Hi everyone. I hope my question is welcome here. I am doing heavy research for a fiction novel I'm writing that partially takes place in Medieval Scotland and revolves around a character from that time. I want whatever language I decide to use to be able to span any territory I write him from.

I found a source online that says this:

During years "600-900 Early Gaelic aka Old Irish" was spoken. Can you explain how this compares to the Irish/Gaelic we're able to use today? I want to know how the words I've used in my story will hold up to history, as I don't like the idea of straying so far from every true historical point. For example: will it be way too absurd to think someone used 'Go raibh maith agat' as thank you back around then or is it fine? I've also used the term 'Na fhlùir na h-Alba' and plan to use more simple phrases and words throughout.

Also, is it okay to simply refer to this language as Gaelic in the story or will that upset the speaking communities? (I know I have to make things up in fiction but again, I don't want to stray so far from the reality that it's ridiculous.)

I appreciate all time and input greatly!

quite the same difference as between Beowulf's English and today's English... ie. very different!



that sentence is in Modern irish spelling and anyway I doubt people would thank each other that way in Old Irish. A formula is attested in the old Irish texts:
Is buide lemm frit. = thank you (to one person)



doesn't look correct, did you mean "Scotland flowers"? if you did, then it should be flùraichean na h-Alba (in *Modern* Scots Gaelic).
In Old Irish I think it's : Blátha Alban



"Gaelic" is the normal name of Scottish Gaelic in English (normally Irish Gaelic is simply called "Irish") and anyway, at the time of Old Irish, Scottish Gaelic was just the same language as Irish (there might have been local differences but we don't know much about them) so I think "Gaelic" is fine.

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Is fearr Gaeilg na Gaeltaċta ná Gaeilg ar biṫ eile
Agus is í Gaeilg Ġaoṫ Doḃair is binne

My advice: you're watching too much TV and cinema.

Foreign languages are great on the screen, because they give a sensation of foreignness, enhancing the sense of immersion. On, TV you can have subtitles if the viewer is supposed to know what's going on, or you can have the viewer in suspense by leaving them wondering what was said, as a non-speaker in the situation would.

But on the page, it really doesn't work the same. Rather than enhancing the immersion it breaks it. Reading is an automatic process that activates the speech centres of the brain, so that you mentally "hear" the written sentence. You cannot hear a sequence of letters that have no meaning in your own language.

This leaves the reader consciously contemplating the written word and the illusion is broken.

I mean, seriously, consider the process you follow when reading the following:

Das funkzioniert nicht. No vale nada. Chan eil e na dheagh bheachd. Un credu chi é buona idea," said the grumpy man on the internet, trying to explain in four languages that it wasn't worth doing.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

What Niall says is basically true, but I saw this handled very well in a movie a few years ago, where only some characters were speaking Irish, and the approach they took could work in writing as well. As an example, in the movie a man was making a claim against an elderly woman in front of a judge (the details are unimportant), and the woman answered a question from him with Níl [a] fhios agam ("I don't know"). The man turned angrily to the judge (it was an informal court) and said something like "How can she say that she doesn't know? She knows very well." The idea was that the judge understood her perfectly, and this was not intended as a translation for the judge's benefit, but as furthering his complaint. It was a clever way to incidentally translate her words for the viewer, and since it was set in a time when many people still understood Irish, but were switching to speaking English, it made sense that he was speaking English himself.

Your situation would be somewhat different, since it would not make sense for any of the people truly to be speaking English (English was largely in its infancy then, at least at the beginning of your period), and you will presumably have to pick some other language as the "norm" (the language your English text represents). In the period 600-900, at least four languages were being spoken in what is now Scotland.

In the Hebrides, the west coast, and parts of the southwest, Gaelic had been introduced a few centuries before (or possibly earlier than that) by conquerors/settlers form Ireland. In other parts of the southwest, the people were still speaking a Brythonic/Cumbric language, related to (or possibly much the same as) the ancestor of modern Welsh, which is believed to have survived there for several more centuries, before ultimately being overwhelmed by Gaelic.

In the northeast, people were still speaking Pictish, which scholars now believe (after a lot of controversy) was also a Brythonic language. Pictish is believed to have died out soon after the end of your period, as the Gaelic and Pictish kingdoms merged (caused at least partially by the Viking invasions which disrupted their societies) and Gaelic then replaced Pictish in its homeland. If your story brings in the Vikings, then Norse would be a fifth language to take into account.

In the extreme southeast, Anglo-Saxon speakers started to settle during your period, and what later came to be called Scots (a Scottish relative of English) ultimately developed out of their speech. Even they were, however, taken over by Gaelic to some extent towards the end of your period, as the Gaelic kingdom continued to expand. The people in the southeast never became fully Gaelic-speaking, although it did become the language of government there, and many if not most of them would probably have learned it, at least to some extent, as a second language. After only 2-3 centuries, though, Gaelic started to decline there, and Scots began spreading out into the rest of the Lowlands, ultimately gaining the support of the monarchy and replacing Gaelic as the language of government, and spreading gradually throughout the Lowlands in a process that ended in some places only the 19th century, when English began spreading through the Highlands as well. In the later stages of this process, "true" Scots eventually lost out to more standard English, and few people in Scotland can actually speak real Scots any more.

Since your book is going to be largely in English, you will presumably have to choose one of those language groups to be the main one, and have them speak English instead of their true language, but that will give you the flexibility to play around with the others and have them speak their various languages, and having people translate for one another will make sense historically for that period, since they didn't all start speaking Gaelic at once. You could choose the Brythonic speakers as the "true" natives, and have people translate what the Gaelic speakers say, or vice versa. Little distinctively Pictish vocabulary is really known, so you won't be able to use their language much (except for place names), but you could also make them the "English" speakers, and then have people translating from both Gaelic and the southwestern Cumbric into "Pictish/English".

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I'm not a native (or entirely fluent) speaker, so be sure to wait for confirmations/corrections, especially for tattoos.

Now Fraoch, don't you wish you were just writing another book about vampires!

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Leuk tae this ae wee beukie ye'd micht weel lear something on it -
http://www.scotslanguage.com/news/Nov-2 ... the_Pechts

The place to start your 'research' would be wikipedia or a library. I can't see how we can enlighten you in a few answers if you of don't have some sort of basic knowledge

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

Sorry, but it wouldn't. You cannot read a language you cannot read, and nothing you can write after the unknown language can do anything to undo the breaking of the illusion. I advise all would-be ùr-sgeul sgriobhadairean to sttick to using faclan from their own cànan.

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A language belongs to its native speakers, and when you speak it, you are a guest in their homes.
If you are not a good guest, you have no right to complain about receiving poor hospitality.

What you could try is a glossary of common phatic elements (hello, goodbye, forms of address etc -basically social tokens) then use them in direct speech.

I'm not sure how it would work in practice, but it's an idea

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__̴ı̴̴̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡ ̡͌l̡*̡̡ ̴̡ı̴̴̡ ̡̡͡|̲̲̲͡͡͡ ̲▫̲͡ ̲̲̲͡͡π̲̲͡͡ ̲̲͡▫̲̲͡͡ ̲|̡̡̡ ̡ ̴̡ı̴̡̡ ̡͌l̡̡̡̡.___

There is an Old Welsh just as there is an Old Irish and Old English. That's pretty much what they spoke in the Middle Ages. We studied some of it at university - in fact it was that book that started me down the road to my dissertation.

Very hard to understand, by the way. The teacher had to translate the Old Welsh into Modern Welsh so we could comprehend what was written. We then had to do a bit of that same type of translation on our exams that year. Not my most positive exam experience.

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Pegi
Well behaved women seldom make history
My Welsh is good, my Irish is just beginning.