The modern Gaelic alphabet has 18 letters - Gaelic simply needs a smaller alphabet to make its sounds. To pronounce Gaelic words correctly you need to know what the sounds of the letters are, particularly the sounds of combinations of letters. Using his knowledge of the conventions of the language and not a little humour, George McLennan offers a straightforward guide to the Gaelic alphabet. Placenames and surnames are used to illustrate particular pronunciations, in the expectation that most people will be familiar with them. Each letter is discussed separately. Combinations of consonants, eg chd, are dealt with or referred to under the first letter. The vowels are then done in alphabetical order as are groups of vowels. Like its sucessful campanion volume Scots Gaelic an introduction to the basics, A Gaelic Alphabet will be of great help to learners and speakers of the language.

A Gaelic Alphabet: a guide to the pronunciation of Gaelic letters and words

Reference

McLennan, George

Words, Language & Grammar

New Argyll Publishing

The purpose of this book is to provide a brief introduction to the Gaelic language with a selective discussion of its main features. In contrast to native speakers, who absorb the language as children, adults who are learning Gaelic from scratch often derive much benefitfrom knowing why the language takes its shape.

Scots Gaelic: an introduction to the basics

This book sets out to illustrate the relationship between Gaelic and English words within the wider Indo-European context. Many Scots, finding Gaelic difficult, are unaware that much of Gaelic comes originally from the same source as English (and many other European languages), this origin being an early language of Europe and areas of the Indian sub-continent. Known as Indo-European, this long vanished language evolved in various ways to become the modern European languages we know today.

Gaelic and English: Their common origins

This book was written as a companion volume to the earlier Slogans Galore - Gaelic words in English. There has been quite a surge of interest in Scots in recent years after a long period of discouragement and neglect and this volume highlights the long intertwined history of the Scots language and Scottish Gaelic by examining words that have been borrowed into Scots over the centuries.

Gaelic Words in Scots

This book examines where Gaelic stands within the family of European languages, tracing its roots to Indo-European languages and showing how firmly it is established within them, rather than being a strange, unrelated outlier. He uses his knowledge of several modern and ancient languages to show the links between them, and to demonstrate the roots of Gaelic in particular. This book will help anyone interested in the history of Scots Gaelic to understand its place within this family of languages, and will be of interest to both the learner and the more experienced reader.

Scottish Gaelic and its European Cousins