Language

[macneighill]

There are many resources for learning Gaelic online, but I can only lead you to Irish Gaelic. To find Scottish Gaelic sites, you might want to turn to your friend Google.

Here, try these
http://www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/alba/f...ic/index.shtml
http://www.gaelic4parents.com/
http://www.smo.uhi.ac.uk/gaidhlig/ionnsachadh/bac/

[Casey_in_Carolina]

Many thanks for all the informative replies. Looks like I'll be doing a good bit of reading in the near future, and trying to pick up what I can.

Take care all,

Casey

[Phil]

I take it you were asking about the language rather than the pronunciation. As Highlander Daz says, accent varies from region to region across Scotland. I well remember laughing my head off in a Walt Disney World show at the Magic Kingdom about Presidents where one of them was speaking to John Muir about the Yellowstone Park. The accent they had given Muir was Para Handy meets Brigadoon - totally unlike an East Lothian accent. Scots is a distinct language, however, with its own words and grammar and is spoken from the South West where P1M lives up to the North east around Aberdeen. Inverness, where Highlander Daz is, is fringing on the more Gaelic-speaking area of the North West and Islands and I don't know if Scots is so widely spoken there. For someone brought up among Scots speakers there is something about the language which expresses things much more meaningfully than English can. A "wee shilpit buddy" translates as a "poor undernourished sickly-looking little person", "yon auld boy's a bit dyted" means that old man is a bit confused(lost his marbles), a "snell wind" is a cold, biting wind that seems to cut right through you. This is quite distinct from writing English phonetically which is what, by and large, P1M does to reflect a Scottish accent. I am sure if you search here there are earlier posts about Scots and if you Google Scots or Lallans you will find other resources about the language.