Scottish Gaelicorthography has evolved over many centuries and is heavily etymologizing in its modern form. This means the orthography tends to preserve historical components rather than operating on the principles of a phonemic orthography where the graphemes correspond directly to phonemes. This allows the same written form in Scottish Gaelic to result in a multitude of pronunciations, depending on the spoken variant of Scottish Gaelic. For example, the wordcoimhead "watching" may result in,,, or. Conversely, it allows the sometimes highly divergent phonetic forms to be covered by a single written form, rather than requiring multiple written forms.
Alphabet
The alphabet is known as the aibidil in Scottish Gaelic, and formerly the Beith Luis Nuin from the first three letters of the Ogham alphabet: b, l, n. The alphabet now used for writing the Scottish Gaelic language consists of the following letters of the Latin alphabet, whether written in Roman type or Gaelic type: From a language internal perspective, the following digraphs are considered single letters: Older manuscripts made use of the acute accent over vowels, but these are no longer used in standard orthography. Since the 1980s the acute accent has not been used in Scottish high school examination papers, and many publishers have adopted the Scottish Examination Board's orthographic conventions for their books. The acute accent is still used in most Scottish universities and by a minority of Scottish publishers, as well as in Canada.
The early Medieval treatise "Auraicept na n-Éces" describes the origin of alphabets from the Tower of Babel. It assigns plant names and meanings to Ogham, to a lesser extent to Norse Runes, and by extension to Latin letters when used to write Gaelic. Robert Graves' bookThe White Goddess has been a major influence on assigning divinatory meanings to the tree symbolism. Some of the names differ from their modern equivalents.
The consonant letters generally correspond to the consonant phonemes as shown in this table. See Scottish Gaelic phonology for an explanation of the symbols used. Consonants are "broad" when the nearest vowel letter is one of a, o, u and "slender" when the nearest vowel letter is one of e, i. A "back vowel" is one of the following; ; a "front vowel" is any other kind of vowel.
Vowels
Many of the rules in this section only apply in stressed syllables. In unstressed syllables, the range of vowels is highly restricted, with mainly /ə/, /ɪ/ or /a/ appearing and on occasion /ɔ/. Only certain vowel graphs exist in unstressed syllables: a, ai, e, ea, ei and i and very infrequently o, oi, u and ui.
Vowel-consonant combinations
Lenited bh, dh, gh, mh are commonly pronounced as vowels or are deleted if they are followed by a consonant. For example, in cabhag the bh is usually /v/ but in cabhlach the bh has turned into an /u/ vowel, yielding /au/ rather than /av/ in the first syllable.
Letters
Phoneme
Examples
abh, amh
cabhlach, samhradh
adh, agh
adhbran, ladhran
aidh
snaidhm
aigh
saighdear, maighdean
eagh
do theaghlach
eamh
geamhradh, leamhrag
iodh, iogh
tiodhlaic, ioghnadh
ogh
foghnaidh, roghnaich
oibh
goibhle, goibhnean
oigh
oighre, sloighre
oimh
doimhne, doimhneachd
uimh
cuimhne, cuimhneachadh
Epenthetic vowels
Where an l, n or r is followed by a b, bh, ch, g, gh, m or mh, an epenthetic vowel is inserted between the two. This is usually a copy of the vowel that preceded the l/n/r. Examples; Alba, marbh, tilg, arm, iomradh. If this process would lead to the sound sequence, the epenthetic vowel is an in many dialects. Example; dearg.
Defunct combinations
The acute accent is no longer used in standard Scottish Gaelic orthography, although it may be encountered in late twentieth century writings, and occasionally in contemporary writings, especially in Canadian Gaelic. Certain spellings have also been regularised where they violate pronunciation rules. "Tigh" in particular can still be encountered in house names and certain place names, notably Tighnabruaich and Eilean Tigh.
