1-A: The Gaelic alphabet - an aibidil Ghàidhlig [Under construction!]

Question 1

stràc (` )

Answer 1

grave accent (`)

Changes a vowel’s sound.

Mnemonic: cognate with English “stroke”.
The English name “grave” is sometimes also used.
Longer name: stràc throm.
The acute (´) accent, stràc gheur, was abandoned in the 20th-century spelling reforms, but may still be found in old and sometimes academic writing.

Question 2

grave accent (`)

As in: à, è, ì, ò, ù

Answer 2

stràc (` )

Changes a vowel’s sound.

Mnemonic: cognate with English “stroke”.
Longer name: stràc throm.
The acute (´) accent, stràc gheur, was abandoned in the 20th-century spelling reforms, but may still be found in old and sometimes academic writing.

Question 3

/ah/

IPA: [ɑ]

or /æ/, the sound in English “cat”

Answer 3

A, a

a = /æ/ in English “cat”.
a may be /eh/ or /ə/ in an unstressed syallable, esp. final.
à = /ah/ [ɑ] in English “bra”.
à is sometimes drawn out a little.

Question 4

/beh/

or /bə/

Answer 4

B, b

b = /b/, initial.
b = /p/, medial (sometimes) or final.

Question 5

/keh/

or /kə/

Answer 5

C, c

c = /k/, initially.
c = often /shk/ [ʃk] or /thk/ [θk] or /khk/ [xk] when medial or final.
False friend! /keh/ sounds much like /kay/ but Gaelic has no letter “k”.

Question 6

/deh/

or /də/

Answer 6

D, d

d = /d/ initially before broad vowel.
d = /j/ (/dzh/) [dʒ] or [tj] initially before slender vowel.
d = /t/ medially and finally, but sometimes /th/ [ð] or [θ] (may be dialectal).

Question 7

/eh/

Answer 7

E, e

e = /ey/ [e] or /eh/ [ɛ]
è = longer /ey/ [eː]

Question 8

/feh/

or /fə/

Answer 8

F, f

Question 9

/geh/

or /gə/

Answer 9

G, g

Question 10

/heh/

or /hə/

Answer 10

H, h

The Gaelic h is almost exclusively used to show lenition (“softening” of a consonant, caused by various grammatical rules). In pre-modern material, this was instead represented with a dot (˙) above the letter. I.e., antique ċ = modern ch, etc.

Question 11

/ee/

or /ih/

Answer 11

I, i

False friend! /ee/ sounds like the name for English letter “e”.

Question 12

/el/

or /əl/

Answer 12

L, l

Question 13

/meh/

or /mə/, or /mmm/ or /əm/

Answer 13

M, m

Question 14

/neh/

or /nə/, or /nnn/, or /ən/

Answer 14

N, n

Question 15

/oh/

or more like /aw/, IPA [ɔ]

Answer 15

O, o

Question 16

/peh/

or /pə/

Answer 16

P, p

Question 17

/reh/

or /rə/

Answer 17

R, r

The exact “r” sound used to name this letter will vary by dialect and speaker, and is often the flap (the /d/–/r/ blend, as used in Spanish).

Question 18

/es/

or /əs/

Answer 18

S, s

Question 19

/teh/

or /tə/

Answer 19

T, t

Question 20

/ooh/

Answer 20

U, u

Question 21

A, a

Answer 21

/ah/

or /æ/, the sound in English “cat”.

a = /æ/ in English “cat”.
à = /ah/ [ɑ] in English “bra”.
à is sometimes drawn out a little.

Question 22

B, b

Answer 22

/beh/

or /bə/

b = /b/, initial.
b = /p/, medial (sometimes) or final.

Question 23

C, c

Answer 23

/keh/

or /kə/

c = /k/, initially.
c = often /shk/ [ʃk] or /thk/ [θk] or /khk/ [xk] when medial or final.
False friend! /keh/ sounds much like /kay/, but Gaelic has no letter “k”.

Question 24

D, d

Answer 24

/deh/

or /də/

d = /d/ initially before broad vowel.
d = /j/ (/dzh/) [dʒ] or [tj] initially before slender vowel.
d = /t/ medially and finally, but sometimes /th/ [ð] or [θ] (may be dialectal).

Question 25

E, e

Answer 25

/eh/

e = /ey/ [e] or /eh/ [ɛ]
è = longer /ey/ [eː]

Question 26

F, f

Answer 26

/feh/

or /fə/

Question 27

G, g

Answer 27

/geh/

or /gə/

Question 28

H, h

Answer 28

/heh/

or /hə/

The Gaelic h is almost exclusively used to show lenition (“softening” of a consonant, caused by various grammatical rules). In pre-modern material, this was instead represented with a dot (˙) above the letter. I.e., antique ċ = modern ch, etc.

Question 29

I, i

Answer 29

/ee/

or /ih/

False friend! /ee/ sounds like the name of English letter “e”.

Question 30

L, l

Answer 30

/el/

or /əl/

Question 31

M, m

Answer 31

/meh/

or /mə/ or /mmm/

Question 32

N, n

Answer 32

/neh/

or /nə/ or /nnn/

Question 33

O, o

Answer 33

/oh/

or more like /aw/, IPA [ɔ]

Question 34

P, p

Answer 34

/peh/

or /pə/

Question 35

R, r

Answer 35

/reh/

or /rə/

The exact “r” sound used to name this letter will vary by dialect and speaker, and is often the flap (the /d/–/r/ blend, as used in Spanish).

Question 36

S, s

Answer 36

/es/

or /əs/

Question 37

T, t

Answer 37

/teh/

or /tə/

Question 38

U, u

Answer 38

/ooh/

Question 39

Recite, in proper order, the phonetic names of …

the Gaelic ABCs – names
for “ay, bee, cee”, etc.
(and the grave accent).

Answer 39

ah, beh, keh, deh, eh, feh, geh,
heh, ee, el, meh, neh, oh, peh,
reh, es, teh, ooh
(agus stràc).

Try it again with the muted /ə/ versions of the consonants.

Modern Gaelic speakers use the basic sounds of the letters (ah, beh, keh, deh, eh, etc.) when spelling out. Or some use the same “ay, bee, see, dee, ee” letter names as in English.
The medieval Gaelic letter names (based on now-archaic plant names) have died out.

Question 40

When to use …

/ə/
(the “schwa” vowel, and the “helping vowel”)

Sometimes a changed letter sound, sometimes an unwritten “helping vowel”

Answer 40

Any a or e (not à or è) may turn into the short “schwa” vowel when unstressed.

Most common at word-end: fada (“far”) = /fætə/. Or as “helping vowel”.

But also heard in middle, unstressed syllables of long words.
Sound: This is the “muted-uh” sound in the 1st and 3rd syllables of English “banana”, /bə-næ-nə/.
The “Gaelic helping vowel”: An unwritten /ə/ is frequently inserted as a spoken extra syllable before and between various consonants. There are some patterns, but in many cases it is arbitary and just has to be memorized. Also occurs in Scottish English, e.g. “worm” as /wurr-əm/.

Question 41

Name the …

English letters not used in Gaelic

Answer 41

J, K, Q, V, W, X, Y, Z

Most of these sounds occur (except “z”), but written with other letters.

May appear in a Gaelic passage in a proper name or foreign loanword (“Kaplan”, “x-ray”).
Also in some very modern “Gael-lish” pidgin/slang neologisms like tweeteadh (m., gen. tweetidh), variant tweetigeadh (m., gen. tweetigidh), both meaning “a tweet on Twitter/X” and using an English “ee”, as well as “w”.
A proper name with a foreign letter is still subject to other Gaelic rules like lenition. E.g. Sanjay in vocative case is: a Shanjay.

Question 42

What group is this?

a, o, u,
à, ò, ù

Answer 42

The broad vowels

These do not induce any changes on juxtaposed consonants.

Question 43

Name the …

broad vowels

Answer 43

a, o, u,
à, ò, ù

These do not induce any changes on juxtaposed consonants.

Question 44

What group is this?

e, i,
è, ì

Answer 44

The slender vowels

These induce changes on juxtaposed consonants, “softening” them.
Some of these changes are subtle, and take a long time to master, others are more obvious and you’ll pick them up quickly.

Question 45

Name the …

slender vowels

Answer 45

e, i,
è, ì

These induce changes on juxtaposed consonants, “softening” them.
Some of these changes are subtle, and take a long time to master, others are more obvious and you’ll pick them up quickly.

Question 46

A principle to understand:

“Slender to slender, broad to broad.”

This rule definitely helps with learning correct spelling.

Answer 46

Any consonant (or group thereof) will be immediately surrounded only by vowels of the same type.

Examples: salann (a is broad); uisge (i & e are slender).

So, genitive salainn is right, while attempts like “saliann” or “sailainn” would be obvious typos.
There are a handful of rare exceptions; these are usually contractions from originally longer words that followed the rule, or phonetically represented direct loanwords or proper names from other languages.

Question 47

Learn about the …

default syllable stress

Answer 47

Stress is on the 1st syllable by default.

If in doubt, go with this.

Any secondary stress will be on the 3rd syllable (skipping over the 2nd).
1st-syllable stress may not apply when an accent-marked vowel is in a 2nd or later syllable: Alba (“Scotland) is pronounced /ALL-ə-pə/ (with the “helping vowel, /b/→/p/ shift, and schwa-ing of final vowel), while Albàinis (“Albanian”), /All-BAH-nish/, has 2nd-syllable stress due to the à (and has none of those other effects).
There are various irregular exceptions that just have to be memorized.

Question 48

What are the …

dominant word order
in Gaelic;
adjective & adverb order

Answer 48

verb–subject–object (VSO), usually;
noun–adjective;
verb–adverb

English mostly SVO (except questions); and Adj–N; but V–Adv or Adv–V.

Gaelic usually has verb 1st then subject, with object (if any) last.
Yoda-style OVS order does occur, especially with certain prepositional verbs like aig (“to have”): Tha cù aig Anna = “Anna has a dog”, more like “A dog has Anna”, but lit. “Is dog has Anna”.
Adjectives usually follow their nouns, and adverbs their verbs. Some advs. come first, like fhathast /hast/ “still, continuing to”.
Verbs expressing current/temporary (not habitual/permanent) often take an “is …[whatever]ing” structure: Tha mi faicinn cù mòr = “I see a big dog”, lit. “Am I seeing [a] dog big”. Get used to this!

Question 49

Learn about …

punctuation in Gaelic

Answer 49

Mostly the same as in English.

Including exclamation point, question mark, hyphen, comma usage, etc.

Gaelic does make some special uses of hyphenation and apostrophes, to learn over time. Examples:
- Either character to join some grammatical particles to words.
- Hyphen to prefix an adjectival noun (causes lention): madainn-chofaidh as alternative to cofaidh maidne (both = “morning coffee”).

Gaelic quotation (outside Gaelic Canada) is usually in British style: ‘seo’, not “this,” (single not double, and comma or period/stop outside if not part of original quoted material).

Question 50

Learn about …

capitalisation in Gaelic
(or capitalization if you prefer)

Answer 50

Mostly the same as in English.

When a particle is fused to a capitalised base word (with or without an intervening ‘ or -), the capital remains on the base word: Alba → dh’Alba, t-Alba, etc.
In older material, such punctuation may be absent: dhAlba, tAlba.

Question 51

What are some …

English sounds not used in Gaelic

Answer 51

/z/ in “zebra”, “has”
/zh/ [ʒ] in “beige”, “vision”,
weak /o͝o/ [ʊ] in “book”, “foot”

These may occur in loanwords or foreign names, but not native Gaelic.

Be especially mindful about mispronouncing “false friends” like Gaelic is /iss/ as if English “is” /iz/.
/zh/ kinda-sorta appears in combined /dzh/ [dʒ], “j”-sound, form, but technically the version in Gaelic is something like [dʝ].
Weak /o͝o/ [ʊ] is actually used in some dialects, but uncommonly.

Question 52

A note about …

initials/acronyms and lenition

Answer 52

In writing, and using Gaelic letter pronunciations, an acronym / initial may take lenition like any other word.

BBC /beh-beh-keh/ → BhBC /veh-beh-keh/

This seems not to be universally followed.
It is also entirely normal to just use /bee-bee-see/ English letter pronunciations.
A related curiosity is that the English abbreviation “TV” is sometimes adopted but changed as TBh in Gaelic (/teh-veh/ or /tee-vee/).

Question 53

… ⁊ … (not 7)

Answer 53

… & …

The “Tironian et/ampersand”; looks like a subscripted “7” (compare “⁊”).

Mostly found in old and academic material. Modern publications are apt to use “&”.
Said as “agus” just like “&” is said as “and” when reading English aloud.
Gaelic name of character is agusan.

Question 54

… & …

Answer 54

… ⁊ … (not 7)

The “Tironian et/ampersand”; looks like a subscripted “7” (compare “⁊”).

Mostly found in old and academic material. Modern publications are apt to use “&”.
Said aloud as “agus” just like “&” is said as “and” when reading English aloud.
Gaelic name of character is agusan.

Question 55

aspiration: the unwritten “helping consonant”

Answer 55

/H/, but sometimes other sounds: /sh/ or soft /kh/

Not a written letter, but short soft sound added before a consonant.

This can generally be approximated with a noticeable /H/ sound, but in front of some consonants it may sound different, and it probably varies by dialect. E.g. ard is generally /arHt/, but for some speakers is closer to /arsht/, IPA: [arʃt]. In cearc (“chicken”) it may take on the softer /kh/ [x] sound: /kyerkhk/ [kʲɛrxk] or /kairkhk/ [kɛrxk] - note the /k/ is still there.