Ionnsaich Gàidhlig
Learn Scottish Gaelic
Eight short guides to how the language works. The first four build on each other, so if you are new to Gaelic, start with the alphabet and read them in order; the numbers, and then the time and dates, can be picked up at any point, asking questions once you have met tha in the grammar, and names, places and sayings whenever you like. Every example has a listen button.
The eighteen letters, broad and slender vowels, the accent, and how to look a word up.
Open alphabetThe handful of spelling rules that explain almost every Gaelic word.
- Slender with slender, broad with broad
- The accent makes a vowel long
- Adding an h: lenition
- Hyphenated t- and h-
- Apostrophes mark a dropped letter
- Capital letters
How the letters are pronounced, and the combinations that catch out English speakers.
- Reading this page
- Short and long vowels
- Vowel pairs
- Broad and slender consonants
- The r sounds
- b, d, g and p, t, c
- Consonants with h
- ll, nn and m
- Consonant clusters
- Helper vowels
The core patterns of the language, from word order to comparatives.
- The verb comes first
- The verb to be: tha
- The other verb to be: is
- Saying not, and asking
- Answering yes and no
- Personal pronouns
- Prepositional pronouns
- More prepositional pronouns
- My, your, his and her
- The article: the
- On the table: prepositions with the
- Of the: the genitive
- What causes lenition
- Talking to someone: a Sheumais
- Adjectives
- Masculine or feminine, and plurals
- Regular verbs
- Doing it: verbal nouns and objects
- Irregular verbs
- Would: the conditional
- It was done: the passive
- Numbers
- Bigger, smaller, better
- Going out, being out
Counting to ten and past it: the counting forms, the old system of twenties, the separate numbers for people, and the ordinals.
- Counting to ten
- Counting things
- Eleven to twenty
- Counting in twenties
- Counting people
- First, second, third
- Numbers in everyday use
Telling the time, morning and evening, the days of the week, the months, and saying the date.
- What time is it?
- Past and to
- Morning and evening
- The days of the week
- The months
- Saying the date
- Yesterday, today and tomorrow
Who, what, where, when, why and how: the question words, and which form of the verb each one takes.
- The question words
- Which form of the verb follows
- With other verbs
- Why not?
- The short forms you will hear
- What time, what age, what day
- How many, how much, how big
- Whose, from where, to whom
- Answering
Gaelic first names and surnames, how to read the place names on the map, and the proverbs every learner meets.
Open names, places and sayings