An Aibidil
The alphabet
Scottish Gaelic uses eighteen letters. Fewer letters does not mean fewer sounds — Gaelic gets its full range of sounds by combining them, and by pairing every consonant with the vowels around it.
The letters
With the tree each letter was traditionally named after. The names are part of the history of the alphabet rather than something you will hear used, and sources disagree about some of the trees.
- Aaailmelmbroad vowel
- Bbbeithbirch
- Cccollhazel
- Dddairoak
- Eeeadhaaspenslender vowel
- Fffeàrnalder
- Gggortivy
- Hhuathhawthorn
- Iiioghyewslender vowel
- Llluisrowan
- Mmmuinvine
- Nnnuinash
- Oooirspindle treebroad vowel
- Pppeith bhogdowny birch
- Rrruiselder
- Sssuilwillow
- Ttteinegorse
- Uuurheatherbroad vowel
Not used in native words: j k q v w x y z
Eighteen letters
Ochd litrichean deug
Gaelic is written with eighteen letters: five vowels and thirteen consonants. There is no j, k, q, v, w, x, y or z in native words, yet Gaelic has a v sound, a y sound and plenty of k sounds — it simply spells them with other letters.
The letter h is a special case. It almost never begins a native word on its own; instead it is added after a consonant to change its sound (bh, ch, mh and so on), or joined with a hyphen to the front of a word for grammatical reasons, as in na h-Alba.
Borrowed words
Faclan iasaid
When Gaelic borrows a word, it usually respells it with its own eighteen letters, which is a good way to see how the letters behave.
- bhanVANvanThe v sound is written bh.
- tagsaidhTAK-seetaxiNo x, so the sound is spelled out as gs.
- bhidioVID-ee-ohvideo
- sùSOOzoo
A few recent loans, brand names and technical terms do keep their original letters, but they stand out as foreign in Gaelic text.
Broad and slender vowels
Fuaimreagan leathann is caol
The five vowels split into two groups. a, o and u are broad; e and i are slender. The group a vowel belongs to decides how the consonants next to it are pronounced, and it drives the most important spelling rule in the language.
Any vowel can carry a grave accent — à, è, ì, ò, ù — which makes it long. Consonants never carry an accent.
| Broad | Slender |
|---|---|
| a · à | e · è |
| o · ò | i · ì |
| u · ù |
See the letter rules for how broad and slender vowels govern spelling, and the sounds page for how they change pronunciation.
Looking words up
A' lorg fhaclan
Gaelic words change at the front, so a word you meet in a sentence is often not the form a dictionary lists. Before looking a word up, strip the grammatical changes back off:
- Remove an h written after the first consonant: look up bhràthair under bràthair.
- Remove a hyphenated prefix: look up t-uisge under uisge, and h-Alba under Alba.
- Remove dh' from the front of a verb: look up dh'òl under òl.