Gaelic/Resources

Free Resources

Online Courses

• Duolingo – a good introduction to Scottish Gaelic, and good for learners who prefer more interactive learning. The course content is created by native speakers of several dialects and includes a section on Nova Scotia. The Scottish Gaelic Duolingo course uses audio recordings done by native speakers of different dialects. The course also includes very good notes when using the website version (the notes aren’t available in the mobile app though).
  • An external website with the tips and notes as a single page
• Glossika – a space repetition learning course that offers multiple languages. Scottish Gaelic is one of the free languages it provides.
• LearnGaelic.scot – a website combining several good resources for learning Scottish Gaelic, it includes:
  • LearnGaelic Beginner’s Course – an interactive course based on modified Irish language course called Buntús Cainte,
  • Little by Little – another interactive beginner’s course,
  • Speaking Our Language – a video course for beginners (A1 and A2) and intermediate (B1 and B2) learners.
• Speak Gaelic – an online learning platform and video course launched in 2021, besides video materials, it has online lessons and PDF learning materials.

Dictionaries

• Am Faclair Beag – the online Gaelic dictionary, it contains entries from old Faclair Dwelly as well as its own entries with phonemic transcription and sometimes recordings. It also provides inflection tables for irregular verbs. But it uses Gaelic abbreviations and the interface isn’t very friendly, so it might be hard to use at the beginning.
• LearnGaelic.scot Dictionay – the dictionary part of the LearnGaelic.scot website – it contains most of Am Faclair Beag entries and it has its own recordings.
• Wiktionary – Wiktionary is a multi-lingual dictionary. It includes definitions, etymology, pronounciation, usage notes, inflections, related terms, etc.
• English—Gaelic Dictionary / Faclair Bun-tomhasach Beurla—Gàidhlig by Roy Wentworth – a never-finished English-Gaelic dictionary with lots of usage examples, in a MS Word doc format.
• An Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language by Alexander MacBain, 1911 – an old but still useful etymological dictionary of modern Scottish Gaelic.

See also below for dictionaries of specific dialects. Some of them might work well as general Gaelic dictionaries too!

Grammar

• Akerbeltz Wiki Beagan gràmair – a collection of Michael ‘Akerbeltz’ Bauer’s articles about various points of Gaelic grammar, history, and phonology.
• Guide to Scottish Gaelic to be, the linking verbs: substantive bi, tha & the copula is on this wiki.

Media

Videos

• Gaelic with Jason – great video lessons on Youtube.
• BBC Alba

Radio

• BBC Radio nan Gàidheal

Podcasts

• Gàidhlig na Cagailte (the Hearth Gaelic, the Fireside Gaelic) – podcasts with native speakers talking in a casual manner, with transcripts of the full episodes (so you can read along while listening to it), and a separate audio and text files with grammar notes and explanations of various expressions and dialectal forms used by the speakers.

Websites

• LearnGaelic.scot – a great collection of learning materials for Scottish Gaelic, including courses, dictionary, reading material, etc. (see other sections here)
• Akerbeltz Wiki Beagan gràmair – a collection of Michael ‘Akerbeltz’ Bauer’s articles about various points of Gaelic grammar, history, and phonology

Paid For Resources

Grammar and textbooks

• Scottish Gaelic in Twelve Weeks, Roibeard Ó Maolalaigh, 2008 – a popular grammar-heavy textbook, don’t expect to finish it in twelve weeks though.
• Cothrom Ionnsachaidh: A Chance to Learn Scottish Gaelic Grammar, Ronald Black, 1997 – another grammar-heavy textbook also providing IPA-based phonetic transcriptions.
• Gaelic Verbs Systemised and Simplified, Colin B.D. Mark, 2006 – a good overview of Gaelic verbs and their inflection patterns and usage, with a lot of sentence examples and notes on their grammar.

Dictionaries

• The Gaelic-English Dictionary, Colin B.D. Mark, 2003 – a comprehensive modern dictionary of Gaelic, you can also preview and search it for free in Google Books (but the number of pages you’ll be allowed to read is limited).

Online courses

• Taic – Scottish Gaelic grammar lessons online, first 10 lessons are freely available as a preview, but to access the rest of the site you need to request a login credentials and make a donation after 2 months if you want to keep using it.

Dialects

Wester Ross (Ros an Iar)

• Rannsachadh air Fòn-eòlas Dualchainnt Ghàidhlig Gheàrrloch, Siorrachd Rois, Roy Wentworth, 2005 – Wentworth’s PhD thesis about Gairloch Gaelic phonology, very thorough, written in Scottish Gaelic. The PDF file hosted on the DIAS website doesn’t have a correct character map (it’s not possible to search or copy text in it), but there is a fixed file available.
• Faclan is Abairtean à Ros an Iar by Roy Wentworth, 2003 – another unfinished but very good English–Gaelic dictionary, with Gairloch-specific phonemic transcriptions of words and phrases and lots of usage examples, this will work as a good general En–Gd dictionary as well. Available in MS Word doc format.