Comparison of Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic

File:Gaelic British Isles.jpg

Map of the Gaelic-speaking world. The red area shows the maximum extent of Old Irish; the orange area shows places with Ogham inscriptions; and the green area are modern Gaelic-speaking areas.

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 Template:Vr, thus one hears in County Waterford and County Tipperary, and in northern Scotland. West Munster also lenites the Template:Vr, 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?".

Template:Langx (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 Template:Vr 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 Template:Vr when followed by a broad consonant from the regular dialect development Template:Vr to Template:Vr in the same environment, thus "bird" in comparison to "died; passed on). Template:Vr is now used instead of Template:Vr in Standard Irish. Both Template:Vr and Template:Vr existed in Classical Irish, to a large extent showing nominal case differences (with Template:Vr varying with Template:Vr in the dative of Template:Vr-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 Template:Vr to represent how the combination is pronounced in northern dialects, writing Template:Vr instead of Template:Vr, the southern form. Manx spelling, based mainly on English, shows that Template:Vr is also the underlying form in Manx, the word being spelled Template:Vr.

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 Template:Vr.

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 (Template:Langx, "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. Template:Vr, Template:Vr. Irish uses Template:Vr where Scottish Gaelic uses Template:Vr, although Template:Vr itself was once common in written Irish, as was Template:Vr in Scottish Gaelic – both being used in Classical Gaelic. In the combinations Template:Vr and Template:Vr, Irish now uses Template:Vr and Template:Vr, while Scottish Gaelic uses Template:Vr and both Template:Vr and Template:Vr, despite there being no phonetic difference between the two languages.

Most obvious differences in spelling result from the deletion of silent lenited digraphs (mainly Template:Vr, Template:Vr, and Template:Vr) 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

English	Irish	Scottish Gaelic	Manx	Notes
authority				Pre 1950s in Irish
black
bridge
child
church				In Irish, is a Roman Catholic house of worship; a Protestant house of worship is called a (temple). is also used as it can mean chapel as well.
day
Gael				Pre 1950s in Irish
God
government				Pre-1950s in Irish
hotel				Pre 1950s in Irish
house	; M:			In biblical Gaelic
inside
Ireland		,
island
king				Pre-1950s genitive and dative in Irish
news	; U:
night				Pre 1950s in Irish
office
open				Also in Ulster Irish
parliament
prayer				Also in Irish.
radio				Also and in spoken Irish and Scottish Gaelic
report
river	, M:
school				Pre 1950s in Irish
Scotland
star				Pre 1950s in Irish
town
without
water
whisk(e)y
white
year				Pre-1950s in Irish. The form ( today) is used as a special plural form following numerals; the regular plural is ). Some eastern Scottish Gaelic dialects use the form .

Differences in vocabulary

English	Irish	Scottish Gaelic	Notes
America
Bible
cold (sickness)			Meaning illness
England
Germany
in			In Classical Irish the forms were "i", "a", "in", "an" – "i/in" when the following sound was slender, and "a/an" when the following sound was broad. In both Irish and Scottish, in the spoken language, the four forms of "i", "a", "in", "an" still exist.
London
minister			In Irish, for a government minister
road
talking			(formerly ) in Irish means "fighting", "quarrelling." in Scottish Gaelic is used as a noun only, meaning "speech," except in Arran where it is also a verb

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

Irish	English	Scottish Gaelic	English	Notes
	Wales	A' Bhreatainn Bheag	Brittany	(Britain) is the same in both. The Scottish Gaelic equivalent for Wales is , a Gaelicisation of an Anglicisation of the Welsh . The Irish for Brittany is from Latin "Britannia".
	harbour		ocean	A number of words are used in both languages for "ocean" and "sea", such as aigéan/aigeun, an fharraige. or (also in the compound "calafort" < "cala-phort") are commonly used in Irish for "harbour".
	He walked		He died	means "walk" or "stroll" in Scottish Gaelic, but is also a euphemism for death

Comparison of text

Article 1 of the UDHR in the languages:

Language	Text
English	All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Irish
Manx
Scottish Gaelic

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