About
Gaelic is a celtic language that is found in differing forms throughout Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. It was at one time the main language of the Scottish Highlands, including Perthshire, but now it has been supplanted by English and to a lesser extent Scots.
Perthshire Gaelic, and more specifically the one I focus on, East Perthshire Gaelic were (likely no longer spoken at all there) spoken in the Scottish Highland area of Perthshire (imagine that!)
Infact, it was part of a continuum of closely related dialects that had a lot of the same features such as the dropping of unemphasised sounds and the loss of certain case forms.
Unfortunately due to the influence of English, changes in demographics due to things such as the world wars and potentially others, Gaelic has steadily lost out and no where is this more apparent than places such as Perthshire and Aberdeen where some of the Gaelic literary tradition once found a home.
Fortunately for enthusiasts (such as myself), there is a lot of material around that details Perthshire Gaelic and also recent recordings. The bad thing is that it is spread out across centuries, books and websites, so collating it all is a major pain in the tòin! Some great sources however are the books aptly named "East Perthshire Gaelic" and "West Perthshire Gaelic", "Tales from Highland Perthshire", "Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness", "Armstrong's Dictionary" (which isn't all strictly Perthshire but it features a ton of entries detailing Perthshire forms and words), the websites "Tobar an dualchais" and "dasg" and an interesting Gaelic translation of the travel journal of Queen Victoria.
Kindly hosted by: Neocities.
