Mar 15th, 2023

Author: donich_admin

Learning Gaelic now

I’ve always wanted to learn Scots Gaelic. I find it very sad that whilst a hundred years ago nearly everyone in Argyll would have spoken it, the language was systematically and deliberately eradicated from the area and now is not widely spoken outside the Western Isles.
So I’ve tried to start learning it from a book I bought – rather optimistically called “Learn Gaelic in 12 weeks” twice now. I had no success – it is not a particularly easy language for English speakers and in particular the relationship between spelling and pronunciation is rather odd. You can see this from the dual language road signs when you realize that many place names have been directly anglicized from the Gaelic originals, with radically different spellings. For example:-

But the other day I discovered that DuoLingo are doing a course on it – this is really really useful as it gives you real Gaelic speakers reading the pronunciation. I’ve just finished my first week and am doing quite well.