Wir Ain Leed — Gaelic Influenced Scots
Gàidhealtachd - the Gaelic for the Highlands and Islands to the west - were of course until the 20th century on the whole Gaelic speaking.
Gaelic has had an influence on the vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar of Scots spoken in areas, which until relatively recently, were Gaelic speaking.
Some well known Scots words of Gaelic origin are:
In older literature representations of how Gaelic speakers pronounced Scots were frequent. That is unlikely today since access to the phoneme inventory of Scots has long been available to all through universal education in Scottish Standard English. Some of the most frequent pronunciations are:
The vowel /ɪ/ may be pronounced /ʌ/.
I have two big fish.
The <th> /θ/, in a final position may be pronounced /s/. Written <s> or <ss> here.
Have you seen Macbeth?
I had a hot bath this morning.
I think there's a fly in my mouth.
At the beginning of words <th> /θ/ may be pronounced /ts/.
Things aren't what they seemed to be.
Is anything in the chest?
The <th> /ð/, may be pronounced /t/, /s/ and / or /sz/.
This is my house.
The other day.
It's further down the lane.
The pronunciation /z/ may be replaced by /s/, written <ss> here.
This is a ewe.
He was taking it to be shorn.
The other ewes were left in the field.
The /ʤ/ as in just may be pronounced /ʃ/ as in shut.
James has just been promoted to sergeant.
A /b/ may be pronounced /p/.
Bring the box into the cabin.
A /d/ may be replaced by /t/.
I had a good drink with him.
A /g/ may be replaced by /k/.
Have you seen my pet goat?
In Scots nouns are either masculine, feminine or neuter. Gaelic only has masculine and feminine, many neuter words may be referred to as she.
It's been built recently. (The house)
In Gaelic the adjective may be repeated for emphasis.
It a very wet day.
She's a very good girl.
The pronoun A (I) may be replaced by masel, influenced by the Gaelic 'mi-fein'.
I will row you to your ship.
In Gaelic the preposition 'air' (on), is used for on, in, o (of) and tae (to). This may occur as on in Gaelic influenced Scots.
Well done.
The dog died in spite of all my efforts.
He was nasty to me.
Ask me a question about it.
Someone did something to me.
Things are going wrong for me.
The horse ran away though I did my best to hold it.
Gaelic only has a single verb form 'tha' for am, is and are, similarly Gaelic 'bha' means both wis (was) and war (were).
I am cold.
My hands are all dirty.
This dog is very good.
Which are these?
The children were here.
The Gaelic relative sentence using that may be used in place of a simple sentence.
I am the farmer and you are the cottager.
Tenses. The verb 'to be', is the only Gaelic verb having a present tense. In Gaelic the present tense is usually formed by using a the present tense of the verb 'to be' and a verbal noun. As a result of substituting the Gaelic prepositions 'ag', 'aig' with at and 'air' with efter (after), the following may occur:
Sites for people interested in learning Scottish Gaelic.