Deeside Gaelic Explained

February 2023.

Deeside Gaelic is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Aberdeenshire until 1984.^[1] Unlike a lot of extinct dialects of Scottish Gaelic, it is relatively well attested. A lot of the work pertaining to Deeside Gaelic was done by Frances Carney Diack,^{[2] [3]} and was expanded upon by David Clement, Adam Watson^[4] and Seumas Grannd.^[5]

Decline

In Aberdeenshire, 18% of Crathie and Braemar and as much as 61% in Inverey were bilingual in 1891.^[6] By 1984, the dialect had died out.

Features in Deeside Gaelic

In the mid-20th Century the Scottish Gaelic Dialect Survey was undertaken when there were still people who spoke Deeside Gaelic. Features of Deeside Gaelic include:

• dropping of unstressed syllables; an example of this is the Word "Duine" becoming "duin'"^[7]
• weakening of the /o/ to a /u/ sound, words such as "Dol" being pronounced closer to "Dul"^[8]
• slender nn being pronounced like an English ng ^[9]
• mutation of f instead of being dropped is pronounced as a /v/ or /b/ or /p/ in Speyside^[10]
• dropping of -adh, words such as tuilleadh being recorded as tull^[11]
• conditional final stop; conditional tense was realised as a /g/ or /k/ sound in Braemar^[12]
• shortening of words; words such as agaibh being pronounced closer to "aki" and cinnteach being shortened to cinnt ^[13]

Notes and References

1. Web site: Gaelic in the North East | The School of Language, Literature, Music and Visual Culture | The University of Aberdeen. www.abdn.ac.uk.
2. Web site: Papers of and relating to Francis Carney Diack - Archives Hub. archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk.
3. A (re-)examination of the work of F. C. Diack (1865-1939). Jacob. King. www.academia.edu.
4. Web site: Clement (David). bill.celt.dias.ie.
5. Web site: Grannd (Seumas). bill.celt.dias.ie.
6. Web site: Upper Deeside. aberdeenshire-gaelic.
7. SGDS vol. 3: 360
8. SGDS vol. 5: 689
9. SGDS vol.2:167
10. SGDS vol. 3: 384
11. SGDS vol.2: 133
12. SGDS vol.3:281
13. SGDS vol.3: 281