Mid-Minch Gaelic

Mid-Minch Gaelic
Spoken in	Northwest Highlands, Western Isles
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Scottish Gaelic Mid-Minch Gaelic
Writing system	Gaelic alphabet (Latin script)
Language codes
ISO 639-3	–

Mid-Minch Gaelic^[1][2] (Scottish Gaelic: Gàidhlig meadhan na mara^[1]) is a term used to describe a developing over-regional form of Scottish Gaelic loosely based on the surviving dialects of Scottish Gaelic with considerable numbers of speakers. It has also been referred to by a number of other names, such as Standard Hebridean,^[3] BBC Gaelic^[2] or Standard Gaelic^[4] (Gàidhlig bhun-tomhasach^[4]).

These are mostly concentrated around the North-West Highlands and Islands, including Wester Ross, the Outer Hebrides and Skye. As these cluster around The Minch, this variety has been dubbed Mid-Minch Gaelic. The Gaelic term Gàidhlig meadhan na mara ("Mid-sea Gaelic") is somewhat wider and can be seen to incorporate varieties of Gaelic spoken further south, such as Tiree, Coll, Mull or Islay.

As is generally the case with dialect levelling, this process is fuelled both by the emergence of Gaelic mass-media such as Radio nan Gàidheal and BBC Alba, Gaelic medium education, the decline of the so-called peripheral dialects (e.g. East Sutherland or Perthshire) and the change in demographics towards urbanisation, leading to dialect mixing.

References

1. ^ ^{a b} "Am Faclair Beag". http://www.faclair.com/. Retrieved 5 July 2011. 
2. ^ ^{a b} Lamb, Will A diachronic account of Gaelic news-speak: The development and expansion of a register (1998) Edinburgh Occasional Papers in Linguistics
3. ^ Black, Ronald (2006). Cothrom Ionnsachaidh. Edinburgh. ISBN 0906981336. 
4. ^ ^{a b} Bauer, Michael (2011). Blas na Gàidhlig: The Practical Guide to Scottish Gaelic Pronunciation. Glasgow: Akerbeltz. ISBN 978-1907165009.