Deeside Gaelic

This article may contain citations that do not verify the text. Please check for citation inaccuracies. (February 2023) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Deeside Gaelic
Aberdeenshire Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic: Gàidhlig Shrath Deathain
Region	Aberdeenshire
Extinct	18 March 1984, with the death of Jean Bain
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Scottish Gaelic Deeside Gaelic
Early forms	Proto-Indo-European Proto-Celtic Proto-Goidelic Primitive Irish
Language codes
ISO 639-1	gd
ISO 639-2	gla
ISO 639-3	gla
Glottolog	scot1245
Braemar Inverey Tullich Glen Muick Strathdon Crathie Strathspey
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

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]

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.

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]