I am searching my family tree and have hit a brick wall. My 4th great grandmother was from Argyll/Islay Scotland which I know from records. As far as her husband the records here in the USA only say Scotland. It makes it difficult finding any records on him in his homeland. A relative that knew both said they had different accents from each other. I figured that I could rule out areas of search for my my 4 great grandfather with this information.

Back in 1829 how many different dialects of Gaelic were spoken in Scotland? What dialect was spoken in Argyll / Islay? Does anyone have a map of the areas that each dialect was spoken in that time period? This information would be really helpful.

Thank You
Danyel

I'm not an expert on dialects, but there's a lot of Gaelic info online, and I know I've seen a dialect map or two somewhere. Modern Scottish Gaelic has more or less merged into one dialect, with some lingering regional differences in pronunciation and vocabulary, but there was once an entire range of dialects, which were actually part of a continuum from the south of Ireland across the Isle of Man and up through most of Scotland. I'm not sure how you plan to use dialect info in your genealogical research, unless you have some old info about how your respective ancestors spoke Gaelic, but I can help with some info.

There are several pronunciation features which used to distinguish different dialects, but which have now spread almost everywhere that Gaelic is still spoken. Two big ones are these:
-- the sibilant ("sh") sound which occurs within the consonant combinations "rt" and "rd", which end up sounding like "rsht" (as in the word ard), and
-- "pre-aspiration", which is the guttural sound occurring before p, t, and k in some cases.

I have a pdf document with maps showing the former distribution of those sounds and some others, which I could send you if you send me a message with an email address to use (I can't load the pdf here). None of them are exactly dialect maps, but I if you have some other info to use, they may be helpful. There used to be a link to this document online, but it's now broken.

Wikipedia has an article about Gaelic which briefly discusses dialects, but without a lot of detail:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic_language

Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, the Gaelic college on the Isle of Skye, has a web site with extensive links to online info at:
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/english.html
Unfortunately, some of the links are broken or outdated, and I notice that the link for info re dialects is one of the broken ones. You may be able to contact someone through one of the numerous other links who can guide you better than I can to specific info about older dialects

There are also a lot of links at the Gaelic Reference page: http://home.comcast.net/~kimurho/fios.html
but I don't see anything specifically about the history of dialects.

Sorry that i couldn't be of more help, but if i find any additional info, I'll post it.

_________________
I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

I know for sure my 4th great grandma was from argyll / islay. So I guessed I wanted to start with what dialect was spoken there around the 1820's. Then find out what other areas the dialect was spoken in also. That would rule out some areas that I don't need to search for my grandfather. Because it was said they had extremely different accents from one another. How the accents differed I do not know. I have searched for maps but the ones I have found only show recent languages in Scotland. I have not been able to find information about the 1820's.

Thank you for your response!

my email address is ghettobarbie at gmail dot com

Hi dc5anyel,

The Argyll dialects are quite different from other Scottish Gaelic dialects. The dialect of Islay (a sub-dialect of the Argyll dialect) would be the most distinctive of the Argyll family and is the Scottish Gaelic dialect closest to Irish.

What kind of information do you want about the dialects?

_________________
The dialect I use is Cork Irish.
Ar sgáth a chéile a mhairid na daoine, lag agus láidir, uasal is íseal

Well I guess that makes sense with what was said about my 4th Great Grandparents and them having very different accents. I wanted to know where each different dialect was spoken in Scotland in the 1820's. I figured it might help me track down the area of Scotland that my Great Grandfather was from. As I said before I have had trouble finding any records on him prior to coming to the united states.

Thank You for the information!

I've emailed you the document I promised. Lon Dubh is undoubtedly a much better source of info than I am, but if I come across something else useful, I'll let you know.

_________________
I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Awe thank you very much! I really appreciate everyone's help.

Have a Great Day
Danyel