and the manuscript. Alphabet The modern Scottish Gaelic alphabet has 18 letters: . is mostly used to indicate lenition of a consonant, it was not used in older writings, since lenition was indicated by an overdot. The letters of the alphabet were traditionally named after trees, but this custom has fallen out of use. Long vowels are marked with a grave accent (), indicated through digraphs (e.g. for ) or conditioned by certain consonant environments (e.g. preceding a non-intervocalic is ). Traditionally the acute accent was used on to represent long close-mid vowels, but the spelling reforms replaced it with the grave accent. Certain 18th century sources used only an acute accent along the lines of Irish, such as in the writings of Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair (1741–51) and the earliest editions (1768–90) of Duncan Ban MacIntyre. Example text Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Scottish Gaelic: Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood. Common words and phrases with Irish and Manx equivalents Note: Items in brackets denote archaic, dialectal or regional variant forms References Explanatory notes Citations Further reading Gillies, H. Cameron. (1896). Elements of Gaelic Grammar. Vancouver: Global Language Press (reprint 2006), (hardcover), (paperback) Gillies, William. (1993). "Scottish Gaelic", in Ball, Martin J. and Fife, James (eds). The Celtic Languages (Routledge Language Family Descriptions). London: Routledge. (paperback), pp. 145–227 Lamb, William. (2001). Scottish Gaelic. Munich: Lincom Europa, . (2007). – A Gaelic Thesaurus. Lulu Enterprises, North Carolina McLeod, Wilson (ed.). (2006). Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: Policy, Planning and Public Discourse. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, Robertson, Charles M. (1906–07). "Scottish Gaelic Dialects", The Celtic Review, vol. 3 pp. 97–113, 223–39, 319–32. External links – Scottish Gaelic language, music and news "Gaelic in Medieval Scotland: Advent and Expansion" by Thomas Owen Clancy, Sir John Rhys Memorial Lecture, 4 March 2009 Gaelic Resource Database – founded by Comhairle nan Eilean Siar Scottish Gaelic Swadesh list of basic vocabulary words (from Wiktionary's Swadesh-list appendix) – Dwelly's Gaelic dictionary online – 's links to pages in and about Scottish Gaelic DASG – The Digital Archive of Scottish Gaelic An Comunn's website Nova Scotia Office of Gaelic Affairs Articles containing video clips Endangered Celtic languages Fusional