Talk:Comparison of Irish, Manx, and Scottish Gaelic

Formality

An Irish Gaelic learner recently told me that Irish has never had informal vs. formal forms, and that it is one of the only indo-european languages to never have had this (apparently English used to have it, but doesn't any more). As a Scottish Gaelic learner, I was surprised to hear this, as I'm quite used to the different forms.

Any comments? - File:Icons-flag-scotland.png calum 19:45, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

I've heard that this is almost true, but that there was a time in Ireland when the parish priest would be addressed as sibh rather than tú. I can't verify this, though. Traditionally in Ireland, of course, if you were speaking to someone upper-class whom it would be appropriate to vouvoyer, you were speaking to them in English anyway. Angr (talk) 20:24, 29 May 2006 (UTC)

Changes

I have made a number of changes to the text as well as some corrections. Firstly, while northern Scottish and southern Irish might differ greatly in terms of vocabulary, they share some features absent in the other dialects (Connacht and Ulster) most notably, the lengthening of short vowels before long sonants.

Secondly, there is no such thing as "Standard Irish" when it comes to vocabulary or phraseology. The book "Gramadach na Gaeilge agus Litriú na Gaeilge: An Caighdeán Oifigiúil" does not lay down any rules as to what is a "standard Irish" word or phrase. It merely fixed a standard spelling and morphology. Therefore I have deleted the entry "Standard Irish: Conas tá tu?".

Also, in terms of spelling differences, it should be noted that many of what are commonly called spelling "differences" or which appear to the unitiated to be "Scotticisms" are normally nothing more than archaic spellings which have survived in the absence of wholesale standardisation in Scotland. "Sg" and "chd" being two examples of this.

"Foscailte" occurs in Donegal and if Kenneth Jackson is to be trusted (Scéalta ón mBlascaod), Peig Sayers herself used "foscail" instead of "oscail". This is on the same lines as the "faill/aill" contrast.

An Muimhneach Machnamhach 18:15, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

'Sib' vs 'Sibh'; the pronunciation resulting in a 'b' sound in words such as dóibh, acu, sibh and libh is specific only to south connemara, most of connacht pronounces it 'sibh', including most of north connemara. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.78.84.194 (talk) 15:54, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Not mutually comprehensible?

Is saying that Irish and Scottish Gaelic are not mutually comprehensible not a little too strong? I see that the statement is made specifically towards dialects of GA and GD not being so, but surely a speaker of one would be able to know what the other was saying even if the way it was said sounded strange? --sony-youth^pléigh 22:56, 24 June 2007 (UTC)

No. siarach 22:19, 27 June 2007 (UTC)

We have a woman come down from Scotland (Skye, I believe) to Kerry (Corca Dhuibhne), and she does just fine, she just has a thick (all I can describe it as is 'Scottish') accent. The man from donegal actually seemed to have a tougher time than her! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.48.55.179 (talk) 07:37, 11 February 2013 (UTC)

Extremely experienced Irish speakers of my acquaintance cannot understand spoken Scottish Gaelic at all. CecilWard (talk) 06:13, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

WikiProject class rating

This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:03, 10 November 2007 (UTC)

reversion - Irish/Irish Gaelic

Just a quick explanatory note regarding my reversion here – as the article is dealing explicitly with the differences/similarities between two variants of Gaelic I think it makes more sense to have both varieties named as such. siarach (talk) 16:11, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Cancel that. As the title has "Scottish Gaelic and Irish" it probably makes more sense to use the same nomenclature throughout the article. Bad day at the office *sigh. siarach (talk) 16:13, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It is a great pity that some Gaelic speakers think that it is appropriate to call our language 'Irish' and not 'Irish Gaelic. Gaelic speakers on both sides of the 'Sruth na Maoile' spoke of 'the Gaelic' when were making reference to their language to an English speaking audience. That the descendants of these same people now think it appropriate to call the language 'Irish' instead of 'the Gaelic', is a sign of the times and probably owes something to the process of Anglicization! Would it not be appropriate to refer to the language simply as 'the Gaelic' when speaking to a home audience and as either Irish Gaelic, Manx Gaelic or Scottish Gaelic to a multinational audience? Wikipedia is a multinational resource and Irish Gaelic would seem to me to a more appropriate term to use in this forum. D’aithin file mór na Gaeilge, Somhairle Mac Gill-Eain, buaine agus tábhacht an ghaoil idir an dá thír nuair a scríobh sé: "an fhéile, Nach do reub an cuan, Nár réab an fharraige, Nach do mhill mìle bliadhna; Buaidh a’ Ghaidheil buan"Eog1916 (talk) 22:25, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

And over here people bemoan the fact Gaelic is not known as "Scottish" and longingly look at "Irish". The reality is, Irish is usually Irish and Scots Gaelic is usually (Scots) Gaelic. So be it. Rather than bemoan the realities of English naming conventions of Gaelic and Irish, perhaps we should focus on improving the articles on the topic? Akerbeltz (talk) 22:50, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

eclipsis

The section on eclipsis was almost completely wrong. Claims that there is no diachronic eclipsis in SG are pure drivel, and as clear evidence of this the idiots responsible for GOC have come out with proposals (less idiotic than most of the proposals they deliver) to change spellings to eliminate it (and all children taking Gaelic exams are now expected to use these spellings). The claim that SG doesn't indicate eclipsis in writing is also incorrect, it was very common to indicate eclipsed "t" by writing it "d'th" until very recently, and of course the changed spellings are a way of indicating it now. I've edited it to eliminate these inaccuracies. This has made it too long - it would probably have been better just to tear the section out, but that would probably have started a flame war.

The ipa indicating the pronunciation of "aig an dorus" has me completely bewildered. I suppose the superscript gamma is an attempt to add an extra diacritic to the n, maybe indicating velarisation, but that is not how a velarised n is shown in IPA. Anyway, this strange string of symbols can’t represent any pronunciation where the d fails to disappear completely through eclipsis, so the claim that it represents everywhere except Arran and Kintyre is bizarre to say the least. I don't know what to do to correct it - there isn't a single pronunciation used everywhere, and a long list of pronunciations would be pointless, so I've left it as it was in the hope that someone else will have a good idea and fix it. MichealT (talk) 17:50, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Actually, superscript gamma is the usual way of indicating velarization in IPA. Using the swung dash is also an option, but that's ambiguous between velarization and pharyngealization (though that's not a problem in languages that don't have both) and it can be difficult to read on letters other than l and t. I must say I've never seen "cha d'thug" in texts of any age; I assume that was only in informal, unedited writing. The grammar books I have (and they're from before 1982) say "cha tug". But the section should still probably be rewritten: it's misleading to call the progressive nasalization of an doras and am bod "eclipsis" since that term refers to a completely unrelated phenomenon. However, if "cha dug" for older "cha tug" is real (and I have no reason to believe it isn't), that really is eclipsis, and could stand to be mentioned. +Angr 18:29, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

Can we calm down first of all? I dislike GOC as much as anyone. Check my record of non-compliance at www.faclair.com if you don't believe me. Next... may I clarify what I mean by diachronic vs synchronic? In Irish, eclipsis is independent of existing nasals. It can apply to any word, even reced loanwords, so seacht bPula "7 Pula" is perfectly expectable in spite of the non-presence of a final nasal. In Scottish Gaelic, the same words that cause eclipsis in Irish do not have the same effect. seachd Anything never is eclipsed. For the most part, eclipsis only productively happens in the presence of a nasal. There is, as you correctly point out, the issue of forms like nach dug ~ cha dug or even a bheil but these are frozen forms as a small comparison shows clearly. If the rule was synchronically active, we would expect chan to cause eclipsis in all environments, right? But it doesn't. Cha tuig is /xa tʰikʲ/ in all dialects, never /xa nˠikʲ/.

As for the other point, I think Angr has addressed that. Akerbeltz (talk) 19:00, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

What are we to make of ar and ur then? I think these are legitimate eclipsis triggers in SG, as they don't end in a phonetic nasal. They may be few in number, but so is the variant lenition trigger (the feminine article) that changes s->t instead of s->h. A limited trigger is still a trigger especially if it is frequent enough in usage. (similar arguments exist for specialized mutations in Breton, which are also triggered by a very limited number of functional items). I agree, however, that it is obvious that the vast majority of Irish eclipsis triggers are purely progressive nasal assimilation in SG. Comhreir (talk) 19:24, 11 May 2010 (UTC)

In the short description of nasalisation in Scottish Gaelic, it gives a description of Lewis Gaelic and perhaps gives the impression that that is representative of the whole of Scotland. Perhaps some clarification would be helpful. I recommend the section on nasalisation in the appendix in Ó Maolalaigh’s “Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks” as a brief, more detailed account. CecilWard (talk) 06:10, 14 June 2021 (UTC)

Manx

Can I ask what sources you're using for the Manx examples here? I've not encountered either clone or eg and can't find them in any of my sources. The usual forms are cloan and ec, but as Angr reverted my last edit I thought I'd better bring it up here. Also, it's not correct to say that Manx no longer has nasalisation. It doesn't nasalise in the example given, but we still nasalise in some verb forms and plural possessives. -- Shimmin Beg (talk) 19:47, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

What I actually was reverting was someone else's change of eg to e.g., which I hadn't noticed until you changed it to ec. You're right about cloan and ec being the usual spellings. —Angr (talk) 22:30, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Ah, I see. Cheers for sorting that out. I'm trying to work out the best way to clarify the Manx nasalisation example without derailing the page. In the example given, there's actually a mutation occurring: we have "class two" lenition after preposition + article, rather than nasalisation, but that doesn't affect dentals so 'dorrys' doesn't change. So it would be true to say that Manx doesn't have nasalisation in that context, but we retain it for negative future and conditional verbs, and plural possessive forms. There's a breakdown on Manx Wikipedia but that might not be much help. -- Shimmin Beg (talk) 10:09, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Change of title

Would it be worth changing the title to Comparison of Goidelic Languages, as Manx is mentioned a lot? Danielquayle (talk) 21:23, 19 February 2014 (UTC)

Agam-sa

The assertion that emphatic suffixes are usually hyphenated in Scots Gaelic is simply not true: TAIC MarkRae (talk) 19:06, 15 June 2015 (UTC)

Eh, GOC tries is pushing the hyphenless forms of prepositions but as usual, they're shtumm on a whole lot of shit they didn't think of, such as what to do with the regional variants of prepositions e.g. amagas vs agam-as, adsa vs ad-sa, ? vs a'am-s, a lot of which become fairly unreadable without hyphens and as a result, you'll often find hyphens in these. Secondly, while prepositions are common, there's a much larger pool of noun+emphatic (taigh-sa, cù-ne) which are hyphenated, even in GOC. It is, as usual, messy. Akerbeltz (talk) 21:15, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

eu vs éu vs éa vs èa…

The paragraph starting with

The Classical Irish digraph ⟨éu⟩ [eːʷ] 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 ⟨é⟩ when followed by a broad consonant from the regular dialect development ⟨é⟩ to ⟨i⟩ in the same environment, thus éan [ian] "bird" in comparison to d'éug [dʲeːɡ] "died; passed on).

is nonsense:

1. The spelling d’éug (or d’eug) is not common at all in older Munster texts; on the other hand sgeul is and it is said with /ia/, not /eː/. I’m not aware of any author making such a distinction in spelling between ⟨éu⟩ for /eː/ and ⟨éa⟩ for /ia/.
2. There was no distinction between ⟨éa⟩ and ⟨eu ~ éu⟩ in Early Modern Irish/Gaelic. ⟨eu⟩ was just a variant spelling of long /eː/ before a broad consonant (where ⟨é⟩ was also common, so all sgél, sgéal, sgeul were possible spellings for "story"). There was no such phoneme in Classical Gaelic as “[eːʷ]”. See eg. Mícheál Hoyne (2017). "Early Modern Irish miscellanea". Ériu. 67: 174. doi:10.3318/eriu.2017.67.7. Eu is included in these lists as that digraph is only used to indicate long é with broad offset and not short ea.

I’m not entirely sure how that came to be, but it seems to me that when Old Irish u-infected éu/éo became /(j)oː/ (like in béu > beó; éun > eón) and turned to the spelling ⟨eó⟩ (while short ⟨eo, eu⟩ turned to /(j)o/ before velars, merged with /e/ otherwise, eg. deug > deoch), the spelling ⟨eu⟩ was left available for plain long /eː/ (which AFAIK also sometimes resulted from éu, but not sure when). (see Stair na Gaeilge, §§II 11.4, III 3.8, IV 2.5)

I’m also not sure what conditioned the choice of spelling between the two in Scottish Gaelic (eun, sgeul, ceud, breug, eucoir, but dèan, brèagha, gèadh etc.).

So all in all I’m not sure how to improve that part of the article… but at least the “Classical Irish” background and the bits about “southern dialects of Irish” should be removed or completely rewritten.

@Akerbeltz and Mahagaja: What d’ye think? Silmethule (talk) 15:00, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I think the way to improve that part of the article is to delete the paragraph in question. —Mahāgaja · talk 15:06, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm hazy on the history of this digraph when it comes to the period preceding older forms of modern ScG i.e. I could opine on when eu is still /eː/ in ScG and that there's a general development towards /eː/ > /ia/ but I couldn't say how the modern ScG spelling conventions, such as they are, match those of Classical Gaelic or Old Irish. I'd always assumed there was a pattern in CI/OI but best as I can tell, the choice of eu vs èa vs ia are rather haphazard and apart from eu persisting as /eː/ in spelling and pronunciation before labials and in high register words, it seems to have been largely determined on which early authors were most prolific and managed to pass down their own preferences as dogma. The piddly GOC framework aside, it's not like there's consistency, I've seen sgeul, sgial and sgéal, dianamh and dèanamh (though not deunamh, though I wouldn't be shocked...). Akerbeltz (talk) 21:11, 26 October 2023 (UTC)

The spelling deunamh was common enough in Irish right into the 20th century. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:05, 27 October 2023 (UTC)

Corpas DASG (Sc. Gaelic literary corpus) finds only 7 instances of deunamh and déunamh (d[h,]eunamh query), most from 19th century (one from the 16th, one from 18th), but indeed Irish RIA corpus finds many examples between 17th and 18th c. Bardic Poetry Corpus (choose Irish Syllabic Poetry 1200–1700) finds only two examples of déunamh and deunam (CQL query [lc = "n?dh?[eé]un[auo]mh?"]) and 5 forms starting with deun-, but there’s not that many instances of that verbal noun (210 in all spellings I could think of). I guess there aren’t that many examples there, as many poems in the corpus are taken from editions which normalized the spelling to some extent and thus eu is less likely there than in actual manuscripts of the time. Silmethule (talk) 14:35, 27 October 2023 (UTC)