Scottish Gaelic phonology and orthography

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.

The number of diphthongs in Scottish Gaelic depends to some extent on the dialect in question but most commonly, 9 or 10 are described: /ei, ɤi, ai, ui, iə, uə, ɛu, ɔu, au, ia/.

In the modern languages, there is sometimes a stronger contrast from Old Gaelic in the assumed meaning of "broad" and "slender"; the phonetic distinction can be more complex than mere "velarisation"/"palatalisation".

The only trace of their original palatalisation is a glide found before a back vowel, e.g. beum /peːm/ ('stroke') vs beò /pjɔː/ ('alive').

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.

[citation needed] 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.

Certain consonants (in particular the fricatives [h x ç ɣ ʝ v] and the lenis coronals [l n ɾ ɾʲ]) are rare in initial position except as a result of lenition.

The more common ones are: Velarised /l̪ˠ/ has 6 main realisations as shown on the map:[8] The Survey of Scottish Gaelic Dialects occasionally reports labialised forms such as [l̪ˠw] or [l̪ˠv] outside the area they predominantly appear in, for example in Harris and Wester Ross.

[15] 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.

In southern Hebridean dialects, the nasal optionally drops out entirely before a consonant, including plosives.

Words where stress falls on another syllable are generally indicated by hyphens: these include certain adverbs such as an-diugh ('today') [əɲˈdʲu] and an-còmhnaidh ('always') [əŋˈgɔ̃ːnɪ].

A distinctive characteristic of Gaelic pronunciation (also present in Scots and Scottish English dialects (cf.

For example: Of all the Celtic languages, lexical tones only exist in the dialects of Lewis[19] and Sutherland[20] in the extreme north of the Gaelic-speaking area.