🚀 go-pugleaf

> K. Scott Shay

>I was wondering if anyone out there knows of any books (that can be
>obtained in America) that deal with the subject of the Gaelic language
>in Scotland.  Books on Irish abound, but I've never come across one
>on this subject.  I'm mainly interested in grammar-type books.
>Thanx!

    I've only encountered 3 books on Scots Gaelic in my life, and all
    three have serious problems.

    The easiest to get your hands on is probably from the "Teach Yourself.."
    series. If my memory serves me correctly, this book uses an
    English-style phonetic notation that is utterly worthless for any
    language (English included), not to mention a language whose
    sound structure is as thoroughly alien as Gaelic. For all I could
    tell, it might have treated Scottish grammar as well as anything in
    existence, or it could have been full of lies and delusions. I
    am not usually inspired by the generally pedestrian tone of the
    material presented by the "Teach yourself.." series, but that
    could be precisely what most people need, especially if there is a
    real live Scotsperson handy to tell you how the words are
    really pronounced. What we need is a native speaker to comment on
    this book.  

    Some time ago I managed to successfully order a grammar from a funky
    place in Scotland by the name of "McClaren's Scottish Highlands'
    Printing Company" (or something like that). Their scholarship is,
    well, not exactly what one comes to expect from the big money
    languages. For one thing, I could not understand the point of many
    of the exercises, while others left me in the dark about important
    grammatical, syntactic, and phonetic questions (horrible English-style
    pronunciations again..). Still, it is clear that a great deal of
    sincere effort went into this book. I've also seen a dictionary
    published  by the same outfit which provided mysterious single-word
    definitions (no history, no phonetics) and lacked the words whose
    meanings I wanted to know at the time. McClaren's also purports
    to publish things to read if you ever really learn Gaelic.

    The best text I've found (in a used book store) is "The Gaelic of
    Arran" Nils M. Holmer from the Dublin Institute for Advanced
    Studies, which is a scholarly presentation of a Scots Gaelic
    dialect still used by 605 native speakers in 1931. The treatment
    is brutally minimal, quite scientific, amazingly complete given
    its 211 pages, but, alas, assumes one already has basic
    references, such as a good dictionary and grammar. This text is
    certain to appeal to a very small percentage of that huge Scots
    Gaelic instructional text market out there..

    Need I say I haven't made much progress?. Learning Gaelic,
    especially Scots Gaelic, presents obstacles far more serious than
    other languages, even if satisfactory texts existed and even if
    one could obtain them.  

    It has become my ignorant opinion either that the Celtic languages
    are genuinely peculiar, or else that, due to a historical lack
    interest in them, proper didactic techniques have yet to be
    invented. Perhaps all the Celtic languages need is somebody to do
    what Chomsky did for English; traditional English grammar texts
    didn't make any sense to me either until I studied Latin (the mold
    into which it was being force-fit). The "Real" English made a
    lot more sense when I first saw it from the viewpoint of the
    phrase-structure/transformational approach; I suspect that the
    apparent confusion of Celtic languages would dissolve if a Celtic
    Chomsky would tailor a formalism suitable for clarifying just what
    all those strange verb forms and funny particles are doing. 

    Other problems: Who would you speak with? What would you read? Is
    it not true that the Scottish literary tradition has been in
    English for more centuries than the Irish? Even if you found a
    Gaelic speaker, they'd probably speak the wrong flavor: Scots
    Gaelic is quite a different language from Irish Gaelic -- I've
    been told they're not mutually comprehensible. Can anyone confirm
    or deny all this hearsay? 

    As to the the differences between Scottish and Irish, on paper,
    among the obvious divergences I can perceive are that the
    Scots verb has totally lost person/number distinctions in
    conjugation, unlike Irish. Eclipsis, an initial consonant
    mutation (lenition is the other), is another feature disappearing
    in Scottish while remaining in Irish. Spelling differences abound
    whose reality, phonetic or otherwise, is of unknown significance
    to me. Here are a few random words in each and wild stab at the
    pronunciations thereof (Gaelic cognoscenti are urged to issue
    forth corrections with vigor): 

                    Orthography                ??Pronunciation??
    English	Irish	       Scots	      Irish	     Scots
    -------	-----	       -----	      -----	     -----
    grass	fear	       feur	      f'er	     f'er
    seven	seacht	       seach-d/g      s'akht	     s'akhk
    night	aoiche	       oidhche	      ekh'0	     ukh'0
    after	i ndeaghaidh   an deidh	      in'ey	     0nd'ey
    wart	faithne	       foinne	      fahn'0	     fon'0
    barn	iothlann       iolain	      ohl0n	     ul0n'
    hill	cnoc	       cnoc	      knok	     krongk
    monster	uill-phiast    uile-bheist    ul' f'i0st     ul'0 v'est'
    ash(tree)	fuinnseog      uinnsean	      funs'0g	     uns'0n

    Note on pronunciations: besides the usual european values for
    consonants and vowels, 0=a in idea, kh=ch in German ach, ng=ng in
    song, '=palatizes preceding consonant (cluster), {s',t',d'} sound
    very much like English {sh, ch, j}, st' much as st in "question",
    kh' as ch in German ich; palatization can also induce glides in
    flanking vowels.. 

-michael

    chan 'eil Gaidhlig math againn /kha nel' gal'ig' mweh ag0n'/
    (we do not speak good Gaelic)

-common saying in parts of Scotland