Southern Hebridean dialect group
group of dialects of Scottish Gaelic
The Southern Hebridean dialect group is a group of dialects of Scottish Gaelic. The Southern Hebridean dialects are spoken in the Outer Hebrides south of Lewis, that being the islands of Harris, Uist and Barra, as well as surrounding smaller islands such as Berneray and Eriskay. The dialect of Skye is closely related to this dialect group and shares many of its features, as are the west coast mainland dialects of Glenelg, Mallaig and Arisaig.
The group is generally subdivided dialectally into its individual islands, though the distinction between the individual Uist islands is less clear.
Phonological characteristics
Back realisation of /u/, compared to the central realisation as [ʉ] found in Lewis.
Preaspiration is a strong [h] before t and p, and [x] or [ç] before c.
In Uist and Barra the sequences lc and rc feature preaspiration, e.g. olc 'evil' /ɔl̪ˠxk/, but in Harris it is unaspirated as in Lewis.
Presence of voiced plosive consonants in certain post-nasal situations, e.g. an cat 'the cat' [ə ˈŋɡʰaht̪].
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This entry incorporates text from “Southern Hebridean dialect group” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.