35: A look at the Gigha Gaelic dialect

 

Written and published in the UK by Linden Alexander Pentecost, published on the 26th of July 2024 only on this website www.bookofdunbarra.co.uk.
This article includes a brief introductory note, followed by a look at some of the features of Gigha Gaelic, some notes about some of my publications, and with the reference at the end. This shorter article contains 886 words.

All written examples of Gigha Gaelic in this article are written in a spelling that includes, through my own choice of letters, some of the phonetic information about the dialect that is visible in source (1) and as given by informant 40 in source (1), source (1) being: the Survey of the Gaelic dialects of Scotland: questionnaire materials collected for the Linguistic Survey of Scotland, edited by Cathair Ó Dochartaigh.

 

Gigha is a small island located off the western coast of the Kintyre Peninsula, with views towards the mountains of Islay and Jura. My grandparents have been to Gigha before, but I never have, and it was only recently I decided to study a little on the Gaelic dialect there.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the Gaelic of Gigha shares much in common with nearby mainland and insular dialects, but nevertheless it has its own unique features. One thing that I immediately noticed as interesting in source (1), is that the word seasamh – stand, is pronounced with a slender initial s, i.e. it sounds more like the English “s” and not like the “sh” sound. Several [ø]-like sounds are found in Gigha Gaelic, one of which seems close, but not identical to that of Arran. Nevertheless I write a short form of one of the sounds, the same in this article as I do for the similar sound in Arran Gaelic. For example rȯd – “thing”. The orthographic b, d, g in Gigha Gaelic are, unusually, pronounced much like the voiced sounds that these letters represent in English. This is also found in Arran Gaelic and in some other dialects to different degrees.

The slender orthographic d is often a clearly pronounced [dz] in Gigha Gaelic, for example in dziùltadh – refusal, standard spelling: diùltadh. In the Gigha form dziùltadh, the t is half voiced towards a [d], after the liquid. In addition, what are generally long vowels or even diphthongs in Gaelic as a whole are often half-long or short vowels in Gigha Gaelic. So in dziùltadh the ù is a half-long vowel rather than a long vowel. Other examples of dz can be seen in drochaidz – bridge, dzég – ten, dziallaidz – saddle, the standard Scottish Gaelic forms of these words are: drochaid, deug, diallaid. Note that that ai in Gigha Gaelic is frequently pronounced like something close to [i], which is the case in both instances of ai in the word dziallaidz.

Glottal stops are found in Gigha Gaelic, but a form of glottalisation is much more common, and is extremely frequent in Gigha Gaelic. For example, du’ļag – leaf, standard spelling: duilleag. In this example the ’ represents the glottalisation. The consonant ļ is palatal and are written with the marks below because it is difficult otherwise to write it as being slender in this word. Another example of this glottalisation can be seen in the word du’ni – man, standard Scottish Gaelic spelling: duine. Note also the difference in the final vowel in the Gigha form of the word.

Long vowels appearing as half-long in Gigha Gaelic is in for example the word rámh - oar, standard Scottish Gaelic: ràmh, In the Gaelic dialect writing of Àdhamh Ó Broin and of myself, á is pronounced as a long [ɛ] normally. A half-long vowel is also visible in the word sör - "work", standard spelling: saothaoir. The r in this word is slender. The ö is used in my writing of Arran Gaelic for a long [ø]-sound, but I am including it here in Gigha Gaelic spelling for a similar sound to the long version of that on Arran, but which on Gigha is a half-long vowel.

This has been a very short look at the Gigha dialect of Scottish Gaelic, but I will write more on it in the future. But I do also want to mention the curious presence of an Ogham stone on the island of Gigha, an Ogham stone which has not be fully deciphered. In the next week or so I will be publishing a small Kindle ebook with information on the Barra Gaelic dialect, some runestones, and other topics pertaining to language and to history in Britain. A few days ago I also wrote a silly linguistics article, the first of three, in a new series about the mystical nature of Finnish, titled

An ancient temple, languages in the Bock sa-ga, and some similarities between Finnish and Quechua (with temple photo):

part one of: “The mystical nature of Finnish & of language in Finland”. The content of the aforementioned articles and of all my others is unique. In the case of the aforementioned article it is only being published in the Silly Linguistics magazine. It will not actually be published for some time probably but I have submitted it and hope it will be published.

 

Reference:

(1): Survey of the Gaelic dialects of Scotland: questionnaire materials collected for the Linguistic Survey of Scotland, edited by Cathair Ó Dochartaigh.