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The Scottish Gaelic alphabet contains 18 letters, five of which are vowels. The letters are (Vowels in bold):
a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i, l, m, n, o, p, r, s, t, u
The five vowels also appear with grave accents, the absence or presence of which can change the meaning of a word drastically as in bàta (a boat) versus bata (a stick):
à, è, ì, ò, ù
Until recently, the acute accent was also used in some words, but was abolished. This is in contrast to Irish Gaelic which only uses the acute.
It is also increasingly common to see other Latin letters in loanwords, including v & z etc.
The alphabet is known as the aibidil in Scottish Gaelic, and formerly the Beith Luis Nuin from the old Ogham letter order, b,l,n etc.
Old names of letters (not in current use)
The old names of the letters were based upon the names of trees, but sometimes differ slightly from modern forms e.g. dair = darach, suil = seileach.
- A - ailm (elm)
- B - beith (birch)
- C - coll (hazel)
- D - dair (oak)
- E - eadha (ivy)
- F - feàrn (alder)
- G - gort ()
- H - uath (hawthorn)
- I - iogh ()
- L - luis (rowan)
- M - muin ()
- N - nuin (ash)
- O - onn (gorse)
- P - peith, also beith bhog (soft "b")
- R - ruis (elder)
- S - suil (willow)
- T - teine (whin, broom)
- U - ur (yew)
Another obsolete naming system was similar to many European ones, e.g. b would be 'beh', c would be 'ec' etc.
See also