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Quotes on #Sutherland #Gàidhlig dialects:
"The Gaelic of Sutherlandshire in general, and of the Reay Country in particular, may be termed the Doric of Gaelic dialects, and this feature is due to the fact that we came more under Norse influence than our southern neighbours"
"The Gaelic of Sutherlandshire in general, and of the Reay Country in particular, may be termed the Doric of Gaelic dialects, and this feature is due to the fact that we came more under Norse influence than our southern neighbours"
"(...) and had not a standard of written Gaelic like the south-west of Argyll to counteract the foreign influence." - Rev. Adam Gunn, 1888
He goes on to note some features of Mackay Country Gaelic & draws links with Iceland.
He goes on to note some features of Mackay Country Gaelic & draws links with Iceland.
"The name for a bull in the east of Iceland is tuddi; when a Reay Country herd has occasion to call this animal towards him, his expression is tuadhi, tuadhi - the usual changes being made, those of dipthongisation and aspiration"
"The dairymaid's call in Iceland is kuskus, kuskus, kuskus (root seen in Scot. qu-ey); that of the Reay Country maid is husgus, husgus, husgus"
"In driving away cattle, the Reay country herd makes use of a word which, phonetically spelled, woulda ppear as tirrhi - the voice resting on the r. The Norse 'to drive' is trrrhi"
"Again, our fish names are nearly all of Norse origin"
"Again, our fish names are nearly all of Norse origin"
"All along the north and east coast of Sutherland, the name for cod is cilig from keila, the gadus longus of the Norse Edda; in Assynt it is trosg. Further examples are cnudan, geddag, lang, sgait, from Norse cnudr, gedda, langa etc."
"It would seem that the east and north of Sutherland came to a much larger extent under Norse sway, chiefly because more fertile and accessible than the wilds of Assynt"
Rev. Charles M. Robertson also wrote in 1902:
"Sutherland Gaelic has come in contact with Norse influence directly of old, and also indirectly to some extent, through the Norse element in Caithness speech."
"Sutherland Gaelic has come in contact with Norse influence directly of old, and also indirectly to some extent, through the Norse element in Caithness speech."
"It has also come in contact, it must be remembered, with English, through intercourse with Caithness, and through military service; and in the case of Sutherland proper, through Dunrobin Castle, and perhaps, migrations from the other side of the Moray Firth should be added"
"As Sutherland Gaelic, like other dialects, has its peculiarities, so anyone desirous to account for them has a choice of influences to attribute them. A knowledge of Lewis Gaelic and of Caithness English are amongst the desiderata for reliable explanation."
Note - when Gunn wrote this in the 1880s there was a popular idea that Scots (what he refers to as Doric here - I presume not specifically just the North-East dialects but Scots in general) - had the character it has due to Norse influence
But we know now that for the most part most features in the Scots language can be traced back to Middle English and earlier, rather than direct Norse influence
