S C O T T I S H  G A E L I C  -  A N  O P E N  L E T T E R
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This document uses the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to represent the 
sounds of Gaelic. To read it, you need to download this IPA font from the 
Phonetics Department of University College, London (this takes only a few 
seconds). Save the font on your computer in C:\WINDOWS\FONTS, then double-click 
it to activate it.

Glasgow,
August 2005.


Dear Libbie and Gordon,

You may remember that when Elizabeth and I visited you about 10 years ago - give 
or take a decade - you gave me a copy of a Gaelic primer called "Can Seo", saying 
that if that was what the language was like, you were going to have to forgo 
mastering this part of your Scottish heritage. I'm writing now in the hope of 
pointing you back on the track, and also - while admitting that I'm really 
writing for a wider audience than just yourselves - to thank you for setting me 
wondering whether this language really had to be that difficult.

I think now that it doesn't, and below I set out why. What makes Gaelic 
difficult, in my view, is not the language itself, but that there is no 
accessible primer that isn't muddled and incomplete.

You'll be wanting to start with the sound-system. Here are the 39 phonemes of 
Gaelic in the International Phonetic Alphabet (which is not hard to find 
reference-books for, if you don't know it):

Consonants

pŽ  p  tŽ  t  t'Ž  t'  k'Ž  k'  kŽ  k

f   v  s      C    j   S        x   G

h   m

r'  r  r¼     n'   n   n¼       l'  l  l¼

Vowels

i   e  E   a  u    o   O     M  7   @

Vowels can be short or long (i, i:), and nasalised or not (a, a~), and can have 
an upstep (Éa).

Obviously this is no place to discuss the sounds in detail, but some remarks may 
be useful. The big difference in the plosives (top line in the display above) is 
between those which have great puffs of breath around them (marked with 
superscript h), and those which don't. There's a second difference between those 
which have a y-sound mixed up with them (marked with superscript j), and those 
which don't. (Some have simultaneous puff of breath and y-sound.) There are three 
varieties each of the consonants r, n and l: one called 'palatal', which has a 
y-sound mixed up with it (superscript j), one called 'velar', which has a hollow 
sound made by tensing the back of the tongue (superscript G), and one normal (no 
superscript). No primer mentions nasalised vowels, but they sound like French 
nasal vowels and the nasal quality creates a different meaning: xa "vi: it won't 
be, xa "vi~: it isn't me. The upstep - you pronounce the vowel with a kind of 
squeak - also creates a different meaning: "pal¼ak skull, "pal¼Éak belly.

Secondly, you'll be wanting to know how the spelling relates to the sounds. This 
is actually the second most difficult part of learning Gaelic. (The most 
difficult part, of course, is finding any primer that talks sense.) Claims that 
"Gaelic is more or less phonetically spelt" are tosh, and the only practicable 
way to proceed is to find a primer that gives you a phonetic transcription as it 
goes along. Unfortunately the only such primer is the seriously serious tome by 
Carl Borgstrøm published by Norwegian Universities Press in 1940 and available 
now only in university libraries. Seminal for learning Gaelic, but not exactly 
accessible. Until a phonetic primer appears (watch this space!), you'll just have 
to flounder.

Back to the sound-system. Perhaps its most startling feature is lenition, a 
process by which verbs and nouns change their first consonant under certain 
grammatical conditions. The basic process is simple: each lenitable consonant 
(some don't lenite) has its lenited counterpart. So p lenites to v, tŽ lenites to 
h, and so on. The correspondences are not particularly systematic, but they're 
quickly learned. (But there are some fiddly details: certain consonants lenite 
when there is lenition with verbs but not when there is lenition with nouns, or 
have different lenition-forms with verbs and nouns.) A second process by which 
nouns change their first consonant is usually called 'nasalisation', but I use 
the term 'ploption' to distinguish it from nasal vowels. Under ploption, initial 
plosives are replaced by a sort of plopping sound. It doesn't happen in all 
dialects, but when it does, it makes you wonder where half the consonants have 
gone, so you need to know about it for that reason.  A third process, which 
applies to the final consonant of a word, is palatalisation - the consonant 
changes to its palatal equivalent (the one with superscript j in my 
transcription).

All primers have difficulties with ploption and nasal vowels, and when I say 
difficulties I mean they simply don't mention them. The reason for this is that 
ploption and nasal vowels aren't represented in the spelling, so a primer that 
treats the language in terms of its orthography (and that means all of them) 
can't discuss them. Lenition, on the other hand, is mostly represented in the 
spelling, but lenition of l, n, and r is not, so primers have to say that those 
consonants don't lenite. (They do. To say that they don't lenite is about as 
helpful as saying, for example, that the past of English to read is the same as 
the present: we read a book.) Palatalisation is shown in the spelling (it's 
traditionally called 'slenderisation'), so primers deal adequately with that.

Turning now to grammar, the news is much better. First, the verbs. One of the 
disconcerting things about learning Gaelic, if you're used to the major European 
languages, is that verbs don't have an identifying ending as they do in German, 
for example, where the infinitives all end in -en, or French, where the 
infinitives end in -er, -ir or -re. In Gaelic, verbs are just globs like any 
other words. (They share this characteristic with English, of course.) But the 
good news is that they have only two principal parts. This is not clear from the 
primers, where the terms 'verb', 'root', 'infinitive' and 'verbal noun' are used 
with ill-defined and shifting meanings, but the two forms you need are the 
'root', which is the same as the imperative sing. and is the form quoted in 
dictionaries, and the 'verbal noun', from which the infinitive can be formed 
(some primers say they're the same). Unfortunately you can't predict the verbal 
noun from the root, although you can make a guess (because there are some common 
patterns) - but you still have only two parts to learn. These two parts will 
enable you to make any tense of any verb, with the exception of the 10 
irregulars. And even with these 10 irregulars there are only 4 forms each - 40 
words - to learn.

The verbal noun gives you enormous expressive power. Take a sentence such as:
  ha: mi @k "O:l      
Word for word, this is Am I at drinking, meaning I'm drinking, and obviously you 
can substitute any verbal noun for the last word to create a different meaning 
(you need to drop the k of @k if the following verbal noun begins with a 
consonant, and change k to k' if the verbal noun begins with i, e or E):
  ha: mi @k' "iC@     I'm eating      
  ha: mi @ "l'e:v@G   I'm reading     
  ha: mi @ "fa:kal    I'm leaving     
So if you know 10 verbal nouns you can say 10 things; but then if you substitute 
one of the seven personal pronouns mi I, u you (sing.), a he, i she, Sin' we, Su 
you (plur.), at they you can say 70 things: 
  ha: u @k' "iC@      you're eating   
  ha: at @k "O:l      they're drinking
  ha: i @ "l'e:v@G    she's reading   
  ha: Sin' @ "fa:kal  we're leaving   

But there's more than this. By adding two words to your vocabulary - the future 
and past of to be - you can change the time-reference:
  pi: Su @k' "iC@         you'll be eating                
  va: a @ "l'e:v@G        he was reading                  
And by changing the preposition @k you can include more time-relationships. There 
is a surprising range of possibilities here. For example:
  ha: mi Er' "iC@         I'm after eating, I've eaten    
  ha: Su r'i "iC@         you're in the middle of eating  
  va: at ku "iC@          they were on the point of eating
  pi: i "t'irax Er' "iC@  she'll be right after eating    

One more set of possibilities remains. The three forms of the verb to be given 
above, ha:, pi: and va:, are used only in positive statements; to make questions 
and negatives you need an interrogative form and a negative form for each tense, 
i.e. six more words. So with a vocabulary of, say, 31 words (9 forms of to be, 7 
pronouns, 5 prepositions and 10 verbal nouns), you can say (9 x 7 x 5 x 10 =) 
3150 things. No worries!

The above is known as the periphrastic set of verb constructions. There is also a 
non-periphrastic set, in which each tense is formed by inflectional changes to 
the 'root'. Roughly speaking, the periphrastic forms convey the same meanings as 
the English -ing forms, while the non-periphrastic set convey the meanings of the 
English plain old past and future.

There is good news on the non-periphrastic front as well. There are only four 
tenses (future, past, conditional and imperative) and three possible forms of 
each (independent, used in non-subordinate positions, relative, used after 
relative conjunctions, and dependent, used in other subordinate contexts). But 
not all forms are found in all tenses - only 7 of the possible 12 forms exist. 
Moreover these verb-forms don't change to express person - you just shove the 
subject pronoun after the verb:

Root tŽok lift:

  -            Independent  Dependent  Relative
  Future       tŽoki        tŽok       hok@s   
  Past         hok          
  Conditional  hok@G        tŽok@G     
  Imperative   tŽok         

The seven forms are made from the 'root' by using just two resources: lenition (h 
is the lenited form of tŽ) and adding an ending (i, @s or @G). Examples:
  Fut. Ind.   "tŽoki tŽu a        you'll lift it           
  Fut. Dep.   nax "tŽok i a       won't she lift it?       
  Fut. Rel.   @ "fEr @ "hok@s a   the chap who will lift it
  Past        "hok mi "SO         I lifted that            
  Cond. Ind.  "hok@G tŽu a        you'd lift it            
  Cond. Dep.  nax "tŽok@G Sin' a  wouldn't we lift it?     
  Imper.      "tŽok a             lift it!                 

A few details need to be added to complete the account given above. (a) Lenition 
follows a different pattern with verbs from that used with nouns. (b) In a 
lenition-like process, verbs beginning with vowels change their front end. (c) 
Dependent forms show ploption instead of lenition, or don't change, according to 
which subordinating particle introduces them. (d) One or two persons of the 
conditional and imperative - but not all 7 persons - use personal endings. (e) 
The conditional and future use the pronoun tŽu instead of u. (f) There is a 
passive participle and an impersonal verb-form, not mentioned above. But the 
major part of the system is as described, and not hugely complicated.

There are two further points worth mentioning about verbs, however. The first is 
that different primers tell different stories about how you add grammatical 
objects to periphrastic verbs (e.g. dinner in she's eating her dinner). They may 
go into the genitive or not, and they may come before or after the verb, and 
these things may happen in all or only certain circumstances. Perhaps this is a 
matter of dispute among Gaelic commentators, like the disagreement in English 
over I don't like you going versus I don't like your going.

The second point is that there are perhaps a dozen cases where English uses a 
verb, but Gaelic uses a noun. Examples are English I can, Gaelic it is ability to 
me, English I know, Gaelic there is knowledge at me. These constructions are 
perfectly clear (they're nouns followed by a preposition and a person), but 
they're usually described as 'idioms' as though they were impenetrable, and 
called verbs. This is confusing - describing ability in it is ability to me as 
'an auxiliary verb' or 'a verb followed by a preposition' turns any analysis into 
rubble. Can may be a verb in English, but ability isn't a verb in Gaelic.

On to pronouns! The subject and object pronouns in themselves are a piece of 
cake: there are only seven of them (listed above), and they're invariable. You 
can tell which is which because the order of elements in a sentence is always 
verb - subject - object:
  "hok mi i  I lifted her 
  "hok i mi  she lifted me
But that's where the good news about pronouns ends. There are serious problems in 
creating phrases where a pronoun follows a preposition (with them, against us, 
for me), and in using pronouns as grammatical objects of periphrastic verbs (e.g. 
it in they're after cutting it = they've cut it). And these constructions are 
frequently needed in speech.

The problem with phrases like with them, to me is that they no longer consist, in 
Gaelic, of a separate preposition and a pronoun. Instead, the two have coalesced 
over time to produce single words, each a combination of preposition and pronoun, 
in which the two elements can't now be separately identified. So *Er' Su on you, 
for example, is "7r'É7v, *le Sin' with us is l7in', and *t@ mi to me is GO~. 
Given that there are seven personal pronouns, and assuming that a set of 10 
prepositions is a reasonable starting kit, you'll have 70 of these little 
squashed toads to learn. What's worse is that you have no way of finding out how 
they're pronounced, unless you consult Borgstrøm: primers list them only in 
orthography, and how the orthography converts to pronunciation is, as ever, 
impenetrable. (For example, the orthographies for "7r'É7v, l7in' and GO~ are 
<oirbh>, <leinn> and <dhomh>.) And you need these words not only for general 
conversational use, but more particularly for use with the nouns that Gaelic uses 
where English uses verbs, described above.

As for the pronoun-objects of periphrastic verbs, there's another set of squashed 
horrors used here - but there are only seven of these, so squashed frogs, 
perhaps, rather than squashed toads. The problem here is that the 'content verb' 
- "iC@ in ha: mi @k' "iC@ - is really a noun (I am at eating), so how do you 
attach a grammatical object to it, to say, for example, I'm eating them? The 
answer, in Gaelic, is that you turn the object into a possessive pronoun, and say 
I am at their eating, but you combine at their into a single word. There are 
seven such words, one for each personal pronoun. At their is Gan: ha: mi Gan 
"iC@. This is OK for the periphrastic verbs with @k, but no primer tells you how 
to add pronoun objects to periphrastic verbs with the other prepositions Er', 
r'i, ku etc.

After verbs and pronouns, the only other topic of importance is nouns, which it 
has to be admitted are not hugely easy to learn. There are three cases (absolute, 
vocative and genitive, but also a vestigial dative), two numbers (singular and 
plural, though with a vestigial dual) and two genders (masc. and fem.) The 
'absolute' case is used for both subject and object (some call it the 
nominative); the vocative is used when addressing people, and the genitive is 
used for possession and when one word qualifies another, as in school-house. The 
dative is found only in a handful of fem. nouns.
 
The rather bad news is that nouns are affected by two systems operating 
simultaneously - inflections and sound-changes - and you need a clear head to 
keep them apart. The primers won't help you in this - they get the two systems 
muddled up, and their account turns into sludge. And of course you can't get any 
sort of grip on what's happening if you work only in terms of spelling, and 
that's what the primers do.

First, the inflections. Gaelic deploys only four resources to inflect nouns: 
leniting the first consonant, changing the last vowel, palatalising the final 
consonant and adding a suffix. The problem is that even a simple classification 
yields 5 types of noun, each with a different mix of the four resources, not to 
mention a good sprinkling of irregularities. Some examples:

  -     I       II       III     IV       V     
  -     cat     shoe     school  work     man   
  Abs.  kŽaŽt   prO:k    skOl    "op@r'   "tMn'@
  Voc.  xeŽt'   vrO:k    skOl    "op@r'   "GMn'@
  Gen.  kŽeŽt'  prO:k'@  skOl@   "opr'@x  tMn'@ 

(One of the results of lenition of the vocative, by the way, is that the vocative 
of "Se:m@s James is he:miS, and this was picked up as a different name, Hamish, 
by English-speaking intruders; and similarly with "va~:r'i, the vocative of 
"ma:r'i Mary, picked up as Mhairi, pronounced vah-ree.)

Plurals are formed in various ways, but a common method - and the default for 
borrowed words - is to add iC@n: sto:v stove, "sto:viC@n stoves. Again, you more 
or less have to learn the plural of each noun alongside its singular (but the 
plural inflections are less complicated).

Alongside this inflectional system there is a sound-change system, consisting of 
lenitions and ploptions, which creates further modifications. For example, the 
definite article causes ploption in the masc. abs. sing.: @N haŽt the cat, and 
lenition after prepositions in the fem. sing.: Er' @ "vrO:k on the shoe, but 
creates no change in the fem. gen. sing.: n@ "prO:k'@ of the shoe. Moreover some 
prepositions always lenite a following noun, whereas others do not: fO "Se:m@s 
from James shows no lenition, whereas lE "he:m@S with James shows lenition of S 
to h (and differs from the vocative in that the last consonant isn't palatalised 
or the last vowel changed). The possessive pronouns are a mixed bunch, some 
always causing lenition and others never: @ "va~:h@r' his mother (lenition), @ 
"ma:h@r' her mother (no lenition). At the end of the day, you just have to learn 
which prepositions, articles, etc. cause lenition, and under which circumstances, 
and which do not.

Some primers try to unify the inflectional system and the sound-change system by 
introducing such concepts as the 'definite noun' (the noun with the definite 
article). One can then say, for example, that the definite noun lenites after 
prepositions. Such accounts quickly fall apart, however - they don't explain the 
difference between "Se:m@s and "he:m@s (both 'indefinite') above, to take just 
one example. Treating the inflectional system and the sound-change system as 
different means that the description is more fragmentary, but in the end makes 
more sense. It also acknowledges that some lenitions are inherent in the 
grammatical forms of some words (e.g. vocative), whereas others are produced by 
various preceding words.

I think that's about all I have to say in this overview. As you'll guess, I've 
relied heavily on Borgstrøm's 1940 publication in drawing it up, and I've 
confined it to the variety described by him as used in Lewis. (I've also thrown 
"Can Seo" in the bin.) It seems to me that the Gaelic verb system is infinitely 
less complicated than that of French or Spanish, and that its noun system is no 
more complicated than that of German, which is horribly bitty. But of course 
Gaelic deploys very different and interesting resources to embody its grammatical 
structures, and opens up a different way of thinking about it all. I'm sure 
you'll enjoy it!

Yours ever,

Derek