Scottish Gaelic orthography has evolved over many centuries and is heavily etymologizing in its modern form. This means the

orthography An orthography is a set of conventions for writing a language, including norms of spelling, hyphenation, capitalization, word breaks, emphasis, and punctuation. Most transnational languages in the modern period have a writing system, and ...

tends to preserve historical components rather than operating on the principles of a

phonemic orthography A phonemic orthography is an orthography (system for writing a language) in which the graphemes (written symbols) correspond to the phonemes (significant spoken sounds) of the language. Natural languages rarely have perfectly phonemic orthographi ...

where the

grapheme In linguistics, a grapheme is the smallest functional unit of a writing system. The word ''grapheme'' is derived and the suffix ''-eme'' by analogy with ''phoneme'' and other names of emic units. The study of graphemes is called '' graphemi ...

s correspond directly to

phoneme In phonology and linguistics, a phoneme () is a unit of sound that can distinguish one word from another in a particular language. For example, in most dialects of English, with the notable exception of the West Midlands and the north-wes ...

s. This allows the same written form in Scottish Gaelic to result in a multitude of pronunciations, depending on the spoken variant of

Scottish Gaelic Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well ...

. For example, the word ('watching') may result in , , , or . Conversely, it allows the sometimes highly divergent phonetic forms to be covered by a single written form, rather than requiring multiple written forms.

Alphabet

The alphabet (Scottish Gaelic: , formerly from the first three letters of the Ogham alphabet) now used for writing Scottish Gaelic consists of the following

Latin script The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern I ...

letters, whether written in Roman type or

Gaelic type Gaelic type (sometimes called Irish character, Irish type, or Gaelic script) is a family of Insular script typefaces devised for printing Classical Gaelic. It was widely used from the 16th until the mid-18th century (Scotland) or the mid-20th ...

: : Vowels may be

accented A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...

with a grave accent but accented letters are not considered distinct letters. Prior the 1981 Gaelic Orthographic Convention (GOC), Scottish Gaelic traditionally used acute accents on to denote close-mid

long vowels In linguistics, vowel length is the perceived length of a vowel sound: the corresponding physical measurement is duration. In some languages vowel length is an important phonemic factor, meaning vowel length can change the meaning of the word, ...

, clearly graphemically distinguishing and , and and . However, since the 1981 GOC and its 2005 and 2009 revisions, standard orthography only uses the grave accent. In her review, Ross finds five traditional approaches to the use of accent marks in Scottish Gaelic prior to standardization. Since the 1980s, the acute accent has not been used in Scottish high school examination papers, and many publishers have adopted the Scottish Qualifications Authority's orthographic conventions for their books. Despite this, traditional spelling is still used by some writers and publishers, although not always intentionally. In

Nova Scotia Nova Scotia ( ; ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada. It is one of the three Maritime provinces and one of the four Atlantic provinces. Nova Scotia is Latin for "New Scotland". Most of the population are native Eng ...

, the 2009 Gaelic language curriculum guidelines follow the 2005 GOC orthography, but do not change the traditional spelling of words and phrases common to

or in pre–spelling-reform literature.

Letter names

The early Medieval

treatise A treatise is a formal and systematic written discourse on some subject, generally longer and treating it in greater depth than an essay, and more concerned with investigating or exposing the principles of the subject and its conclusions." Tre ...

('The Scholars' Primer') describes the origin of alphabets from the Tower of Babel. It assigns plant names and meanings to the Ogham alphabet, to a lesser extent to Norse

Younger Futhark The Younger Futhark, also called Scandinavian runes, is a runic alphabet and a reduced form of the Elder Futhark, with only 16 characters, in use from about the 9th century, after a "transitional period" during the 7th and 8th centuries. The ...

runes, and by extension to Latin letters when used to write Gaelic. Robert Graves' book ''

The White Goddess ''The White Goddess: a Historical Grammar of Poetic Myth'' is a book-length essay on the nature of poetic myth-making by author and poet Robert Graves. First published in 1948, the book is based on earlier articles published in ''Wales'' magaz ...

'' has been a major influence on assigning divinatory meanings to the tree symbolism. (See also Bríatharogam.) Some of the names differ from their modern equivalents (e.g. ''dair'' > ''darach'', ''suil'' > ''seileach'').

Consonants

The consonant letters generally correspond to the consonant phonemes as shown in this table. See

Scottish Gaelic phonology 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 majori ...

for an explanation of the symbols used. Consonants are "broad" ( velarised) when the nearest vowel letter is one of and "slender" ( palatalised) when the nearest vowel letter is one of . A back vowel is one of the following; ; a front vowel is any other kind of vowel.

Vowels

Many of the rules in this section only apply in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, the range of vowels is highly restricted, with mainly /ə/, /ɪ/ or /a/ appearing and on occasion /ɔ/. Only certain vowel graphs appear in unstressed syllables: and very infrequently .

Vowel-consonant combinations

are commonly pronounced as vowels or are deleted if they are followed by a consonant. For example, in the is usually /v/ but in the has turned into an /u/ vowel, yielding /au/ rather than /av/ in the first syllable.

Epenthetic vowels

Where an is followed (or in the case of , preceded) by a , an epenthetic vowel is inserted between the two. This is usually a copy of the vowel that preceded the . Examples; , , , , . If this process would lead to the sound sequence , the epenthetic vowel is an in many dialects, e.g .

Defunct combinations

The acute accent is no longer used in standard Scottish Gaelic orthography, although it may be encountered in late 20th century writings, and occasionally in contemporary writings, especially in Canadian Gaelic. Certain spellings have also been regularised where they violate pronunciation rules. "Tigh" in particular can still be encountered in house names and certain place names, notably

Tighnabruaich Tighnabruaich; (; gd, Taigh na Bruaich) is a village on the Cowal peninsula, on the western arm of the Kyles of Bute in Argyll and Bute, Scotland. In 2011 the population was 660. It is west of Glasgow and north of the Isle of Arran. Tighnabrua ...

and

Eilean Tigh Eilean Tigh ( gd, Eilean Taighe) is a tidal island in the Sound of Raasay of Scotland, that lies between Rona and Raasay. Approximately in extent, the island was once settled and the ruins of various structures are still visible at the south ...

. * → * → * →

References

Sources

*Bauer, Michael ''Blas na Gàidhlig - The Practical Guide to Gaelic Pronunciation'' (2011) Akerbeltz

External links

Gaelic Orthographic Conventions (2009)
Scottish Qualifications Authority

originally published in the Stornoway Gazette {{DEFAULTSORT:Scottish Gaelic Orthography Scottish Gaelic language Indo-European Latin-script orthographies