Isle of Arran - Gaelic

Gaelic

Gaelic was still spoken widely on Arran at the beginning of the 20th century. The 1901 Census reported 25-49% Gaelic speakers on the eastern side of the island and 50-74% on the western side of the island. By 1921 the percentage for the whole island had dropped to less than 25%. From then onwards, the number of speakers fell into the vague 0-24.9% bracket. However, Nils Holmer quotes the Féillire (a Gaelic almanack) reporting 4,532 inhabitants on the island in 1931 with 605 Gaelic speakers, showing that Gaelic had declined to about 13% of the population. It continued to decline until the last native speakers of Arran Gaelic died in the 1990s. The 1.6% Gaelic speakers in the 1991 Census and the 1.5% in the 2001 Census represent Gaelic speakers from other areas settling on the island.

Arran Gaelic is reasonably well documented. Holmer carried out fieldwork on the island in 1938, reporting Gaelic being spoken by "a fair number of old inhabitants". He interviewed 53 informants from various locations and his description of the dialect, The Gaelic of Arran, was published in 1957 and runs to 211 pages of phonological, grammatical and lexical information. The Survey of the Gaelic Dialects of Scotland, which collected Gaelic dialect data in Scotland between 1950 and 1963 also interviewed 5 native speakers of Arran Gaelic.

The Arran dialect falls firmly into the southern group of Gaelic dialects (referred to as the "peripheral" dialects in Celtic studies) and thus shows:

• a glottal stop replacing an Old Irish hiatus, e.g. rathad 'road' /rɛʔət̪/ (normally /rˠa.ət̪/)
• the dropping of /h/ between vowels e.g. athair 'father' /aəɾ/ (normally /ahəɾʲ/)
• the preservation of a long l, n and r, e.g. fann 'weak' /fan̪ˠː/ (normally /faun̪ˠ/ with diphthongisation).

The most unusual feature of Arran Gaelic is the /w/ glide after labials before a front vowel, e.g. maith 'good' /mwɛh/ (normally /mah/).

Mac an Tàilleir (2003) notes that the island has a poetic name Arainn nan Aighean Iomadh - "Arran of the many stags" and that a native of the island or Arainneach is also nicknamed coinean mòr in Gaelic, meaning "big rabbit". Locally, Arainn was pronounced /ɛɾɪɲ/.