CommanderK Bilingual Triglot Newbie Israel melearninglanguages. Joined 4969 days ago 24 posts - 25 votes Speaks: Modern Hebrew*, Russian*, English Studies: German
| Message 1 of 3 02 April 2011 at 1:49pm | IP Logged |
Which is better to learn and can they understand each other?
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Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 5791 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh
| Message 2 of 3 03 April 2011 at 6:57pm | IP Logged |
"Better"? That's a dangerous word.
(Scottish) Gaelic has fewer verb tenses, and a slightly simpler set of sound changes, but on the other hand verbs are slightly more regular in Irish than in Gaelic.
They're quite different from each other for the most part, although certain dialects of one sound like dialects of the other. In some respects, they're about as similar as Italian and Spanish -- knowing one makes the other much easier to learn. In both pairs Italian/Spanish and Gaelic/Irish, some speakers of one claim to have few problems understanding the other, but other speakers don't understand a word of the other.
Many older Scottish Gaels used to listen to Irish radio before BBC Scotland started broadcasting in Gaelic, but it's hard to say whether this is proof of mutual comprehensibility, or just the result of a lot of time spent listening.
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Enkidu Bilingual Triglot Newbie Ireland Joined 4872 days ago 3 posts - 7 votes Speaks: English*, Irish*, Spanish Studies: French
| Message 3 of 3 05 April 2012 at 8:01pm | IP Logged |
As a speaker of Irish Gaelic, I would say that Scottish Gaelic is easy enough
to understand when written down, but quite hard to understand in speech. The Scots Gaelic
I can understand the most is the Isle of Lewis.
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