An increasingly wide body of literature has examined the ideological practices surrounding new speakers, and attitudes to their varieties (for example Puigdevall 2014, O’Rourke, Pujolar and Ramallo 2015, O’Rourke and Pujolar 2015). Less studied, however are the linguistic forms used by new speakers. A central aim of the new speaker model is to move away conceptually from the notions of deficiency implied by such terms as non-native', second language' and `learner' (O’Rourke and Ramallo 2013, 56). Much of the previous work on new speakers has considered this aim from the perspective of qualitative examinations of power distribution. Another potential angle is to quantitatively investigate the linguistic forms used by new speakers. In doing so I aim to demonstrate that while the linguistic behaviour of new speakers may be different to traditional forms of the language, it has its own internal consistency, and can be considered as innovative rather than deficient. Specifically, this chapter considers how linguistic forms used by new adolescent Scottish Gaelic speakers in Glasgow are innovative compared to traditional varieties of Gaelic, and the extent to which we can consider new speaker varieties as new dialects of minority languages.