Nancy Dorian

Nancy Currier Dorian (1936–April 24, 2024) was an American linguist who carried out research into the decline of the East Sutherland dialect of Scottish Gaelic for over 40 years, particularly in the villages of Brora, Golspie and Embo. Due to their isolation from other Gaelic-speaking communities, these East Sutherland villages presented a good opportunity to study language death. Dorian's study is possibly the longest such study in the field. She was considered "a prime authority" on language death.^[1] Language Death: The Life Cycle of a Scottish Gaelic Dialect, her study into the decline of Gaelic in East Sutherland, is considered "the first major monograph"^[2] on language death. According to linguist Joan Argenter, Dorian's name "is well known to scholars working in" several areas of linguistics.^[3]