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Re: Celtica (was: Maggel)

From:Joe <joe@...>
Date:Monday, June 14, 2004, 15:35
Barbara Barrett wrote:

>>>Steg Said; >>>Anyone know why Scottish Gaelic accents go "\" and Irish Gaelic ones go >>>"/" ? >>> >>> > > > >>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. > > >
Irish is a synonym with [gEjlIk], Scottish with [g&lIk]. I think.