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Faclair na Pàrlamaid / Dictionary of Terms
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Faclair na Pàrlamaid:Dictionary of Terms

FOREWORD

INTRODUCTION

Faclair na Pàrlamaid has been compiled and edited by a team established by The European Language Initiative (TELI), a non-political, non-profit body which specialises in producing dictionaries for public service. The main task of compiling the database was completed within the period of six months from July to December 2000. Editing and further consultation were completed thereafter.

This dictionary is not intended to be an erudite publication destined to sit on the bookshelf or be confined to libraries. Our aim has been to create a practical reference work that is as comprehensive and as user-friendly as possible within the time available for this first edition. We have included basic grammatical information for those who might find it useful in their work, but we have not overloaded the publication with linguistic data. Instead, we have preferred to support the entries where appropriate with examples of the language in action. In the English — Gaelic section, for example, we have given the genitive and plural forms of Gaelic nouns and the verbal noun form of Gaelic verbs. We trust that users will find these helpful. Parts of speech are shown in Gaelic beside Gaelic terms and in English beside English terms. Details of the abbreviations used for this purpose are listed after this foreword.

While seeking to arrive at a standardisation of terms, we have in certain instances included words in formal and informal registers where appropriate. Users will find formal terms suitable for use in Parliament, in committee work and documents such as Annual Reports, and informal terms suitable, for example, for use in general conversation and in the media.

At this initial stage in its development the Faclair contains the titles of Scottish Executive departments and their ministers in operation at the time we went to press. It contains the names of current Parliamentary committees. Changes of organisation and portfolio will result in changes of title as time passes, and it will be a continuing task to keep track of these changes and feed them into the database for future editions. Similarly, the Faclair contains the names of a number of Acts of Parliament, but it is not yet a comprehensive list. Expansion in these and other areas is a task for future editions.

We have included as many examples and collocations as time permitted as a practical guide to the use of the language. In style, our publication differs in some ways from other dictionaries. In its format and layout Faclair na Pàrlamaid is designed to be a working tool of the living language. The relatively generous spacing of the entries, for example, is deliberate. They are spaced so that users have room to add in their own notes. If you have useful terms, phrases or expressions relevant to Parliament that you find helpful, and which were not included at this stage, please send them to us to take into account as part of the consultation process.

STARTING POINT

The brief for the project contained two aims. The first was to create a dictionary of specialist terms relevant to Scotland’s Parliament. The second aim was "to consider issues which are related to ... [the] standardisation of Gaelic orthography."

TELI adopted as its starting point the need to build on the continuity established by the Gaelic Orthographic Conventions (GOC), published in 1981. We have taken the principles laid down by GOC as our starting point and followed them in this lexicon. It is our belief that there could be no logical alternative to this approach, which has been the basis on which children have been taught in schools for the past two decades. Any unreasonable departure from the conventions would have set back the progress of twenty years and led to widespread confusion.

In our work we were helped by the school dictionary, Brìgh nam Facal (published 1991), to the extent that it embodied the principles of GOC and was a useful guide to consistency in spelling. We also took into account further thinking on this subject, in particular the recommendations of the CALL project. (Edinburgh University, 1997)

In considering the question of orthography, we were glad to receive advice from colleagues on the Board of Celtic Studies on general issues, but most specifically on the subject of lenition and genitives in noun phrases. Users who are interested in such technical matters may find it helpful to have an outline of the principles that we have followed as a result of the advice received. A summary is given with practical examples after this foreword.

Our ability to address the question of orthography was necessarily limited by the time available to us. There remains much more to be done in this area, but we trust and believe that we have made a useful start in focusing on how GOC can be used and further developed to provide a sound basis on which to move forward in the future.

Aonta agus adhartas - THE EDINBURGH SEMINAR, NOVEMBER 2000

POINTS OF DETAIL

A seminar organised by Comunn na Gàidhlig and the project’s Management Group took place in Edinburgh in November 2000. Its aim was to achieve consensus and consistency — aonta agus adhartas. At the seminar a number of points were put forward by the TELI team for discussion. They were examined in working groups at the seminar and achieved almost unanimous approval. The points are outlined below.

1 Principle

We confirmed our support for the recommendations laid down in the Gaelic Orthographic Conventions of 1981. The dictionary developed under this project would embody those principles. We decided that it would be helpful to set out a number of key points as a reminder of GOC’s recommendations.

2 The grave accent

We recommended the use solely of the grave accent to denote a lengthened vowel sound.

3 The acute accent

The team recommended that the acute accent should be eliminated.

4 Specific example

We took the view that the term for "out of" should be written with the grave accent: "à / às", to denote the particular quality of the vowel sound.

5 Accents on capital vowels

It was noted that this question was not handled in GOC. The team believed that there could be no ‘halfway house’ in dealing with this issue, and that it would not be wise to adopt one rule, for example for placenames, and another rule for general vocabulary.

We considered the options and advocated using accents on upper case letters. Apart from technical word-processing considerations, where modern software facilitates the retention of these accents, we were influenced by two main thoughts:

a) it was unsound educationally and a potential cause of confusion to teach school pupils to remove accents on capitals that they had been taught to insert on lower case letters.

b) the correct pronunciation of many placenames would be jeopardised without the accents;

6 "na h-Alba" or "na h-Albann"?

The team recommended the use of "na h-Alba.

7 Hyphens, apostrophes and related spacing

Hyphenation should strictly follow GOC recommendations. There would be no hyphens, for example, in "an seo", "an sin" or "an siud" which should be kept as separate words, or in "carson" and "airson" which should be kept as single words. In terms such as "neach-rannsachaidh" it was noted that current practice retained the hyphen.

With regard to use of the apostrophe, it was noted that GOC makes allowance for dialectal variation. The team advocated retaining the space after the apostrophe where recommended. GOC accepts both "balla àrd" and "ball’ àrd", "duine òg" and "duin’ òg". It was our view that where appropriate, forms similar to "balla àrd" and "duine òg" should be the model for the Faclair as they represented the formal register and were therefore more suited to use in the context of Parliament.

8 Initial ‘t’ in irregular verb forms.

The team drew attention to the problem of spelling pronunciation and recommended that consideration be given to reinforcement of this point in schools.

9 "st" or "sd" , "sc" or "sd", "sp" or "sb"?

The team made the following recommendations in line with GOC.
st: should be used in initial, internal and final positions
sg: should be used in initial, internal and final positions
sp: should be used in initial and final positions, with sp / sb as alternatives in internal positions

It was recognised that in personal names the spelling is a matter of individual choice.

10 General recommendation

We believed that the time was right to relaunch GOC to the widest possible audience to achieve the greatest impact and consistency of orthography across all levels of the Gaelic educational system and this was a matter for the Scottish Qualifications Authority.

In our view it would be advantageous to expand GOC, and we recommended the production of a handbook on orthography for the guidance of all users of the language. Such a publication could, for example, contain advice on such matters as the style to be used when writing formal letters.

All the members of the editorial and management team are proud to be associated with the production of this first edition of the Faclair na Pàrlamaid. We hope and trust that it will prove to be a valuable support to users of Gaelic both inside and outwith Parliament, in education, the media and other areas of public life. We are delighted to have had the opportunity to play our part in the development of Scotland’s Parliament at a truly historic moment in the life of our country.

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