns, their stressed forms and pronunciations and practiced many variations. Examples:

The stressed option is basically emphasising the subject, so in English it would be the difference between “they are” and “THEY are”, if that makes sense in such a small phrase? A better, fuller example would perhaps be:

Alec: Ciamar a tha thu? (How are you?)

Nicola: Tha mi gu math, tapadh leat. Ciamar a tha thusa? (I am well, thank you. How are YOU?)

OK, not necessarily a better example but I’m sure you get the picture!

We then swiftly moved on to numbers 1-10 and the Gaelic for page, which is duilleag.

Then things got a little bit complex. We learned about possession, as in “I have” and that it doesn’t exist as a direct translation into Gaelic. Hold on, what? This is potentially linked to religious influence on the language according to our tutor. So instead of saying “I have a car” you are basically saying “a car exists at me”, there are some slight similarities there between Gaelic and Japanese but you have to really want to see them!

To complicate matters prepositions and pronouns are not permitted to co-exist in Gaelic, presumably as they were created by the devil, and so are instead combined. So “at me” which would be aig mi becomes agam and “at you” which would be aig thu becomes agat. Again, combining words has a distinctly Japanese ring to it.

So by way of an example:

A far more in-depth explanation on the topic can be found in the article ‘Possessives and syllabic structure or Ar n-Athair a tha air nèamh‘ on the Akerbeltz wiki site .

Next up we learned Dè tha thu a’ dèanamh? (What are you doing?) as well as the grammar and some related vocabulary for the verbs ag òl (to drink) and ag ithe (to eat).

To say “I am eating bread” is tha mi ag ithe aran and to say “I’m drinking whisky” is tha mi ag òl uisge-beatha and now I’ve learned about 50% of the language I need to live as a hermit on the islands in the unlikely scenario that I outlive my wife!

These sentences can be combined and improved with the following words agus (and), le (with) and gun (without). So utilising them all, we can say tha mi ag ithe aran le ìm agus ag òl uisge-beatha gun uisge which means “I am eating bread and butter as well as drinking whisky without water”.. though a little water does enhance some whiskies in all fairness.. I don’t now how to say ice in Gaelic yet but take it as written that if I utter a similar sentence the ice will ALWAYS be preceded by gun!

Lastly, we covered the verb ag iarraidh which is equivalent to “wanting” and is used for ordering, it apparently doesn’t translate exactly to “I would like” but is more “I am wanting” which may come over as somewhat rude in English but is perfectly acceptable in Gaelic. This of course completes my never-going-to-happen hermit life-style Gaelic necessity, with the ability to now order my whisky, bread and butter.

As always there was some gentle, though in this case not uplifting, respite from the intensity of the class with our weekly song. After singing last week’s song An Tèid Thu Leam A Mhàiri, which was about a man hopelessly trying to get Màiri to move away with him, we moved on to Gràdh Geal Mo Chridh’ which is a tale about a hopelessly (yep, again) sad woman who is mourning the loss of her relationship after her partner left her. I have one word for this song and it is depressing, also way too slow to sing along to.

Also, the first three lines of the chorus which we had to sing have literally no meaning.. they are the equivalent of la la la.

The Origins of Gaelic

This Celtic language was first brought to this country by Irish settlers known as Gaels. By 500 AD they had established their Kingdom of Dàl Riada, centred on what is now Argyll in south-west Scotland. In Gaelic Arra (Earra) Ghàidheal is “the coastland of the Gael”.

These early settlers were known to the Romans as Scotti. Gradually, it became a distinct language and continued to expand in the north and west.

With the 18th century and the Jacobite rebellions came an effort to suppress Highland culture – music and language. The Highland Clearances dealt us a further blow. This suppression continued into the 20th century.

Current Day

Times have changed – we now are determined to fight for the survival of our language. We are proud of our Celtic identity.

“Ultimately, the use of Gaelic is not just a Scottish issue. It is an issue of human dignity, of belonging, and of justice” From the petition sent to the British Government in 1997 entitled “Secure Status for Gaelic”.

Gaelic as a living language is now largely confined to north-western and island communities. There are although sizeable communities to be found in the cities.

Short and sweet! I too am concerned about the survival of this language and intend to do what I can in order to stave off its extinction.

The featured image at the top of the page is courtesy of the always excellent Bella Caledonia website and specifically this article by Daibhidh Rothach from whence I took the following quotation:

When a languages dies, it is gone forever, only the whistle of the wind through grass, the gurgle of the moor burn at night, left to answer its ghost. While the tongues of the Pirahã and Cherokee are of equal value in the mesmerising tapestry of world culture and language, only Scotland can save Gaelic.

We learned about àirigh which is Gaelic for sheiling (bothy) which is a one build small house, normally just one room without modern conveniences such as toilets. During Summer the cattle would move for better grazing and the crofters would follow with their families and where the cattle stopped was where the àirigh would be. Families would spend about 6 or 7 weeks during the Summer in their sheilings, often without properly washing, which was great for kids.. not so good for teenagers. Nowadays the bothies can often be found a few miles away from Stornoway and in some cases they’ve turned into drinking dens for tho who have been banned from the Island’s few pubs!

Though not so interesting but certainly vital to learning the language, we were taught that the structure of Gaelic is Verb Subject Object (VSO), whereas English is Subject Verb Object (SVO) and Japanese is Subject Object Verb (SOV).. I couldn’t pick a language that shares a structure with one I already know, could I?

Feasgar (afternoon/evening) is masculine, Oidhche (night) is female.. this distinction affects the word math (good) in the common greetings Feasgar Math and Oidhche Mhath with the female form aspirating the adjective.

Gaelic is full of words that don’t exist, for example the name Mhàiri doesn’t “traditionally” exist in Gaelic. The name Mhàiri is the aspirated version of the original name Màiri. Aspiration or lenition is difficult to explain so I’ll leave you in the capable (and ALWAYS accurate) wikipedia for this one:

Grammatical lenition

In the Celtic languages, the phenomenon of intervocalic lenition historically extended across word boundaries. This explains the rise of grammaticalised initial consonant mutations in modern Celtic languages through the loss of endings. A Scottish Gaelic example would be the lack of lenition in am fear /əm fɛr/ (“the man”) and lenition in a’ bhean /ə vɛn/ (“the woman”). The following examples show the development of a phrase coning of a definite article plus a masculine noun (taking the ending –os) compared with a feminine noun taking the ending –a. The historic development of lenition in the two cases can be reconstructed as follows:

Proto-Celtic *(s)indos wiros IPA: [wiɾos] → Old Irish ind fer [feɾ] → Middle Irish in fer [feɾ] → Clascal Gaelic an fear [feɾ] → Modern Gaelic am fear [fɛɾ]

Proto-Celtic *(s)indā benā IPA: [venaː] → Old Irish ind ben [ven] → Middle Irish in ben [ven] → Clascal Gaelic an bhean [ven] → Modern Gaelic a’ bhean [vɛn]

Synchronic lenition in Scottish Gaelic affects almost all consonants (except /l̪ˠ/ which has lo its lenited counterpart). Changes such as /n̪ˠ/ to /n/ involve the loss of secondary articulation; in addition, /rˠ/ → /ɾ/ involves the reduction of a trill to a tap. The spirantization of Gaelic nal /m/ to /v/ is unusual among forms of lenition, but is triggered by the same environment as more prototypical lenition. (It may also leave a residue of nasalization in adjacent vowels. The orthography shows this by inserting an h (except after l n r):

Spirantization
/p/	→ /v/	bog /pok/ “soft” → glé bhog /kleː vok/ “very soft”
/pj/	→ /vj/ (before a back vowel)	beò /pjɔː/ ‘alive’ → glé bheò /kleː vjɔː/ ‘very alive’
/kʰ/	→ /x/	cas /kʰas̪/ “eep” → glé chas /kleː xas̪/ “very eep”
/kʰʲ/	→ /ç/	ciùin /kʰʲuːɲ/ “quiet” → glé chiùin /kleː çuːɲ/ “very quiet”
/t̪/	→ /ɣ/	dubh /t̪uh/ “black” → glé dhubh /kleː ɣuh/ “very black”
/tʲ/	→ /ʝ/	deiil /tʲeʃal/ “ready” → glé dheiil /kleː ʝeʃal/ “very ready”
/k/	→ /ɣ/	garbh /kaɾav/ “rough” → glé gharbh /kleː ɣaɾav/ “very rough”
/kʲ/	→ /ʝ/	geur /kʲiaɾ/ “sharp” → glé gheur /kleː ʝiaɾ/ “very sharp”
/m/	→ /v/	maol /mɯːl̪ˠ/ “bald” → glé mhaol /kleː vɯːl̪ˠ/ “very bald”
/mj/	→ /vj/ (before a back vowel)	meallta /mjaul̪ˠt̪ə/ “deceitful” → glé mheallta /kleː vjaul̪ˠt̪ə/ “very deceitful”
/pʰ/	→ /f/	pongail /pʰɔŋɡal/ “exact” → glé phongail /kleː fɔŋɡal/ “very exact”
/pʰj/	→ /fj/ (before a back vowel)	peallagach /pʰjal̪ˠakəx/ “shaggy” → glé pheallagach /kleː fjal̪ˠakəx/ “very shaggy”
Loss of condary articulation
/n̪ˠ/	→ /n/	nàdarra /n̪ˠaːt̪ərˠə/ “natural” → glé nàdarra /kleː naːt̪ərˠə/ “very natural”
/rˠ/	→ /ɾ/	rag /rˠak/ “iff” → glé rag /kleː ɾak/ “very iff”
Debuccalization
/s̪/	→ /h/	sona /s̪ɔnə/ “happy” → glé shona /kleː hɔnə/ “very happy”
/ʃ/	→ /h/	asmhach /ʃes̪vəx/ “conant” → glé sheasmhach /kleː hes̪vəx/ “very conant”
/ʃ/	→ /hj/ (before a back vowel)	òlta /ʃɔːl̪ˠt̪ə/ “y” → glé sheòlta /kleː hjɔːl̪ˠt̪ə/ “very y”
/t̪ʰ/	→ /h/	tana /t̪ʰanə/ “thin” → glé thana /kleː hanə/ “very thin”
/tʰʲ/	→ /h/	tinn /tʲiːɲ/ “ill” → glé thinn /kleː hiːɲ/ “very ill”
/tʰʲ/	→ /hj/ (before a back vowel)	teann /tʰʲaun̪ˠ/ “tight” → glé theann /kleː hjaun̪ˠ/ “very tight”
Elion
/f/	→ Ø	fann /faun̪ˠ/ “faint” → glé fhann /kleː aun̪ˠ/ “very faint”
/fj/	→ /j/ (before a back vowel)	feòrachail /fjɔːɾəxal/ “inquitive” → glé fheòrachail /kleː jɔːɾəxal/ “very inquitive”
Reduction of place markedness
In the modern Goidelic languages, grammatical lenition also triggers the reduction of markedness in the place of articulation of coronal sonorants (l, r, and n sounds). In Scottish Gaelic, /n/ and /l/ are the weak counterparts of palatal /ɲ/ and /ʎ/.
/ɲ/	→ /n/	neulach /ɲial̪ˠəx/ “cloudy” → glé neulach /kleː nial̪ˠəx/ “very cloudy”
/ʎ/	→ /l/	leisg /ʎeʃkʲ/ “lazy” → glé leisg /kleː leʃkʲ/ “very lazy”

Finally, we found out that Western Isles ladies are very forward (sweeping generalisation and obviously not true.. though it does tie in with my experience of Western Isles student nurses whilst working in a certain Irish bar in Aberdeen!). The following is a converation in full which we practiced in class and translated for “homework” in our own time:

Màiri

Halò. Is mi Màiri, cò thu? (Hello, I am Mairi, who are you?)

Pàdruig

Is mi Pàdruig. (I am Patrick.)

Ciamar a tha thu? (How are you?)

Màiri

Tha mi gu math, tapadh leat. (I am well, thank you.)

Ciamar a tha thu fhèin? (How are you, yourself?)

Pàdruig

Tha mi sgìth. (I am tired.)

A bheil thu sgìth? (Are you tired?)

Màiri

Chan eil. (I’m not.)

Cò às a tha thu? (Where are you from?)

Pàdruig

Tha mi as Na Stàitean. (I’m from The States (United of America fame).)

Cò às a tha thu fhèin? (Where are you from, yourself?)

Màiri

Tha mi à Alba. (I am from Scotland.)

A bheil thu pòsda? (Are you married?)

Pàdruig

Chan eil. (I’m not.)

A bheil thu pòsda? (Are YOU married?)

Màiri

Chan eil. (I’m not.)

Hey you, what’s your name? where are you from? oh, you’re tired, I e, ARE YOU MARRIED?

This post, like all subsequent posts, exists in order to document my progress in learning Scottish Gaelic or Gàidhlig from absolute beginner level.

I have signed up for lessons via the Office of Lifelong Learning at The University of Edinburgh and recently attended my first class.

The class size is pretty reasonable at 15 fellow students and the teacher is a native of the Western Island of Lewis. We were advised that the dialect we’ll be picking up as the weeks continue will be the Lewis dialect but hopefully we’ll be understandable elsewhere too.

My initial impressions of the course are all positive, even considering we have to sing a different Gaelic song each week! At this stage of the process I am a very eager and engaged student.. I hope this feeling continues.

It would obviously be entirely unfair for me to share the entire contents of the course as this may convince potential students that they need not attend any classes. Beware however, even at this early stage it seems that Gaelic is not pronounced in any way that resembles the way that the words are written.

Point of example: tinn which means sick/unwell sounds a bit like choing when said aloud. I may occasionally refer to the International Phonetic Alphabet when trying to explain pronunciation, this is not one of those times.

Some of the phrases which we learned are listed below:

We learned more vocabulary than this and also our revision/homework contains other pronouns such as he, she, we, they etc.

One of the many things I learned was that I (and I presume many other folk) have long been pronouncing Alba (Scotland) incorrectly. It is pronounced as if there is a wee half ‘a’ in between the ‘l’ and ‘b’. This also impacts the pronunciation of Albanach (Scottish) which I’ve also been mispronouncing as the last 3 letters are pronounced ‘och’ in Gaelic, or at least in Lewis dialect.

We also had a few goes at the following Gaelic song, where we sang along with the chorus. It wasn’t as bad as we all thought, but probably not as good as the kids in the video sang it.

At the time of this site’s creation I’m a 37 year old Scotsman of Gaelic heritage. I know this as last year I did a DNA test with Scotland’s DNA and the response was that my DNA contains the “quintessential Celtic marker”. Apparently my paternal line hails from Leinster in Ireland and I’m potentially directly descended from the ancient Kings of Leinster.

Extract from my YDNA marker report.

Your marker of S145, the identifier of the Hibernians, is found all over Britain and Ireland, and also along part of the route Pytheas took from Massalia and the Mediterranean. It is present in small but significant numbers in Western France and Spain. One of its most interesting concentrations is in Brittany. Formerly known as Armorica, part of the Roman province of Gaul, this region changed its name to mean “Little Britain”. This happened because of a migration, an exodus from Southern England of Romano-British people who fled the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the 5th and 6th centuries. These were almost certainly aristocrats, landowners and townspeople of means, those with the most to lose and the ability to flee. They brought their marker with them and outside of Britain, S145 is most common in Brittany, Little Britain.

The exiles also brought their languages with them and Breton is related to Cornish and Welsh, the P-Celtic group of languages. Scots and Irish Gaelic and Manx make up the Q-Celtic group, what was spoken by your ancestors, the Hibernians. They are cousin-languages that evolved as dialects and they are closely identified with S145, what might be called the quintessential Celtic marker. In turn they are linked to Galician, a Celtic language that survives, just, in Northern Spain. In antiquity dialects of what is called Celtiberian were spoken all over what is now Spain and Portugal. Archaeology, language and DNA all combine to suggest strongly that the Celtic peoples of Britain and Ireland approached from the south, from Iberia. You belong to a specifically Irish sub-group of S145, and it is S169. It appears to concentrate in Leinster and it occurs frequently in men with the surnames of Byrne and Kavanagh. Murphys also often carry this sub-type. And there is a link with royalty. Some carriers appear to be descended from the medieval kings of Leinster, the men once known as the Chiefs of the Lagin. Their warbands crossed the Irish Sea after the fall of the Roman province of Britannia in the 5th century and left their name on the Lleyn Peninsula of North Wales.

The early medieval kings of Leinster gained notoriety because they invited the Normans into Ireland. Dermot MacMurrough lost his throne and in order to regain it, he promised the succession to Richard de Clare, a Norman earl known as Strongbow. And with typical Norman briskness, he took it. Nevertheless, Dermot has a modern successor; the Prince of Leinster is William Butler MacMurrough Kavanagh. He was born in 1944.

The Hibernians, your people, represent an extraordinary continuity from earliest times.

Though maternal lineage is a little less detailed, it is likely that my maternal line also came to Scotland via Ireland (piecing together the DNA results and what I know about my mum’s family history). So my ancestors were Gaels.. which led me to ask myself, what kind of a Quintessential Celt doesn’t even speak the language of his people?

Whilst living in Japan for an exchange year in 2009-2010 I also presented a short speech differentiating between the sounds of English, Scots and Gaelic and it wasn’t really until I carried out a little research that I realised how much in decline the language is. I can’t stand by and watch the language of my ancestors and one of the languages which so heavily influences Scottish culture vanish from existence. I’ll do what I can to ensure the survival of Gaelic.

As of Thursday 25th of September 2014, I began my journey to learning this language. Though the pace will be relatively slow at first with just one 2 hour evening lesson every week within term time at The University of Edinburgh, it is my intention to one day be fluent in Gaelic.

This blog is intended as a progress journal and something that I can look back on later which may be useful for helping our future children learn Gaelic at a later stage. All and any feedback is appreciated, particularly from Gaelic speakers!

Tapadh leat.. for visiting!

Rather than re-invent the wheel, I found the following excellent pronunciation guide online.

Copied from the Cambridge University Hillwalking Club website with thanks to it’s author Mark Jackson (mark3jackson at gmail dot com) who granted permission to reproduce this below.

Let’s get a couple of things straight before we begin. Firstly, it’s pronounced (in English) ‘gal-ick’. Irish Gaelic is pronounced (in English) ‘gay-lik’. The (Scottish) Gaelic name for (Scottish) Gaelic is Gàidhlig, pronounced ‘gaa-lik’, not to be confused with the Irish (Gaelic) name for Irish (Gaelic), which is written Gaeilge and pronounced ‘gail-gyuh’. Both languages are descended from 6th-century Old Irish, and are about as mutually intelligible as Cockney and Glaswegian (i.e. somewhat, if you speak slowly). Welsh is a more distant relation (compare Welsh pen and Gaelic beinn; Welsh moel and Gaelic meall).

Second, Gaelic pronunciation is a lot more complex than Welsh, and I enjoy writing about it, so I’m not going to give you short shrift. This is going to be a long guide.

Some ground rules

• Gaelic has only eighteen letters in its alphabet, so no J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y or Z.
• A consonant + H denotes a completely different sound to the same consonant without an H following it.
• Gaelic has a system of broad vowels (A, O, U) and slender vowels (E, I). It’s a strange feature of Gaelic spelling that a consonant – or bunch of consonants – only ever has broad vowels on both sides, or slender vowels on both sides. So aonach and coire are both valid words, but not aonech or core. After a while, these sorts of words just start to look wrong.
• When many – but not all – consonants are surrounded by slender vowels (called a slender consonant), they change their sounds to sound as though they have a Y following them. Consonants do exactly the same in English when followed by a U. Thus the initial sounds of the words ceann, dearg are the same as the initial sounds of cure, dune.
• There is also a distinction that needs to be understood in certain places between back vowels (vowels that sound in the back of the mouth, that is ‘aw’, ‘ur’, ‘oo’, ‘ow’, ‘aa’, ‘o’, ‘u’, ‘a’) and front vowels (everything else).
• Gaelic words are stressed on the first syllable. There, that was simple. The whole discussion about vowels only applies in stressed (i.e. initial) syllables, because anywhere else in the word, vowels only make a couple of sounds (to be covered later).

Simple vowels

Gaelic uses the grave accent on vowels, so suddenly we have ten to cope with. The use of the accent is consistent though and just signifies a longer version of the vowel.

• A like in cat, or more accurately, like the first part of the vowel in cow.
• À is a longer version of the above, as in father.
• E like a short version of the sound in bay before the Y sets in; like French é.
• È longer version of the above.
• I is a short version of the sound in see.
• Ì as in see.
• O as in cot usually; but before B, BH, G, GH, M and MH it makes a sound more like the French au in jaune.
• Ò as is law.
• U is a short version of the sound in food; like French ou.
• Ù as in food.

These rules aren’t applicable all the time, but they’re a good starting point.

Broad consonants

(that is, consonants surrounded by broad vowels.)

• F, L, LL, M, N, NN and S; as in English. Well, I wanted to start you off with the easy ones.
• H as in English, but only when it’s found in isolation (which isn’t often). When it comes after a consonant, it modifies the sound of the preceding consonant instead of having a sound of its own. See below.
• P, T and C; as in English, except that in the middle or end of words you should add a very slight ‘kh’ sound before them, almost no more than a little extra breath. (That ‘kh’ is the back of the throat sound as in loch or German Bach. Practise it.) E.g. càrn ‘caarn’, baca ‘ba(kh)-kuh’.
• B, D and G; as in English only at the beginnings of words. Elsewhere they sound like English P, T and C respectively. E.g. bàn ‘baan’, fada ‘fat-uh’.
• R and RR; rolled, and never left out. Ever. If you can’t roll your R’s you can approximate a single tap of the roll (which is all most Gaels ever say anyway) by bending your tongue back until the underside of the tongue is touching the roof of your mouth, and then flicking the tongue forward while trying to say an English R. The tongue should catch behind the teeth, producing a sharp tapping sound rather unlike the English R.
• BH and MH; both pronounced as the English V. For example, mhòr ‘vaur’.
• CH; as in loch or German Bach. If you can’t make this sound, you might as well give up now, because there’s no surer sign that you’re a Sassenach than being unable to pronounce loch as anything other than ‘lock’.
• GH and DH; these are to CH as G is to C, i.e. with the mouth and tongue in the same place but with the vocal cords vibrating. (You can tell if your vocal cords are vibrating or not by placing your hand against your throat and seeing if you can feel a buzzing sensation.) It’s a bit like gargling, or sitting on a G for several seconds. E.g. dhorain‘ ghorrin’.
• FH is silent. E.g. fhuaran ‘uaran’.
• PH as in English.
• SH and TH; as the English H. For example, thuilm ‘hoolim’.

Combinations of consonants

Only one rule here: for some reason best known to itself Gaelic inserts a SH sound into the combinations RD and RT. Therefore aird ‘aarsht’.

Slender consonants

As discussed above, in most cases, ‘slenderising’ a consonant just involves sticking a Y after it. Thus slender B is like the BY in English beauty at the beginning of a word, and like the PY in English puke elsewhere. Slender C is just like the CY in English cute, slender SH is like the HY in hew, slender L is like the LY in million and slender BH is just like the VY in English view. This process is also done to R and NG although their modified forms aren’t found in English. E.g. cìr ‘kyeery’.

The difficulty for English speakers is ending a word with this kind of slenderised sound. For example, cìr above only has one syllable, and it ends with what sounds like an R and a Y run quickly together. Writing out the pronunciations for these things isn’t easy either!

Of course, there are a lot of exceptions.

• Slender S is pronounced as the English SH. E.g. clais ‘clash’.
• Slender CH is pronounced like the German ich; that is to say, rather like an H and a Y run together and said with more force. E.g. lapaich ‘la(kh)-piçh’.
• Slender GH and DH are a voiced version of the above, i.e. as above, but with the vocal cords vibrating. It can sound rather like a severely overdone Y. E.g. dhearg ‘yyerrak’.
• The consonants B, BH, M, MH, F, FH, P, PH, SH and TH only slenderise before a back vowel (see the Ground Rules section). E.g. bealach ‘byal-uhkh’ and meall ‘myowl’, but beag ‘behk’ (not ‘byehk’), caibe ‘kap-uh’ (not ‘kap-yuh’) and tìm ‘teem’ (not ‘teemy’).
• L only slenderises at the beginning of a word. E.g. leum ‘lyehm’ but cuilean ‘ku-luhn’
• N only slenderises initially or after a back vowel. E.g. nead ‘nyet’ and duine ‘duwn-yuh’, but teine ‘tyen-uh’.
• R slenderises everywhere except at the beginning of a word. Honestly, who makes these things up? So we haverèidh ‘ray’ but bhuiridh ‘vui-ryee’.
• LL, NN and RR slenderise as expected, you will be glad to hear.

Finally, ever hear the English word tune pronounced ‘tchoon’ rather than ‘tyoon’? This is a common trend, and the same is happening in Gaelic. Thus it’s fine to pronounce teallach ‘tchal-uhkh’ rather than ‘tyal-uhkh’, and of course it means the word nid comes out as ‘nyitch’ (because the D is pronounced as a T because it’s not at the start, but it’s also slender, so it becomes TY which then becomes TCH…)

Enjoying yourself? Just wait till we meet the vowels…

Combinations of vowels

The trick with this stuff is knowing which vowels are actually supposed to be sounded, and which have been inserted to mark the surrounding consonants as broad or slender. Also, Gaelic vowels have a habit of changing before certain consonants, much as the A’s in the English words ”half”, ”hand”, ”hall”, ”halt” and ”hallow” are all pronounced differently. Just be grateful you aren’t having to learn as many rules as a learner of English!

• As a general rule, an I following a vowel does not change its pronunciation, thus AI, EI and ÒI are pronounced the same as A, E and Ò respectively. E.g. caisteal ‘kash-tchuhl’ and coire ‘corruh’.
• AO is a new vowel, and we all love those. It’s like the OO sound in English ”food”, but with the lips unrounded, and sounded further back in the throat. To some, it sounds like a cross between that OO sound and the UR sound in burn. E.g. aonach ‘uw-nuhkh’.
• EA this combination sounds just like a Gaelic E before the letters D, G and S. Elsewhere, it mostly has the sound of the English E in ”bed”, e.g. beag ‘behk’ but geal ‘gyel’.
• EO and EÒ sound just like the Gaelic O and Ò, except that a Y sound is added before them when they come at the start of a word. E.g. beoil ‘byaul’ and eòin ‘yawny’ (note the slender n).
• EU, IA and ÌO sound like a Gaelic I and A run together, that is, like the English word ”ear” (without the R). E.g.riabhach ‘reea-uhkh’. One exception; before M, EU becomes a long E sound instead. Thus leum ‘lyehm’.
• IO just sounds like I. E.g. biod ‘bit’.
• IU, IÙ and IÙI sound just like the Gaelic U and Ù, except that a Y sound is added before them when they come at the start of a word. E.g. iubhar ‘yoo-uhr’.
• UA and UAI sound as in English pure or Northern tour. Thus bruach ‘bruakh’.
• UI normally just sounds like U (as you’d expect from the first rule in this section) but before M, N, NG and S it sounds like the Gaelic AO instead. E.g. uisge ‘uwshk-yuh’.

Vowels in unstressed syllables

• A, E, EA make an ‘uh’ sound as in the second syllable of butter. E.g. bidean ‘bit-yuhn’.
• AI, EI, I, OI, UI make a short ‘i’ sound as in pin. E.g. tarsuinn ‘tar-sin’.

Simples. No other vowels appear in unstressed syllables.

Vowels before LL, M and NN

Much as in English hall, almost every vowel in Gaelic changes its sound before these letters. This only happens in stressed syllables.

• A and EA now make the sound of English cow. E.g. meall ‘myowl’ and ceann ‘kyown’. In the case of EA, a Y sound is added before it when it starts a word, and it doesn’t change before M.
• AI now makes the sound in English sky. E.g. caill ‘kyle’.
• EI now sounds like English vein, e.g. beinn ‘beyn’ and greim ‘greym’.
• I and U simply get lengthened, e.g. till ‘tcheely’.
• IO (and this is a weird one) becomes the long OO sound (but not before M). What’s more, it gains an extra Y sound in front if it begins a word. E.g. fionn ‘fyoon’, fhionnlaidh ‘yoon-lee’ – don’t forget the FH is silent!
• O is lengthened to a sound similar to that in English home. E.g. tom ‘tohm’.
• OI becomes the sound of the Welsh EI, that is, a sound formed by running together a short ‘uh’ and an ‘ee’. E.g. broinn ‘brueyn’.
• UI becomes a difficult sound formed by running together the back-of-the-throat Gaelic AO sound and an ‘ee’. E.g. druim ‘druuym’.

An important rule to remember is that this does not happen if a vowel follows the LL/M/NN. It’s the same in English with the words fall and fallow. Most of the time a following vowel just causes the preceding vowel to fall back to how it would have been had the LL/M/NN not been present (e.g. mullach is ‘mu-luhkh’ not ‘moo-luhkh’), but there are a couple of exceptions:

• EA becomes a Gaelic short A, but still has a Y preceding it if it starts a word off. E.g. teallach ‘tchal-uhkh’.
• IO becomes a Gaelic short U. It also still has a Y preceding it if it starts a word off. E.g. sionnach ‘shu-nuhkh’.

Vowels before RR/RN/RD

A similar lengthening takes place before the combinations RR, RN and RD. This one is simpler though.

• A, AI and EA lengthen to make a long À sound. E.g. aird ‘aarsht’ and fearna ‘fyaar-nuh’.
• O and U lengthen to sound like Ò and Ù, e.g. sgurr ‘skuur’. Similarly, IU lengthens to sound like IÙ.

As in the previous section, this lengthening does not happen if a vowel follows the RR (note: it does happen if a vowel follows an RN or an RD), e.g. corranaich ‘korruh-niçh’. Also as in the previous section, under these circumstances an EA ends up sounding like a short A (e.g. earrach ‘yarruhkh’).

Those pesky BH, DH, GH and MH

The most annoying thing about these four consonants is their tendency to disappear when following a vowel. If you come across one of these four in that situation, you’re safer assuming that it’s silent than that it sounds as it should: e.g.dubh ‘doo’, labhar ‘laa-uhr’, sidhein ‘shee-in’, buidhe ‘buuy-uh’, mheadhoin ‘vey-in’ (often contracted further to ‘vein’), braigh ‘bruey’, nighean ‘nyee-uhn’. But then there are words like abhainn ‘av-in’, laogh ‘luwgh’, damh ‘dav’ and caoimhin ‘kuw-vin’… It helps to know that DH almost always disappears and that MH rarely does.

One thing a consonant disappearing like this often does is lengthen the preceding vowel. This explains why the common ending -aidh is pronounced ‘ee’.

But sometimes (and whether they disappear or not!) these four consonants change the sound of the preceding vowel instead. As follows:

• A/EA before DH/GH; the DH/GH is not silent, and the A/EA becomes another new vowel, like the ur in English burn but further back in the throat and shorter. E.g. feadh ‘fyeugh’, ladhran ‘leuu-ruhn’ (in this instance the vowel is lengthened by the disappearance of the DH).
• AI before BH/DH/MH; lengthens to the sound of English sky. E.g. aibhne ‘eyev-nyuh’.
• AIGH and OIGH make the sound of OI before LL, that is, ‘uh’ and ‘ee’ run together. E.g. mhaighdean ‘vuey-tchuhn’ and oighreag ‘uey-ryuhk’.
• AOI plus BH/DH/GH/MH; like an AO and an ‘ee’ run together. E.g. laoigh ‘luuy’.

Extra vowels

Gaelic isn’t a fan of having too many consonants of certain types stuck together, so it tends to stick extra vowels in between them, even when there’s no vowel written. To be precise: where an L, N or R is followed by a B, BH, CH, G, GH, M or MH, or preceded by an M, an extra vowel comes between the two. Usually this vowel is a copy of the previous vowel; e.g. bhalgain ‘val-a-kin’, gorm ‘gorom’, garbh ‘garav’.

An exception is that when this would lead to the sound combination E-R-E, an A is sounded instead. This explains why the common word dearg is pronounced ‘jerrak’.

A guide to the respelling used

Yeah, trying to write out how these words are pronounced isn’t very easy when English doesn’t contain half the sounds involved. Here’s a roundup of all the conventions used:

Test

Right, now that you’ve been reminded of what all my garbled pronunciations are trying to say, cover up the right-hand side of the page/screen and have a go at these Munro names: