Scottish Gaelic phonology

This article is about the phonology of the Scottish Gaelic language. There is no standard variety of Scottish Gaelic; although statements below are about all or most dialects, the north-western dialects (Outer Hebrides, Skye and the Northwest Highlands) are discussed more than others as they represent the majority of speakers.

Vowels

The following is a chart of the monophthong vowel phonemes appearing in Scottish Gaelic:

Scottish Gaelic vowel phonemes

	Front		Central	Back
	unrounded	rounded		unrounded	rounded
Close	i	y	ʉ	ɯ	u
Near-close	ɪ				ʊ
Close-mid	e	ø	ə	ɤ	o
Open-mid	ɛ	œ		ʌ	ɔ
Open	æ		a	ɑ	ɒ

All vowel phonemes except for /ɪ/ and /ə/ can be both long (represented with ⟨ː⟩) and short. Note that phonologically, /a/ behaves both as a front or back vowel depending on the geographical area and vowel length.

Consonants

Consonants of Scottish Gaelic

	Labial	Coronal			Dorsal		Glottal
		Dental	Alveolar	Palatal		Velar
Stop	pʰ   p   b	t̪ʰ   t̪	tʰ   t   d	tʲʰ   tʲ   dʲ	kʲʰ   kʲ   ɡʲ	kʰ   k   ɡ	ʔ
Fricative	f   v	s̪	s   z	ʃ   ʒ	ç   ʝ	x   ɣ	h
Nasal	m	n̪ˠ	n	ɲ		ŋ
Approximant	ʋ	l̪ˠ	l	ʎ	j	ʟ
Tap	ⱱ ⱱʲ		ɾ ɾʲ
Trill	ʙˠ		rˠ

External links

• Scottish Gaelic phonology