Gaelic: Lesson One

Aspiration is a way of indicating grammatical change in Scots Gaelic and, since it is widely used, it's best to start off by illustrating how it works. There are eighteen letters in Gaelic: five are vowels (a, e, i, o, and u, as in English), one is the letter "h", which is in a category all by itself, and the remaining letters are consonants (b, c, d, f, g, l, m, n, p, r, s, and t). Of the vowels, two (e and i) are called "slender" vowels, and three (a, o, and u) are called "broad" vowels. Of the consonants, all of them except l, n, and r can become aspirated in writing, and this changes their sound as well. To aspirate a letter, you simply put "h" after it when it appears at the beginning of a word, for example:

Letter	Aspirated Form	Sounds Like
b	bh	"v" as in "vet"
c	ch	"ch" as in "loch"
d	dh	silent after a slender vowel; like "y" before a slender vowel; like "gh!" in "ugh!" before or after a broad vowel
f	fh	silent
g	gh	silent after a slender vowel; like "y" before a slender vowel; like "gh!" in "ugh!" before or after a broad vowel
m	mh	"v" as in "vet"
p	ph	"f" as in "fox"
s	sh	"h" as in "his"
t	th	"h" as in "his"; silent at the end of a word

The purpose of aspiration is to show certain kinds of grammatical change, just as in English we put "-ed" to the end of a verb (e.g. "walk" --> "walked") to show the past tense or put "s" at the end of a word to show the plural (e.g. "hat" -- "hats"). The difference is that Scots Gaelic, in common with the other Celtic languages, puts the change at the beginning of the word instead. For example, one common use of aspiration is to indicate certain kinds of possession. The Gaelic word "mo" means "my" and causes aspiration (where possible) on the following word. The word "taigh" means "house". To say "my house" in Gaelic, you would say "mo thaigh". "Taigh" is pronounced like the English word "tie", but "mo thaigh" sounds like "mo hie". Or to take another example, "cù" means "dog", so to say "my dog" you would say "mo chù". "Cù" sounds like "koo", but in "chù" the "k" sound is dropped in favour of a "ch" sound like in the word "loch" -- a sound halfway between "k" and "h".

Like some other languages, for example Spanish, the Gaelic languages have two verbs that cover the range of the English verb "to be". One of them is used to join a noun with a noun, e.g. "Iain is a teacher" or "Calum is a Scotsman". The other one, which we'll look at in this lesson, is used to join a noun with an adjective -- e.g. "Ruairidh is tall", "Colin is old", etc. The basic present tense form of the verb is "tha" and the pronouns equivalent to English "I", "you", "he", etc. are as follows:

tha mi	I am
tha thu	you are
tha e	he is
tha i	she is
tha sinn	we are
tha sibh	you are
tha iad	they are

(Note the difference between "thu" and "sibh"; "thu" means "you" when speaking to one person only. "Sibh" means "you" when speaking to more than one person but is also a polite form you can use when showing respect to someone who is older). The pronouns "e" and "i" mean "it" when they refer to masculine and feminine nouns rather than people.

The above forms are easily joined with adjectives like "beag" (little), "mór" (big), "òg" (young), "sona" (happy), etc.:

Tha mi sona.	I am happy.
Tha iad beag.	They are little.
Tha e mór.	He is big.
Tha sinn òg.	We are young.

Some other adjectives to get you started:

sgìth	tired
tioram	dry
fuar	cold
fliuch	wet
math	good
blàth	warm
snog	nice
leisg	lazy
dona	bad
dorcha	dark
gòrach	stupid
brèagha	beautiful

ii) Present Tense, Negative

Just as in English and other languages, the verb "to be" in SG is highly irregular. To give the negative form of "tha", i.e. in order to say "... is not...", you have to use a different form altogether -- "chan eil":

Chan eil mi sgìth.	I am not tired.
Chan eil iad beag.	They are not little.
Chan eil i òg.	She is not young.
Chan eil sinn sona.	We are not happy.

iii) Present Tense, Question

In English to ask a question we can just rearrange the word order (e.g. "you are happy" becomes "are you happy?") or we can even leave the word order as it is and just change the tone of voice ("you *are* happy?") In SG, however, we have to use a question word before a verb in order to ask a question using that verb. The question word is "an", but this changes to "am" before the letters b, f, m, and p. Unfortunately since "tha" is irregular, we can't just put the question word before "tha"; we have to put it in front of an irregular form called "bheil". Since "bheil" begins with a "b", this makes the question word "am":

Am bheil thu sgìth?	Are you tired?
Am bheil iad sona?	Are they happy?
Am bheil e òg?	Is he young?
Am bheil mi fuar?	Am I cold?

Over time, however, the "am" has become shortened in speech and writing to "a", so that questions are now usually asked with "a bheil...?" I've shown you the full form because you will still come across it in older books and because it helps to understand the basic rules involved with asking a question generally.

There is no word for "yes" or "no" as such in Gaelic, so a question tends to get answered with either an affirmative or negative form of the verb that was contained in the question. For example, the question "am bheil iad sona?" (are they happy?) can be answered affirmatively with "tha", which just means "are"; the negative answer would be "chan eil" (are not). When the question is "am bheil...?", "tha" becomes a "yes" answer and "chan eil" becomes a "no" answer -- but "yes" and "no" in Gaelic are always different depending on what verb is in the question.

A negative question corresponds to the English phrases "Isn't he/she/it...?" or "Aren't I/they...?" In SG the negative question word is "nach" and, as usual, an irregular form of "tha" is used -- "eil":

As with "am bheil...?" the answer to a negative question with "nach eil...?" is either "tha" (corresponding to "yes") or "chan eil" (corresponding to "no").

The verbal noun is a kind of verb expressing ongoing action, very much like the English verbs which end in "-ing" like "walking" or "laughing". There are two parts to each verbal noun, the verb itself and "a'" ("ag" before a vowel) coming before it. It is used with "tha" and with the different forms of "tha". Some common verbal nouns are: