Outlander Gaelic

[neloon]

freep,
I think you have the general picture. I will try to answer some of your questions.
First, what is a dialect? Is it defined by pronunciation, or vocabulary, or grammar. How many use it? A lot has to do with some degree of geographic separation. Gaelic pronunciation varies considerably - Lewis is particularly different from the rest, but Deeside, isolated by the Grampians, seems also to have had definable characteristics. Vocabulary varies principally in relation to borrowed words and that will depend on what the external contact was e.g. via cattle drovers or by visiting East coast fishing boats. The Gaelic of today has to cope with modern terminology so some people will say "na computairean" and others "na computers", but unnecessary English borrowings are increasingly prevalent - "seomar" has widely been replaced by "rum" (room). Teenagers on Lewis will commonly say "rialaidh math" (really good) instead of "gle mhath".
Nowadays, there are really no dialects of Gaelic so there is no question of mutual non-intelligibility and even Irish Gaelic is quite easily understood by Scots Gaelic speakers. In the past, Gaelic was not much written down and orthography was very variable but is now reasonably standardised
http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/files_ccc/...tions-En-e.pdf
So we cannot possibly say that there have been 200 dialects of Gaelic since the language has had to absorb from Pictish, Norse, Scots etc. and these historical developments have simply produced an evolving continuum with little point in recognising arbitrary divisions. Placename studies underline some of these points.

I think I should stop now!
Alan

[kiltedcontractor]

I watch with my wife. She has read all the books. We actually look foward to it. I realize that the story is fictional but i do not think that gives them the right to take so many liberties with historical accuracy. We watch for entertainment value not history lesson. It has caused us to research things we might not have otherwise.

[OC Richard]

A bit like those who claim to speak Cornish?

Not sure what is meant here. The corpus of Cornish is quite large, and anyone who has studied it knows how to pronounce it. Any such person could read any of the thousands of surviving lines of Cornish and be speaking Cornish.

If you mean conversing in Cornish, I met a linguist who is equally fluent in Welsh, Breton, and Cornish. Whenever he meets another person fluent in Cornish, well, they can converse as well and you and me in English.

[O'Callaghan]

A bit like those who claim to speak Cornish?

Not a Cornish person, but used to know a speaker of the language. Cornish is a revived dead language, reconstructed from written documents that survived. We can't reconstruct versions of Brythonic spoken in Devon or Cumbria, because AFAIK nothing written exists. They may also have taken into account modern Welsh in this reconstruction? Nevertheless, modern Cornish is what they speak in Cornwall now, other than English, of course. There is a very close analogy with how modern Hebrew came about, as I understand it, albeit the latter is used by most Israelis most of the time. Suffice to say, if someone tells me they speak Cornish, then I believe them. They aren't saying they speak ancient Cornish, generally.

[OC Richard]

claimed to have recovered a moribund dialect of Western Apache on the basis of a single(!) contact.

Actually this is common with Native American languages. There are a large number of languages which have very few surviving speakers or a single surviving speaker.

Oftentimes this person dies with the language never having been recorded in any form, and is lost forever.

In the lucky few cases someone has been prescient enough to record the last speaker. Any reconstruction must, therefore, be based on the "single contact" you mention. There ain't no more.

Found this bit online... don't know if it's accurate or not.

According to a recent survey, out of hundreds of languages that were once spoken in North America, only 194 remain. Of these, 33 are spoken by both adults and children; another 34 are spoken by adults, but by few children; 73 are spoken almost entirely by adults over 50; 49 are spoken only by a few people, mostly over 70; and 5 may have already become extinct.

[freep]

Actually this is common with Native American languages. There are a large number of languages which have very few surviving speakers or a single surviving speaker.

Oftentimes this person dies with the language never having been recorded in any form, and is lost forever.

In the lucky few cases someone has been prescient enough to record the last speaker. Any reconstruction must, therefore, be based on the "single contact" you mention. There ain't no more.

Well stated. A couple years ago I went to Alaska and was pleased to find a strong movement to preserve and restore Tlingit to its people. Diversity lost in any field is sad at best.

[Pleater]

Isn't Dalriada a beautiful word.

It would be worth spending the time to learn just in order to be able to say 'I speak Dalriada Gaelic'.

Anne the Pleater :ootd: