Deeside Gaelic is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Aberdeenshire until 1984. Unlike a lot of extinct dialects of Scottish Gaelic, it is relatively well attested. A lot of the work pertaining to Deeside Gaelic was done by Frances Carney Diack, and was expanded upon by David Clement, Adam Watson and Seumas Grannd.
Decline In Aberdeenshire, 18% of Crathie and Braemar and as much as 61% in Inverey were bilingual in 1891. By 1984, the dialect had died out.
Features in Deeside Gaelic In the mid-20th Century the Scottish Gaelic Dialect Survey was undertaken when there were still people who spoke Deeside Gaelic. Features of Deeside Gaelic include:
dropping of unstressed syllables; an example of this is the Word "Duine" becoming "duin'"SGDS vol. 3: 360 weakening of the /o/ to a /u/ sound, words such as "Dol" being pronounced closer to "Dul"SGDS vol. 5: 689 slender nn being pronounced like an English ng SGDS vol.2:167 mutation of f instead of being dropped is pronounced as a /v/ or /b/ or /p/ in SpeysideSGDS vol. 3: 384 dropping of -adh, words such as tuilleadh being recorded as tullSGDS vol.2: 133 conditional final stop; conditional tense was realised as a /g/ or /k/ sound in BraemarSGDS vol.3:281 shortening of words; words such as agaibh being pronounced closer to "aki" and cinnteach being shortened to cinnt SGDS vol.3: 281
References