Dialect of Scottish Gaelic
Deeside Gaelic is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Aberdeenshire until 1984.[1] Unlike a lot of extinct dialects of Scottish Gaelic, it is relatively well attested. A lot of the work pertaining to Deeside Gaelic was done by Frances Carney Diack,[2][3] and was expanded upon by David Clement, Adam Watson[4] and Seumas Grannd.[5]
Decline
In Aberdeenshire, 18% of Crathie and Braemar and as much as 61% in Inverey were bilingual in 1891.[6] By 1984, the dialect had died out.
Features in Deeside Gaelic
In the mid-20th Century the Scottish Gaelic Dialect Survey was undertaken when there were still people who spoke Deeside Gaelic. Features of Deeside Gaelic include:
- dropping of unstressed syllables; an example of this is the Word "Duine" becoming "duin'"[7]
- weakening of the /o/ to a /u/ sound, words such as "Dol" being pronounced closer to "Dul"[8]
- slender nn being pronounced like an English ng [9]
- mutation of f instead of being dropped is pronounced as a /v/ or /b/ or /p/ in Speyside[10]
- dropping of -adh, words such as tuilleadh being recorded as tull[11]
- conditional final stop; conditional tense was realised as a /g/ or /k/ sound in Braemar[12]
- shortening of words; words such as agaibh being pronounced closer to "aki" and cinnteach being shortened to cinnt [13]
References
