Borgstrøm's Word Lists: East Sutherland and Easter Ross Dialects in the Light of the Scottish Gaelic Dialect Survey

Abstract

This article surveys points of similarity between the Scottish Gaelic spoken in Easter Ross – a distinct dialect area not covered by Børgstrom’s 1942 study of Skye and Ross-shire Gaelic – and the dialects of East Sutherland / Caithness, features of which were identified by Nancy Dorian’s 1978 study of East Sutherland Gaelic and subsequently brought together in the Scottish Gaelic Dialect Survey published in the 1990s. Basing his study on two of Børgstrom’s word lists, the author identifies isogloss boundaries in light of SGDS data to help us towards a better understanding of the dialects of the Eastern Highlands.