Scottish Gaelic alphabet

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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

The acute accent is also used on some vowels:

á, é, ó

Since the 1980s the acute accent has not been used in Scottish high school examination papers, and many publishers have adopted the Scottish Qualifications Authority's orthographic conventions for their books.^[1] The acute accent is still used in most Scottish universities (and several Scottish academics remain vociferously opposed to the SEB's conventions) and by a minority of Scottish publishers, as well as in Canada.

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 first three letters of the Ogham alphabet: b, l, n.

[edit] Traditional names of the letters

The letters were traditionally named after trees and other plants. Some of the names differ from their modern equivalents (e.g. dair > darach, suil > seileach).

• ailm (elm),
• beith (birch),
• coll (hazel),
• dair (oak),
• eadha (aspen),
• feàrn (alder),
• gort (ivy),
• uath (hawthorn),
• iogh (yew)
• luis (rowan),
• muin (vine)
• nuin (ash)
• onn/oir (furze/gorse)
• ngetal ("reed")
• ruis (elder),
• suil (willow),
• teine (holly),
• ura (heather/linden),

Another obsolete naming system was similar to many European ones, e.g. b would be 'beh', c would be 'ec' etc.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] References

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