Outlander Gaelic

[neloon]

freep,
I think you have the general picture. I will try to answer some of your questions.
First, what is a dialect? Is it defined by pronunciation, or vocabulary, or grammar. How many use it? A lot has to do with some degree of geographic separation. Gaelic pronunciation varies considerably - Lewis is particularly different from the rest, but Deeside, isolated by the Grampians, seems also to have had definable characteristics. Vocabulary varies principally in relation to borrowed words and that will depend on what the external contact was e.g. via cattle drovers or by visiting East coast fishing boats. The Gaelic of today has to cope with modern terminology so some people will say "na computairean" and others "na computers", but unnecessary English borrowings are increasingly prevalent - "seomar" has widely been replaced by "rum" (room). Teenagers on Lewis will commonly say "rialaidh math" (really good) instead of "gle mhath".
Nowadays, there are really no dialects of Gaelic so there is no question of mutual non-intelligibility and even Irish Gaelic is quite easily understood by Scots Gaelic speakers. In the past, Gaelic was not much written down and orthography was very variable but is now reasonably standardised
http://www.sqa.org.uk/sqa/files_ccc/...tions-En-e.pdf
So we cannot possibly say that there have been 200 dialects of Gaelic since the language has had to absorb from Pictish, Norse, Scots etc. and these historical developments have simply produced an evolving continuum with little point in recognising arbitrary divisions. Placename studies underline some of these points.

I think I should stop now!
Alan