Outlander Gaelic

[freep]

A hypothetical story.

Suppose someone, obviously from their name not of US descent, living in Chicago let's say, claimed to have recovered a moribund dialect of Western Apache on the basis of a single(!) contact. We cannot tell how idiosyncratic this contact may be but our hero recognises his speech as one of 200 such dialects that he somehow knows once existed. He has no recognised linguistic credentials or contact with academic or other agencies involved in Native American language preservation and indeed despises the main such agencies (possibly because they commented adversely on his theories). A Scottish film company is conned into choosing him as language coach for a "cowboys 'n Indians" series they are producing.

Maybe you have to live in Scotland to see the funny side of this. Since the storyline is part fantasy, maybe it all makes sense.

Alan

Perhaps you're right.

An aside:
I'm not sure how you would determine someone was not of US descent based upon their name, given our history of immigration. ;)

Now if you were to say a name denoting they were not of Native American descent. . . well, no. That wouldn't work either.

You see a large percentage of Natives were given names not their own by Anglo census takers. Often quite randomly. The Duck Valley Shoshone Reservation for example has quite a few families with the surname "Bill." There are variations--Long Bill, Tall Bill, Short Bill, Fat Bill Skinny Bill, etc. Now, some 140 years after the original census of the Duck Valley Rez was taken, There are still in addition to the noted variations, eight or ten families with the surname, Bill, none related in any meaninful degree of consanguinity. All that not to mention all the Smiths, Jones, Washingtons, Jeffersons and so on that were arbitrarily foisted off on those people all because an 18 year old private soldier could not take the time to spell names like Munibitc, Kăngwasi gweak or Tinewahkin. Then there's the issue of intermarriage--my chiropractor is of the Cahuilla Nation and is named Garcia, my daughter's brother in law is a Lakota named Grule'.

Back to business.
I know that across Great Britain there are many dialects of English and at least two versions of Cymraeg still in use which gives rise to a few questions.

As regards Gaelic generally:
Do you know how many and what dialects of Scots Gaelic are still spoken?
Have there then been 200 dialects identified overall or does that figure include only currently spoken dialects?
Are all those dialects mutually intelligible?
Are there original sources written in Gaelic extant?
If so, are dialects recognizable in these texts or is there a "court" dialect?
How different is the so-called Dalriada Dialect from other dialects in the Argyll area?
How different is it from those spoken there now?

As regards Outlander:
Is the Gaelic spoken on the show authentic and do we know enough about what dialects were spoken around Inverness in the mid 18th century to be able to tell?
Is the Gaelic spoken on the show understandable to a modern Gaelic speaker?
Are the broad Scots accents used correct to place?
Are they true to accents used in the 18th century or do we simply not know what those sounded like?

As regards reviving hitherto little known Native American Languages here's an article that might be of interest:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...e-people-came/

Lastly, I came across a mention of the Dalriada Dialect of Gaelic in the Transactions of the Gaelic Society of Inverness, Volume XXI -- 1896-1897, page 207. Oh, and also in The Dean of Lismore's Book, Edmundson and Douglas, Edinburgh, 1862, introduction page xxviii. Of course both of these reference ancient use of the dialect and it could have died out completely in the interim. Moreover, Robbie MacVicar might well be lying.