agus/is

[neoni]

d is the pre-goc way (i believe), and people often drop vowels off the end of words

[faoileag]

I'm a great fan of Runrig's Gaelic songs. In Sona, on the latest album, they sing:

Sona 'n-dràsd' tha mi - joyful am I

(about the upsurge in Gaelic language and music among the young people in the Fèis movement).

Deagh cheòl.
Deagh fhacail.
Deagh theachdaireachd.

Èist an seo:

http://lastfm.spiegel.de/music/Runrig/_/Sona

[GunChleoc]

A bheil thu a' coimhead air Haraidh Crèadhadair?

Sorry, a little Runrig fan in-joke

[faoileag]

Chan eil - tha m a' coimhead air fear fada nas fheàrr an àite!

[Stìophan]

d is the pre-goc way (i believe), and people often drop vowels off the end of words

Personally I prefer the pre-GOC way as it suits Gaelic phonetics better, I think changing medial and final d's to t's is suiting English speakers more than Gaelic speakers!

[GunChleoc]

I prefer the d too, because you have no preaspiration in these cases.

Chan eil - tha m a' coimhead air fear fada nas fheàrr an àite!

Cò bhios ann?

[Cèid]

d is the pre-goc way (i believe), and people often drop vowels off the end of words

Personally I prefer the pre-GOC way as it suits Gaelic phonetics better, I think changing medial and final d's to t's is suiting English speakers more than Gaelic speakers!

Is that's the official reason? Or are theses spelling changes that have crept into the common usage over time and more or less OK'd by the GOC? If so, why are some words like gasda still spelled the same?

I don't know enough about Gàidhlig history to form an opinion of these sorts of things. But I have a couple of resources that are pre-GOC and so use the old system of accents (with the é and ó - Akerbeltz sticks by them too). I can undertand when other people say that the older system better clarifies pronounciation, because it certainly clarifies it for me, someone who started learning Gàidhlig with only the most limited amount of prior exposure to the language. In this sense, it seems to me Gàidhlig did move towards English common usage to a small extent, as it introduces a kind of English-like ambiguity about vowel pronounciation, although it's still nowhere nearly as much ambiguity as English has.

[Níall Beag]

I've personally never seen any justification for the GOC guidelines, and that really annoys me.

The GOC was done by the Scottish exam board. I don't know any of the people on the team and I don't know why they made the recommendations they did. Amn't I intelligent enough to understand their reasons?

Also, while I didn't do Gaelic at school, I did take several exams in other subjects from Scottish exam board, and I was never impressed with the papers....

[neoni]

's toil leamsa GOC

[Gràisg]

cha bu chòir dhut a bhith mì-GhOCail sna deuchainnan nas motha!

[Stìophan]

I've personally never seen any justification for the GOC guidelines, and that really annoys me.

The GOC was done by the Scottish exam board. I don't know any of the people on the team and I don't know why they made the recommendations they did. Amn't I intelligent enough to understand their reasons?

Also, while I didn't do Gaelic at school, I did take several exams in other subjects from Scottish exam board, and I was never impressed with the papers....

That sounds about right - changes made to suit people whose first language is ENGLISH, not Gaelic! If we carry on and let these morons ruin the language Gaelic will end up with a totally Anglicised spelling system like Manx!!!!

I mean there's absolutely no way English would have any spelling changes to suit say, Polish speakers learning it!

[Níall Beag]

's toil leamsa GOC

Pah! Air sgàths gu bheil thu cho òg. Nuair a bhios tu nad "grumpy old man" mar mise, bithidh thu a' gearan mu a dheidhinn cuideachd!

Seriously though:
air son was changed to airson, yet we still write air mo shon etc.
Intuitively, that looks confusing. Until and unless they give an official explanation of why it's not confusing, I will continue to believe it was a stupid decision.

é and ó and è and ò
Ground already covered sufficiently.

á -> à
Mo chreach!
The sound á only exists in a few words -- "Có ás a bheil thu?" -- and it's not a long sound! It's a short, clear sound. The difference is even more distinct from the famous é/è ó/ò cases.

So why the GOC?

Well, the Scottish Exam Board had found that they couldn't mark "consistently" because there was no consistent spelling.
What that really means was that they couldn't mark people down for spelling mistakes -- because there was no such thing.
Of course, no-one really understood the advice that SEB had written, so the SQA had to clarify and update them a few years ago.

The GOC can be summarised thus:
The rewriting, by teachers, of a badly-written set of spelling mistakes made by teachers.

I think I've found my new signature.

[neoni]

's toil leam litreachadh na gàidhlig ellan vannin cuideachd

[Níall Beag]

I prefer the d too, because you have no preaspiration in these cases.

I have two problems with that:

The rule is inconsistent: there are other consonant clusters that block preaspiration that haven't been banned by The Teachers (mar eiseamplair: RD, RT).

And aside from preaspiration, what about post-aspiration? I thought that T was post-aspirated and D unaspirated in all dialects, whereas the preaspiration thing was only present in some dialects anyway. (Am I wrong?)

Their choice of eliminating SC in favour of SG is similarly baffling. G is at the back of the mouth, C is at the front. There is a much bigger difference between that them than just pre-aspiration. (Unless you hear in English...)

In fact, given that S is so far forward, I'm not sure it's possible to say SG -- I'm certain I can only say SC...

[GunChleoc]

I always thought g and c both have a back and a front version, depending on if it's broad or slender

Concerning d,t, AFAIK post-aspiration only happens at the start of a word, and we were talking about the middle and end of words, where you have pre-aspiration (depending on dialect) with the t and none with the d. So, IMO st makes no sense and I prefer the sd. I guess the same goes for rt/rd. However, in order not to confuse everyone I stick with the standard spelling, since that's what you need if you want to look it up in a dictionary.