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 majority of speakers. Gaelic phonology is characterised by:
a phoneme inventory particularly rich in sonorant coronal phonemes (commonly nine in total) a contrasting set of palatalised and non-palatalised consonants strong initial word-stress and vowel reduction in unstressed syllables The presence of preaspiration of stops in certain contexts falling intonation in most types of sentences, including questions lenition and extreme sandhi phenomena Due to the geographic concentration of Gaelic speakers along the western seaboard with its numerous islands, Gaelic dialectologists tend to ascribe each island its own dialect. Harris, Uist and Barra are often grouped together as Southern Hebridean,, and likewise Islay, Jura, Colonsay, Gigha, Kintyre and Arran as South Argyll. 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.
History of the discipline Descriptions of the language have largely focused on the phonology. Welsh naturalist Edward Lhuyd published the earliest major work on Scottish Gaelic after collecting data in the Scottish Highlands between 1699 and 1700, in particular data on Argyll Gaelic and the now obsolete dialects of north-east Inverness-shire. Following a significant gap, the middle to the end of the twentieth century saw a great flurry of dialect studies in particular by Scandinavian scholars, again focussing largely on phonology:
1937 Carl Borgstrøm The Dialect of Barra published by Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 1938 Nils Holmer Studies on Argyllshire Gaelic published by the University of Uppsala 1940 Carl Borgstrøm The Dialects of the Outer Hebrides published by Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 1941 Carl Borgstrøm The Dialects of Skye and Ross-shire published by the Norwegian University Press 1956 Magne Oftedal The Gaelic of Leurbost, Isle of Lewis published by Norsk Tidsskrift for Sprogvidenskap 1957 Nils Holmer The Gaelic of Arran published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1962 Nils Holmer The Gaelic of Kintyre published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1966 Gordon MacGillFhinnein Gàidhlig Uibhist a Deas ("South Uist Gaelic") published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1973 Elmar Ternes The Phonemic Analysis of Scottish Gaelic (focussing on Applecross Gaelic) published by the Helmut Buske Verlag 1978 Nancy Dorian East Sutherland Gaelic published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies 1989 Máirtín Ó Murchú East Perthshire Gaelic published by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies In the period between 1950 and 1963, fieldwork was carried out to document all then remaining Gaelic dialects, culminating in the publication of the five-volume Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland by the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies in 1997. The survey collected data from informants as far south as Arran, Cowal, Brig o' Turk, east to Blairgowrie, Braemar and Grantown-on-Spey, north-east to Dunbeath and Portskerra and all areas west of these areas, including St Kilda.
Vowels The following is a chart of the monophthong vowel phonemes that appear in most dialects of Scottish Gaelic:
Phonologically, /a/ behaves both as a front or back vowel depending on the geographical area and vowel length.
Diphthongs 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/.
Orthography
Stressed vowels are written as follows:
The English equivalents given are approximate, and refer most closely to the Scottish pronunciation of Standard English. The vowel [aː] in English father is back [ɑː] in Southern English. The ⟨a⟩ in English late in Scottish English is the pure vowel [eː] rather than the more general diphthong [eɪ]. The same is true for the ⟨o⟩ in English boat, [oː] in Scottish English, instead of the diphthong [əʊ].
Digraphs and trigraphs The language uses many vowel combinations, which can be categorised into two types, depending on the status of one or more of the written vowels in the combinations. Category 1: vowel plus glide vowels. In this category, vowels in digraphs/trigraphs that are next to a neighbouring consonant are for all intents and purposes part of the consonant, showing the broad or slender status of the consonant.
Category 2: 'diphthongs' and 'triphthongs'. In this category, vowels are written together to represent either a diphthong, or what was in Middle Irish a diphthong.
Category 2 digraphs can by followed by Category 1 glides, and thereby form trigraphs:
Consonants Like the closely related languages Modern Irish and Manx, Scottish Gaelic contains what are traditionally referred to as "broad" and "slender" consonants. Historically, Primitive Irish consonants preceding the front vowels /e/ and /i/ developed a [j]-like coarticulation similar to the palatalized consonants found in Russian while the consonants preceding the non-front vowels /a/, /o/ and /u/ developed a velar coarticulation. While Irish distinguishes "broad" (i.e. phonetically velar or velarised consonants) and "slender" (i.e. phonetically palatal or palatalised consonants), in Scottish Gaelic velarisation is only present for /n̪ˠ l̪ˠ rˠ/. This means that consonants marked "broad" by the orthography are, for the most part, simply unmarked, while "slender" consonants are palatal or palatalised. 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". For instance, the Gaelic "slender s" is so palatalised that it has become postalveolar [ʃ]. The main exception to this contrast are the labials (/p pʰ m f v/), which have lost their palatalised forms. The only trace of their original palatalisation is a glide found before a back vowel, e.g. beum /peːm/ ('stroke') vs beò /pjɔː/ ('alive'). Celtic linguists traditionally transcribe slender consonants with a prime (or occasionally an apostrophe) following the consonant (e.g. ⟨m′⟩) and leave broad consonants unmarked.
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