Gàidhlig - Scots Gaelic
A’ Cheud Leasan - Lesson 1

Aspiration

Aspiration is a way of indicating grammatical change in SG (Scots Gaelic) and, since it is widely used, it's best to start 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 - 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. (L, n, and r also sound different when aspirated in speech, but this is not marked in writing).

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" in "yet" before a slender vowel; like "gh" in "ugh!" after or before a broad vowel.
f
fh
silent
g
gh
silent after a slender vowel; like "y" in "yet" before a slender vowel; like "gh" in "ugh!" after or before 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 SG 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".

There is no "eclipsis" in Scots Gaelic as there is in Irish.

Source: Neil McEwan's Gaelic Lessons Online