Learn Gaelic Through Topics You Actually Care About

LingoBear creates short Scottish Gaelic passages on topics you choose. Tap any word for an instant English translation and build your vocabulary as you read. Goidelic Celtic language of Scotland, 18-letter Latin alphabet with grave accents, VSO word order, ~57,000 speakers.

Tap any word for instant translation

Every word in your Gaelic reading passage is clickable. Get English translations and grammar help, including for initial consonant mutations (lenition and eclipsis).

Read about topics you choose

Type any topic and LingoBear generates a fresh Scottish Gaelic reading passage — useful when textbooks focus on standard set themes.

What is Scottish Gaelic and how is it related to Irish?

Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a Goidelic Celtic language brought to Scotland by Irish settlers around the 4th–6th centuries AD. Today about 57,000 people in Scotland speak it, plus several thousand in Nova Scotia. It is closely related to Irish and Manx — speakers of one can read the others with effort, though the spelling and pronunciation diverge.

What grammar features does Scottish Gaelic have?

Scottish Gaelic uses VSO word order, two grammatical genders, initial consonant mutations (lenition adds an h: bean 'woman' → a bhean 'his woman'), and prepositions that conjugate for person (with-me, with-you... are single words like leam, leat). The alphabet has only 18 letters and traditional reading relies on the slender/broad vowel rule: 'caol ri caol agus leathann ri leathann'.