
Scottish Gaelic phonology and orthography

There is no standard variety of Scottish Gaelic; although statements below are about all or most dialects, the north-western dialects (Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Northwest Highlands) are discussed more than others as they represent the majority of speakers.
Gaelic phonology is characterised by:
Due to the geographic concentration of Gaelic speakers along the western seaboard with its numerous islands, Gaelic dialectologists tend to ascribe each island its own dialect. On the mainland, no clear dialect boundaries have been established to date but the main areas are generally assumed to be Argyllshire, Perthshire, Moidart/Ardnamurchan, Wester Ross and Sutherland.
History of the discipline.
Descriptions of the language have largely focused on the phonology. Welsh naturalist Edward Lhuyd published the earliest major work on Scottish Gaelic after collecting data in the Scottish Highlands between 1699 and 1700, in particular data on Argyll Gaelic and the now obsolete dialects of north-east Inverness-shire.
Following a significant gap, the middle to the end of the twentieth century saw a great flurry of dialect studies in particular by Scandinavian scholars, again focussing largely on phonology:
In the period between 1950 and 1963, fieldwork was carried out to document all then remaining Gaelic dialects, culminating in the publication of the five-volume "Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland" by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1997. The survey collected data from informants as far south as Arran, Cowal, Brig o' Turk, east to Blairgowrie, Braemar and Grantown-on-Spey, north-east to Dunbeath and Portskerra and all areas west of these areas, including St Kilda.
Vowels.
The following is a chart of the monophthong vowel phonemes appearing in Scottish Gaelic:
All vowel phonemes except for and can be both long (represented with ) and short. Note that phonologically, behaves both as a front or back vowel depending on the geographical area and vowel length.
Diphthongs.
The number of diphthongs in Scottish Gaelic depends to some extent on the dialect in question but most commonly, 9 or 10 are described: .
Orthography.
Vowels are written as follows:
The English equivalents given are approximate, and refer most closely to the Scottish pronunciation of Standard English. The vowel in English "father" is back in Southern English. The in English "late" in Scottish English is the pure vowel rather than the more general diphthong . The same is true for the in English "boat", in Scottish English, instead of the diphthong .
Digraphs and trigraphs.
The language uses many vowel combinations, which can be categorised into two types, depending on the status of one or more of the written vowels in the combinations.
Category 1: vowel plus glide vowels. In this category, vowels in digraphs/trigraphs that are next to a neighbouring consonant are for all intents and purposes part of the consonant, showing the broad or slender status of the consonant.
 
Category 2: 'diphthongs' and 'triphthongs'. In this category, vowels are written together to represent either a diphthong, or what was in Middle Irish a diphthong.
Category 2 digraphs can by followed by Category 1 glides, and thereby form trigraphs:
Consonants.
Like the closely related languages, Modern Irish and Manx, Scottish Gaelic contains what are traditionally referred to as "broad" and "slender" consonants. Historically, Primitive Irish consonants preceding the front vowels and developed a -like coarticulation similar to the palatalised consonants found in Russian while the consonants preceding the non-front vowels , and developed a velar coarticulation. While Irish distinguishes "broad" (i.e. phonetically velar or velarised consonants) and "slender" (i.e. phonetically palatal or palatalised consonants), in Scottish Gaelic velarisation is only present for . This means that consonants marked "broad" by the orthography are, for the most part simply unmarked, while "slender" consonants are palatal or palatalised. The main exception to this are the labials (), which have lost their palatalised forms. The only trace of their original palatalisation is a glide found before or after back vowels, e.g. "beul" ('mouth') vs "beò" ('alive').
Celtic linguists traditionally transcribe slender consonants with an apostrophe (or more accurately, a prime) following the consonant (e.g. m′) and leave broad consonants unmarked.
The unaspirated stops in some dialects (east and south) are voiced (see below), as in Manx and Irish. In the Gaelic of Sutherland and the MacKay Country, this is the case, while in all other areas full voicing is allophonic with regional variation, voicing occurs in certain environments, such as within breath groups and following homorganic nasals (see below). The variation suggests that the unaspirated stops at the underlying phonological level are voiced, with devoicing an allophonic variant that in some dialects has become the most common realisation. East Perthshire Gaelic reportedly lacks either a voicing or an aspiration distinction and has merged these stops. Irish dialects and Manx also have devoiced unaspirated consonants in certain environments.
In the modern languages, there is sometimes a stronger contrast from Old Gaelic in the assumed meaning of "broad" and "slender". In the modern languages, the phonetic difference between "broad" and "slender" consonants can be more complex than mere "velarisation"/"palatalisation". For instance, the Gaelic "slender s" is so palatalised that it has become postalveolar .
Certain consonants (in particular the fricatives and the lenis coronals ) are rare in initial position except as a result of lenition.
Phonetic variation.
Gaelic phonemes may have various allophones as well as dialectal or variations in pronunciation not shown in the chart above. The more common ones are:
Velarised l.
Velarised has 6 main realisations as shown on the map:
The Survey of Scottish Gaelic Dialects occasionally reports labialised forms such as or outside the area they predominantly appear in, for example in Harris and Wester Ross.
Aspiration.
The fortis stops are voiceless and aspirated; this aspiration occurs as postaspiration in initial position and, in most dialects, as preaspiration in medial position after stressed vowels. Similar to the manifestation of aspiration, the slender consonants have a palatal offglide when initial and a palatal onglide when medial or final.
Preaspiration.
Preaspiration varies in strength and can manifest as glottal ( or ) or can vary depending on the place of articulation of the preaspirated consonant; being before "slender" segments and before "broad" ones. The occurrence of preaspiration follows a hierarchy of c > t > p; i.e. if a dialect has preaspiration with , it will also have it in the other places of articulation. Preaspiration manifests itself as follows:
Lack of preaspiration coincides with full voicing of the unaspirated stops. Area 6 dialects in effect largely retain the Middle Irish stops, as has Manx and Irish.
Nasalisation.
In some Gaelic dialects (particularly the north-west), stops at the beginning of a stressed syllable become voiced when they follow nasal consonants of the definite article, for example: "taigh" ('a house') is but "an taigh" ('the house') is ; cf. also "tombaca" ('tobacco') . In such dialects, the lenis stops tend to be completely nasalised, thus "doras" ('a door') is , but "an doras" ('the door') is . This is similar to eclipsis in Classical Gaelic and Irish, but not identical as it only occurs when a nasal is phonetically present whereas eclipsis in Classical Gaelic and Irish may occur in positions following a historic (but no longer present) nasal.
The voicing of voiceless aspirated stops and the nasalisation of the unaspirated (voiced) stops occurs after the preposition an/am ('in'), an/am ('their'), the interrogative particle an and a few other such particles and occasionally, after any word ending in a nasal e.g. "a bheil thu a' faighinn cus?" as rather than .
In southern Hebridean dialects, the nasal optionally drops out entirely before a consonant, including plosives.
Lenition and spelling.
The lenited consonants have special pronunciations.
The is not lenited when it appears before . Lenition may be blocked when homorganic consonants (i.e. those made at the same place of articulation) clash with grammatical lenition rules. Some of these rules are active (particularly with dentals), others have become fossilised (i.e. velars and labials). For example, blocked lenition in the surname "Caimbeul" ('Campbell') (vs "Camshron" 'Cameron') is an incident of fossilised blocked lenition; blocked lenition in "air an taigh salach" "on the dirty house" (vs "air a' bhalach mhath" 'on the good boy') is an example of the productive lenition blocking rule.
Stress.
Stress is usually on the first syllable: for example "drochaid" ('a bridge') .
Epenthesis.
A distinctive characteristic of Gaelic pronunciation (also present in Scots and Scottish English dialects (cf. "girl" and "film" ) is the insertion of epenthetic vowels between certain adjacent consonants. This affects orthographic l n r when followed by orthographic b bh ch g gh m mh; and orthographic m followed by l r s ch.
Occasionally, there are irregular occurrences of the epenthetic vowel, for example in "Glaschu" ('Glasgow').
There are often wide variations in vowel quality in epenthetic vowels, as illustrated by a map showing the pronunciations of "dearbh."
Elision.
Schwa at the end of a word is dropped when followed by a word beginning with a vowel. For example:
Tones.
Of all the Celtic languages, lexical tones only exist in the dialects of Lewis and Sutherland in the extreme north of the Gaelic-speaking area. Phonetically and historically, these resemble the tones of Norway, Sweden and western Denmark; these languages have tonal contours typical for monosyllabic words and those for disyllabic words. In Lewis Gaelic, it is difficult to find minimal pairs. Among the rare examples are: "bodh(a)" ('underwater rock') vs. "bò" ('cow'), and "fitheach" ('raven') vs. "fiach" ('debt'). Another example is the tonal difference between "ainm" and "anam" , the latter of which has the tonal contour appropriate to a disyllable. These tonal differences are not to be found in Ireland or elsewhere in the Scottish "Gàidhealtachd". Furthermore, they are disappearing entirely among younger speakers even in Lewis.
Morphophonology.
Morphophonological variation.
The regular verbal noun suffix, written <(e)adh>, has several pronunciations.
For some words it is possible to resolve the indeterminate area, for example with the verb sgrìobadh ("scraping"):