Re: Celtica (was: Maggel)

Barbara Barrett wrote:

>>>Steg Said;
>>>Anyone know why Scottish Gaelic accents go "\" and Irish Gaelic ones go
>>>"/" ?
>>>
>>>
>
>
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>>Ray wRote;
>>But as to why Scots Gaelic favors the grave accent & Irish Gaelic the
>>acute for marking long vowels, I don't know.
>>
>>
>
>Barbara Babbles;
>The apocryphal explanation I heard in college (which I've never seen
>confirmed by any historian) is that  when Scots Gaelic began to appear as a
>written language in its own right in printed materiel in the late 18thC the
>use of the grave over the acute was a deliberate choice of the printers to
>visually differentiate written Scots Gaelic from written Irish Gaelic.
>
>This seems plausable because Irish Gaelic was a written language before it
>was introduced to Scotland around the 5/6th century, and Irish Gaelic
>remained the literary standard for written Gaelic in Scotland until the
>early 18thC (EG; the Scots Liturgy of 1567 and the Scots Bible of 1690 are
>essentially Irish Gaelic). IIRC the 18thC saw a flourish in Scotland and
>Wales of establishing strong national identities and revivals of "native"
>languages, so the story fits with the "mood of the times".
>
>What baffles me is how come when one uses the word "Gaelic" ouside of
>Ireland folk assume you mean the Scots dialect rather than the parent
>language, even if you use the Irish rather than the Scots pronounciation of
>"Gaelic"? It seems that in English; Irish=Gaelic but Gaelic=Scots Gaelic:
>Wierd.
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>
>
Irish is a synonym with [gEjlIk], Scottish with [g&lIk].  I think.