The Gaelic of Arran and Galloway

The Gaelic of Arran and Galloway Cormac Ó Shuileabháin Meitheamh 2019 .Scottish Gaelic as a single language .Languages within languages .Basics of the Arran dialect and the dialect spelling .Gaelic in Galloway Scottish Gaelic as a single language Scottish Gaelic is described as a single language, and today it has one written standard, with a quickly evolving spoken standard based on the Hebridean dialects, but often more formal to the written language. The modern standard for Scottish Gaelic has evolved from a ‘perfected’ pronunciation of one dialect area. Scottish Gaelic dialects, seen as a variable entity, can be classified as a levelled language, the original dialects have been largely replaced by a levelled standard, making less the distance between one spoken variety and the written language. The original Gaelic dialects functioned and evolved independently of the written form used in Scotland, so there was no standard Gaelic, and the differences between the dialects can be quite large. Scottish Gaelic today has become one language, but the original Gaelic language was not one language, but a continuum of related, but different forms of speech used across the Atlantic coastline, particularly in Scotland and in Ireland. It was never a language as a single form, but a common culture and language basis shared among many different peoples, and the modern inventions of a standard Irish and Scottish Gaelic are partly artificial. Both Irish and Scottish Gaelic spelling is adapted from Classical Irish spelling, a formal register of Gaelic language that looked little like any of the spoken dialects. These dialects have never really been written at all outside of the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), instead the Irish spelling was updated to level the differences between dialects and the written language, but bringing the dialects further away from their origins and closer to each other. Irish spelling distinguishes things like the spellings faoi, fé, fá but doesn’t distinguish most differences or any of the finer differences within each dialect group. Scottish Gaelic dialects come from a multicultural background, similarly to Irish dialects, there was no single ‘Gaelic’ Scotland, Gaelic always being something that was transferred and came to be spoken by peoples belonging to different tribes, these differences later appeared as clan differences. If we are able to understand how the Gaelic language was picked up and used differently by different peoples, then we may better understand where Gaelic comes from and identify possible signatures in how the previous Pictish languages might have influenced Gaelic. But by studying Scottish Gaelic as a single entity, based on its modern standard manifestation, the information in the original dialects becomes obscured and has been sadly, often unmentioned in the academic or teaching communities. This information is immensely important and I hope in the future that this information becomes more available to academics researching the origins of Celtic languages, as in the future, more thorough representations of the dialects may help to give a better reconstruction of the ancient forms. Languages within languages? Languages such as French, English, Danish, Irish and Scottish Gaelic, are not written in a way that phonemically represents how they are actually spoken. This is partly because the Latin alphabet was not designed to represent the sounds of these languages. But partly because a higher register of language was chosen as the written language, rather than the language spoken. This has obscured the nature of these languages and their dialects, and as we come to account more for dialects, the way that we reconstruct the proto-forms of these languages is likely to change. The big differences in these languages can be an indicator of where an older dialect or variety of that language has gradually changed and adopted more standard forms. In Gaelic this might be the case where some dialects lack the lenition of consonants in certain words. An article that was recently posted in a linguistics group about the Cockney Dialect, gives a look at how Cockney English might appear if it were written as it actually sounds. This article can be found at: https://www.scribd.com/document/421892441/AGuide-to-the-Cockney-Language-or-dialect-and-its-ancient-origins The borders in language come alongside cultural differences, but the status of that speech and its status as a language seems often determined by where there are set borders. The Scots language is a separate language from English, but Scots can also be called the same language as the Northumbrian dialects of Northern English. But these aren’t classed as a language. Cockney English can sometimes be unintelligible to some people, but it has no status as a unique language variety. The trends in what a language is seem to coincide with whichever cultural entity people feel that they belong to. Within England, some of the dialects could be called languages, but there is an identification with England and with English which tends to ‘disregard’ dialects as having less status, perhaps because they are floating in a larger entity. Over time, the identification with this larger culture or language seems to actually influence language, because it becomes trendier and more ‘normal’ to speak in a certain manner. We can see that with Gaelic, originally Gaelic may have been a single group or set of identities which manifested with the Primitive Irish language, the Old Irish language and then Middle Irish. Over time Gaelic was spread to different areas and cultures across the Atlantic world, where it was adapted. At this time there may have been an identification with ‘Gaelic’ across different parts of Britain and Ireland, but with individual identities, perhaps preGaelic, which continued to be separate and speak the language differently. Later on, it became more common to identify with ‘Scotland’, so the speech became ‘Scottish Gaelic’, and gradually these older dialectal forms have come out of use to embrace a language which is ‘classically and culturally Gaelic-Scottish’, but which has largely left the older, preGaelic identity groups and dialects in the past. How we view our own language, and how we classify it, seems to change it, spookily similar to the quantum observation affect. Language changes depending on which contexts we measure it in, how we measure it, and how we identify to it. Basics of the Arran dialect Arran is an island in the Firth of Clyde, it is the most south-westerly location in which Gaelic survived long enough to be studied and recorded. Gaelic dialects in Scotland can be split into a number of rough groupings based upon how certain sounds are treated. Within these groupings are other dialects, some of which have little mutual intelligibility with speakers of main dialect areas. The Arran dialect can be said to belong to the southern group of Argyle dialects, which also includes the dialects of Kintyre, Islay and slightly north-east towards Ballachulish. Argyle has complex Gaelic dialects, with at least two or three major areas identifiable. This was the first part of Scotland where Gaelic developed, so it’s unsurprising that these islands and peninsulas have several dialects in a relatively small area of Scotland. The Southern Argyle dialects are closer to Irish in some ways, just as the dialects of Antrim in Ireland are closer to Scottish Gaelic than other Irish dialects are. There are some common traits found in the Ulster dialects of Irish and in Argyle dialects of Gaelic in Scotland. But Ulster Irish is not necessarily a halfway link between Irish and Scottish, it is unique in its own ways, with peaking clusters of divergent dialects such as those in Gweedore and SW Donegal. This dialect grouping with Ulster Irish can also include the Manx language, and the extinct Galloway Gaelic language to the south of Arran in Galloway. In many respects the Arran Gaelic is similar to the dialects of Kintyre and the nearby islands. But it is also quite unique in many respects. A common change in Argyle Gaelic is from /a/ and /a:/ to /ɛ/ and /ɛ:/. This happens differently in different parts of Argyle, on Arran the change from orthographic a and à to /ɛ/ and /ɛ:/ is more common than elsewhere. For example, standard stad – sꝺėꝺ - stop, standard sgàthan - sgèhaɴ - mirror. Another notable feature of Arran is the semivowel /w/, which develops as a glide after certain broad consonants. For example: bàta - bwèꞇẹ – boat, a-mach – ẹ-mwėch – out. snàthad - ꞅɴèhėꝺ - needle garadh - gėrẹg – warming an àtha – ẹ ɴèẹ – the kiln dachaidh - ꝺėhi – home fàradh – fwèrẹg – ladder facal - fwėcẹꝉ - word màthair - mwèhẹr – mother cat – cėt - cat bha - vwè – was/were casan - cėsẹɴ - feet dà - ꝺè – two an Lag - ẹɴ ꝺʟėg – ‘Lag’ fantuinn – fwėhin̍ - staying fada - fwėꝺẹ - far or long Pronunciation guide. Arran Gaelic is written here using the Gaelic dialect alphabet, created by Ruairí Ó Conghaile. This was originally adapted to the Ring dialect of Irish in Waterford by Ruairí, I have further adapted it for the speech of Arran. ꝺ, ʟ, ɴ, ꞇ and ꞅ are the dental equivalents of these consonants, e.g. ꝺè – two, ꞇrí – three. ʟ becomes ꝺʟ after ɴ, but may do in other contexts as a normal pronunciation, but this is only written after ɴ. It approaches an interdental stop similar to /ð/. The Gaelic slender n may become ɴ on Arran, as in fhèin - féɴ. Lh is a voiceless ꝉ similar to the Welsh ll or /ɬ/, coming from where a fricative has disappeared, this is quite unique to Arran and to Rathlin Island, many speakers on Arran were unable to pronounce it according to Nils Homer. It occurred in a few words such as balach – balhach – boy. Could it be a remnant of the Cumbric or Pictish influence in phonology? Palatal consonants are written with a bar above them, sometimes with a bar below for l and v in Gaelic dialect spelling due to how well this appears on screen, it seems that this spelling system was difficult to use when Ruairí was creating it. Ruairí also records Connaught Irish sliabh as taking /w/ but this was perhaps not taken from a native Connemara speaker. https://www.academia.edu/38361627/The_Gaelic_dialect_alphabet The letters ch and gh represent the broad equivalents in Scottish Gaelic, ċ is used for slender ch. Tç is used for the Arran slender t, and dṡ is the Arran equivalent of a slender d, or j in the dialect alphabet, but on Arran this is a d sound followed by ṡ, equivalent to ‘sh’ in English, not quite the same as j. On Arran Gaelic phonology The Gaelic word tràigh – beach, comes from the same etymology giving traeth in Welsh, the Irish form is trá but tráigh is used in parts of Munster. This etymology may be linked to the English word ‘track’, the original Brythonic etymology may have been something like trect-, in Brythonic the c became /x/ and then disappeared, in Gaelic the -t disappeared. Sometimes this original sound is preserved differently, which again isn’t indicated in the spelling of Gaelic. Arran Gaelic has ꞇráċ and ꞇɇċ for tràigh and taigh, compare Munster Irish tráigh and tigh, but in Munster Irish, final -igh is /ɟ/. The sound ɇ is special on Arran, it represents a sound similar to /ø/, /ɜ/ or / œ/, using Nils Holmer’s comparison of words. It often varies with other sounds on Arran as on Arran itself were many local pronunciations and forms, e.g. faoileag - fɇ́lag or fwélag – seagull. This sound is often equivalent to ao(i), which may vary with /e:/, aodach - ɇ́ꝺach or éꝺach – clothes. The slender n is a very weak sound in Scottish Gaelic, in some dialects, especially the Northern ones it can become r, on Arran it can sometimes disappear, ainm - aȷm – name. Disappearance of slender n occurs commonly in Scottish Gaelic, but where it happens depends on the dialect. Modern Gaelic dialects have f as a weak consonant, which is unaspirated and inserted before vowels of many words which lacked an f in Old Irish. On Arran, inneach – ‘woof’ becomes fin̍ach. Sometimes on Arran words that originally began with a vowel can begin with t-, when the definite article is assimilated into the following word, this has then become the normal form. Or Arran, the Scottish Gaelic broad and slender ch sounds can often become a h or disappear. Occasionally the older Gaelic lenition of m to v does not take place on Arran, thus tamhailt ꞇamẹltç and ag amharc - ẹ gamẹrc. This lenition process does not take place equally throughout all Gaelic dialects, and the spelling is really a rough model to fit how lenition has ‘generally’ evolved. We can ponder whether Arran Gaelic did not mutate medial broad m until more recently. The Connaught and Ulster dialects of Irish sometimes show these prelenited forms, where sibh and roimh are pronounced with a slender b or m in some areas. Uamhaidh – cave, uagi (South Arran), uavi (North Arran), shows an unusual change from v to g. This could be in part influenced by a Pictish or Cumbric form, Welsh ogof – cave, an etymology which wouldn’t otherwise be indicated or visible, if Arran Gaelic was spelt using standard Gaelic spelling. Sometimes medial mh is f on Arran, famhair - fafẹr – giant. The Scottish Gaelic final broad -dh and gh become -g on Arran, sometimes this also occurs elsewhere dha – ga. dèanamh - dṡèɴẹg – doing, deanadh is an Argyle variant, fiodh – fig, sgalladh - sgaꝉꝉẹg. I myself mi fhèin mi féɴ thou thyself thu fhèin u fé he himself e fhèin a/ė fé She herself i fhèin i fé we ourselves sinn fhèin ṡin̍ fé(ɴ) you yourselves sibh fhèin ṡi(v) pé(ɴ) they themselves iad fhèin ėꝺ fé(ɴ) The above pronouns, demonstrate just how much the original, spoken varieties of Gaelic, differ from the modern ‘set’ pronunciation. In standard Scottish Gaelic, fhèin with a slender n and fh pronounced /h/ is common, the Arran forms are quite different. Ruairí has emailed me to tell me that he has abandoned the Dialect Alphabet project, but myself and a couple of others hope to adapt it and make use for it. He told me that “although incomplete and not completely useable yet, if it can be adapted from me then my original work can serve as a basis”. He has asked me if I would be interested in adapting the spelling to cover more Irish dialects, including some of the extinct ones, which I hope to start on in the near future. References .The Gaelic of Arran, Nils M Holmer – this is the source of the Arran phonetic transcriptions, which were used to write Arran Gaelic in the dialect alphabet. The information on Gallowegian Gaelic below was obtained through place-name analysis from old maps. Gaelic in Galloway We can suggest that the extinct Galloway Gaelic could have been close to Arran due to Arran being the closest recorded dialect to the area where Galloway Gaelic was spoken. In reality, Gaelic dialects are rarely clearly divided or fit into easily identifiable patterns. Whilst Arran Gaelic and Galloway Gaelic could have shared ‘radial’ features in common, similarly to Ulster Irish, that doesn’t prove that they were the same dialect or even that close. Galloway itself is a large area of land, with many isolated villages and settlements, some regions are coastal, and not far from Northern Ireland, others are inland. We find Gaelic surviving on the coast near Stranraer in later place-names, and we typically ‘Modern Gaelic’ place-names inland and to the east, such as Barjarg, Gaelic Barr Dearg. When Galloway Gaelic has been more recently written, it is sometimes written in a spelling based on Classical Irish. This indicates the relationship that all early Goidelic languages have to one another. This is also the same spelling that was once used in Scotland, or a variant of it, the exclusion of acute accents é and ó in Scottish Gaelic was very recent, and in the view of many, not a necessary move. It has made ‘Scottish Gaelic’ more distinct from ‘Irish Gaelic’, but only on a standard and visual level. The traditional languages and differences between them are much less defined. Galloway Gaelic, stood in some way between the Scottish and Irish dialects, therefore it may not make sense to ‘turn’ Galloway Gaelic into Standard Scottish Gaelic. That would be like turning Norwegian into Swedish because ‘they’re close enough that it doesn’t matter’. This would also be an act against indigenous Gallowegians, we know historically that Gallowegians did not identify with Hebridean Gaelic culture, or with Scotland until much later, Galloway was originally a Brythonic/Welsh speaking region that later became part of the Norse-Gael culture, similarly to the Isle of Man, and linked to the Norse ruled islands in Western Scotland, but not equivalent to the Gaelic identity of Hebridean people or Highlanders. Gaelic and Norse served as cultural webs between these islands and places, but that doesn’t mean we should simplify them into being the same people, particularly when we know that the Brythonic/Welsh culture was highly influential here. Whilst the medieval kingdom of Rheged has often assumed to be in Cumbria, the ‘heart of the Cumbric language’, Rheged may have in fact been in Galloway, where we have Dunragit, Dún Ragid? A place of archaeological significance in the Bronze Age. We also have placenames such as Penpont, which is identical to the Welsh pen pont. Dornock – Dórnach, unknown meaning, also found in E. Scotland as Dòrnach Clachanmore – Clachan Mór, possibly clachan refers to the stones of a nearby stone circle and not to the settlement. Lochinvar - Loch An Bharra - loch in var, lohan var, where the Gordon Family lived. Balmaghie – Baile Mac Aoidh, - bal magi, town of the MacKay Clan. Cummertrees, or Cumbertrees, Gaelic Cumar Treas, estuary of the violence, Cumbric Cömber Trís, Welsh cymer tres. Dalbeattie - Dail Bheithe, or Dail Bheite, valley of birch, Cumbric *dâl/dôl bedô/bedwi. Glencaple, Gleann + Capall/Capaill, lacking an article dialect alphabet glen, capal, Cumbric Glenn + Capal, Welsh Glyn and Ceffyl. ‘horse valley’. Penpont, with its late Bronze Age hill forts, Cumbric Penn Pont. Rhins, Na Rannaibh, but also Brittonic rhin- or rin-, and originally rind-. Welsh Rhinog. Mennock, Cumbric maínoc, mēnoc, mênoc – stoney, Gaelic mèineach ‘abounding in mines’, but I think more likely Gallowegian Meanach ‘abounding in stones’? Neither the words maen in Welsh meaning a stone, or mwyn ‘mine’ have a well understood etymology, this could theoretically be a link between the two. Palnackie – Poll an Achaidh Mochrum, Gaelic Muc Dhruim, Cumbric Moch Drum, pig back or hill Ardwell near Stranraer, perhaps Árd Bhaile, but we also have ‘Ruthwell’ and ‘well’ may come from a different etymology. ‘ One thing noticeable about Galloway Gaelic is the apocope, where the final vowel disappears in words such as baile. The definite article comes closer to a kind of /i/ sound in place-names. Sometimes ch disappears, but this isn’t the case in all examples, so we can assume /x/ existed as a phoneme in much of Galloway. It is interesting that beite lacks the lenition of t to /h/, *betwiyos was a possible origin of this word in Proto-Celtic. Cumbric behaves similarly sometimes, i.e. Brettargh, a place-name, Brett- and not Breth-. The pronunciation of poll in Palnackie, suggests a sound similar to /ʌ/. In the song Òran Bagraidh, Galloway Gaelic riamh appears as riam, indicative that like on Arran, the lenition processes hadn’t fully taken place. In reality the lenition and ‘broad with broad, slender with slender’ rules in Irish and Scottish Gaelic, tend to break down as set rules when dialects are taken into account. On Islay, the Scottish Gaelic spelling is already used, although with some variants in spelling sometimes used, these generally don’t indicate the major changes of the Islay dialect. Because there is already enough knowledge about Islay Gaelic, and already enough people using the spelling to write it, there would be less need for a dialect spelling to be used. With Arran on the other hand, there isn’t a presence of recent Gaelic speakers to help the younger generation learn the finer details of the dialect through the standard spelling. I believe that using the dialect spelling on Arran would make a lot of sense, and would enable the dialect to be taught and used far easier than if Standard Scottish Gaelic spelling was used. We also have enough data on the dialect to be able to do this accurately. This wouldn’t change the status that Standard Gaelic already has in the Gaelic name translations on Arran, but in fact a knowledge of the dialect spelling at a local level could help people to more easily understand how to use the standard spelling when using or relating to Scottish Gaelic in general. Some examples of these place-names include: Eilean Arainn – Isle of Arran Gleann Shannaig – Glensannox Loch Raonasa – Lochranza Since we don’t know the exact pronunciation of Galloway Gaelic, it would perhaps make sense to use a spelling based upon the classical system for place-names, and a ‘Gallowegian’ standard could eventually be created, with the same Classical Gaelic spelling basis as Scottish and Irish Gaelic. This isn’t truly representative of Gaelic in Galloway but symbolically it would stand in the same way that Scottish and Irish spelling does. Another consideration is the Welsh/Cumbric in Galloway and to what degree it will be included in place-names and signage. We may imagine a situation where we might have signs using all three languages. Note the reconstructed Cumbric form below would be Croeso i Ddin Rheged in Welsh. Welcome to Galloway Fáilte go Gall-Gháedhealaibh Welcome to Dunragit Crôs doch do Dhỿn Ragit Fáilte go Dún Ragid Next articles: .Scottish Gaelic dialect spelling, a look at Islay, Sutherland and Uist.