Comparison Of Irish, Manx, And Scottish Gaelic

Although Irish, Manx and Scottish Gaelic are closely related as Goidelic (a.k.a. Gaelic) Celtic languages, they are different in many ways. While most dialects are not immediately mutually comprehensible (although many individual words and phrases are), speakers of the three languages can rapidly develop mutual intelligibility.

Phonetic and grammatical differences

The spoken dialects of Irish and Scottish Gaelic are most similar to one another in Ulster and southwestern Scotland, regions of close geographical proximity to one another. It is thought that the extinct dialect of Galwegian Gaelic, spoken in Galloway in the far south of Scotland, was very similar to Ulster Irish and Manx.

While the dialects of northern Scotland and southern Ireland tend to differ the most from one another in terms of vocabulary, they do share some features which are absent in other dialect areas lying between them. For example, in both Munster Irish and the Gaelic of the north of Scotland, historically short vowels have been diphthongised or lengthened before fortis sonorants. An example of this is the word "children of the family". In Munster Irish and northern Scottish Gaelic it is pronounced whereas in Ulster and County Mayo it is and in Connemara ; the Manx form is in the north and in the south.

In addition, slender coronal stops ( and in Scottish Gaelic; and in Irish), are affricated (such as and ) in Mayo and Donegal, the southern Highlands and in Manx, but not in Munster or the northern Highlands.

In the verb ''tá'' of Standard Irish, northern Scotland and Central-Southern Munster agree in leniting the initial , thus one hears in County Waterford and County Tipperary, and in northern Scotland. West Munster also lenites the , but only after the preverb "that" e.g. "the man that's standing at the door" (Standard Irish , Scottish Gaelic ).

The closest to Scottish Gaelic in modern Irish is the dialect currently spoken in County Donegal, as illustrated by the sentence "How are you?".

: (plural/formal) or (singular/informal), Lewis dialect (plural/formal) (singular/informal) ( < )
:Ulster Irish: (plural) (singular), spelt in 'dialect spelling' as
:Connacht Irish: (plural), (singular), in colloquial speech
:Munster Irish: (plural), (singular), ,

''Sibh'' is used in both Irish and Scottish Gaelic for the plural "you", while Scottish Gaelic (except for the far south) also uses as a formal version of "you" (much like French uses ; see "T–V distinction"). Modern Irish does not use this formal/informal distinction when addressing people. The use of as 'polite' you is a retention from the Classical Irish usage of the plural personal pronouns to refer to the singular in polite communication, thus "we" for "I, me" and "you (plural)" for "you/thou". is used in Scottish Gaelic when speaking to an individual friend, family member, or a younger person.

The negative particle in Scottish Gaelic, Manx and Northern Ulster Irish is ''cha/chan'' (, = "is not"; ''chan'' is from the Old Irish emphatic negative ). In standard Irish the negative particle is ( = "is not", a contraction of ); is a retention of the normal Old Irish negative; these are illustrated by the sentence "I have no money":

:Scottish Gaelic:
:Ulster Irish:
:Manx:
:Standard Irish:

Scottish Gaelic speakers may also sound as if they were using the Irish phrase, as can frequently be shortened to .

The Classical Irish digraph is still used in Scottish Gaelic spelling but is now obsolete in Irish, except in southern dialect writing, as a means to distinguish the vowel when followed by a broad consonant from the regular dialect development to in the same environment, thus "bird" in comparison to "died; passed on). is now used instead of in Standard Irish. Both and existed in Classical Irish, to a large extent showing nominal case differences (with varying with in the dative of -words), however in both Scotland and Ireland, spelling reforms and standardisation (which took place in Ireland under the auspices of the government of Ireland during the 20th century, and much earlier in Scotland) independently went for different versions.

At times Scottish writers used the spelling to represent how the combination is pronounced in northern dialects, writing instead of , the southern form. Manx spelling, based mainly on English, shows that is also the underlying form in Manx, the word being spelled .

Eclipsis

The most obvious phonological difference between Irish and Scottish Gaelic is that the phenomenon of eclipsis in Irish is diachronic (i.e. the result of a historical word-final nasal that may or may not be present in modern Irish) but fully synchronic in Scottish Gaelic (i.e. it requires the actual presence of a word-final nasal except for a tiny set of frozen forms). Eclipsis is shown in Irish orthography but not in Scottish Gaelic as it is conditioned by the actual environment.

For example, this means that phrases like Standard Irish , standard Scottish Gaelic ^†, Manx is pronounced as follows in different parts of the Gaelic speaking world:

*Southern Irish:
*Western and Northern Irish:
*Scottish Gaelic (casual pronunciation, especially Lewis): , more commonly further south, with fully voiced .

An example of diachronic-type eclipsis are the numbers:
*Irish: "year" > "8 years"
*Scottish Gaelic: >

^† In conservative speech, Scottish Gaelic feminine nouns also slenderise in the dative (prepositional) case, giving , and so a different final consonant. This feature is uncommon today except in more formal registers and is ignored here.

Orthographic differences

There are a number of distinctive orthographical (written) differences. The spellings of both languages have been reformed in recent decades, which has led to further divergence, though conversely more recent spelling reforms in Scottish Gaelic have reduced the divergences to some extent.

One difference is that the accent is written as a grave accent (, "heavy stroke/accent") in Scottish Gaelic, as opposed to the acute accent (, "long (sign)" used in Irish; hence the word for "welcome" is written as in Scottish Gaelic and in Irish as . Irish does not use the grave accent, while until recently Scottish Gaelic used the grave and acute accents to differentiate between open and closed vowel sounds. However, recent spelling reform has meant that only grave accents are now in Scottish Gaelic, leaving phonemic distinctions unmarked.

Another difference in Scottish Gaelic is that the aspirate linker is always hyphenated, while in Irish it is attached to the beginning of the word, as illustrated by the languages' respective names for each other:
:Scottish Gaelic – ,
:Standard Irish – ,
Additionally, while the linkers and are usually hyphenated in both languages, in Irish they are attached to the beginning of words whose first letter is capitalised; in Scottish Gaelic they are always hyphenated.

A number of letter combinations are possible in written Irish which are not found in Scottish Gaelic e.g. , . Irish uses where Scottish Gaelic uses , although itself was once common in written Irish, as was in Scottish Gaelic – both being used in Classical Gaelic. In the combinations and , Irish now uses and , while Scottish Gaelic uses and both and , despite there being no phonetic difference between the two languages.

Most obvious differences in spelling result from the deletion of silent lenited digraphs (mainly , , and ) in Irish in spelling reforms, which was only sometimes done in Scottish Gaelic. Overall, Scottish Gaelic orthography is more conservative than that of Irish.

List of cognates

Differences in vocabulary

Differences can also be seen in words used for geographical features. For example, "hill" and "mountain" are usually "cnoc" (''Knocknapeasta'') and "sliabh" (''Slieve Donard'') respectively in Ireland, but "càrn" (''Cairn Gorm'') and "beinn" (''Ben Nevis'') in Scotland. Additionally, "inbhir," meaning "river mouth" and usually Anglicized as "inver" (for example ''Inverness'' or ''Inveraray''), very common in Scotland, is almost never seen in Ireland.

False friends

Comparison of text

Article 1 of the UDHR in the languages:

See also

* An Caighdeán Oifigiúil (standard of orthography and grammar used by the Government of Ireland)
* Dialect continuum
* Early Modern Irish
* Middle Irish
* Old Irish

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Comparison of Irish and Scottish Gaelic
Gaelic
Goidelic languages
Irish language
Manx language
Scottish Gaelic language