Outlander Wardrobe and language

[figheadair]

Thing I was thinking about, regarding Outlander, is that the boundary between Scots and Gaelic would have been much further south in 1743 than today. Would that have meant Gaelic speakers learning their English from Scots speakers, rather than from Standard English speakers as it has been in the more recent past?

The other thing to bear in mind is that in the mid-18th century there were several Gaelic dialects that have effectively disappeared; Perthshire for instance. Until the late 1800s the Gaelic 'border' in my part of the country was a mile or so north and west of Crieff and both languages would have been spoken locally, both by some, a few solely Gaelic and the majority would have been mostly English speakers by then. And in each case the accent would have been Perthshire/Central Highlands. In Prebble's Mutiny he cites an example of a Highlander being quizzed about what another might have said: the former claimed that he did not fully understand the latter's Gaelic which is entirely possible. Uist Gaelic for example, is much more lilting than that of the mainland and probably has its intonation heavily influenced by Norse. It’s quite possible for a mainland speaker would not easily understand a Uist Gael until he’d got his ear in so to speak.