Scottish Gaelic

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Scottish Gaelic
Gàidhlig
Pronunciation [ˈɡaːlɪkʲ]
Spoken in  Scotland
 Canada
 United States
 Australia
Region  Scotland Scottish Highlands & Western Isles
 Nova Scotia Cape Breton, Nova Scotia
 Ontario Glengarry County, Ontario.
Total speakers 58,552 in Scotland.[1]

92,400 people aged three and over in Scotland had some Gaelic language ability in 2001[2] with an additional 2,000 in Nova Scotia.[3] 1,610 speakers in the United States in 2000.[4] 822 in Australia in 2001.[5] 669 in New Zealand in 2006.[6]

Language family Indo-European

• Celtic
  • Insular Celtic
    • Goidelic
      • Scottish Gaelic

Official status
Official language in  Scotland
Regulated by
Language codes
ISO 639-1 gd
ISO 639-2 gla
ISO 639-3 gla
Note: This page may contain IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode.

Scottish Gaelic (Scottish Gaelic: Gàidhlig) is a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic languages, and is distinct from the Brythonic branch of the Celtic languages, which includes Welsh, Cornish, and Breton. Scottish, Manx and Irish Gaelic (collectively called the "Goidelic languages") are all descended from Middle Irish, and share an ancestry going back to Old Irish and Primitive Irish. Other common names for Scottish Gaelic are Scots Gaelic and Highland Gaelic.^{[citation needed]}

Outside Scotland, it is occasionally also called Scottish, particularly when being compared to Irish and Manx, though Scottish Gaelic should not be confused with the Scots language (Lowland Scots, Lallans), which is an Anglic language descended from Old English. Within Scotland, the language is called Gàidhlig pronounced [ˈɡaːlɪkʲ] while outside Scotland it is usually referred to as Gaelic pronounced /ˈɡeɪlɪk/.

The 2001 UK Census showed a total of 58,652 Gaelic speakers in Scotland (1.2% of population over three years old).[7] Compared to the 1991 Census, there has been a diminution of approximately 7,300 people (11% of the total), showing a decline in Gaelic. By 1991, attempts at language revival or reversing language shift had met with limited success,[8]^{[citation needed]} and there has been an increase in young Gaelic speakers[9]

History

Scottish Gaelic itself developed after the 12th century, along with the other modern Goidelic languages. Scottish Gaelic and its predecessors became the language of the majority of Scotland after it replaced Cumbric, Pictish and in considerable areas Old English.[10] There is no definitive date indicating how long Gaelic has been spoken in today's Scotland, though it has been proposed that it was spoken in its ancient form in Argyll before the Roman period,[11]. No consensus has been reached on this question, however, the consolidation of the kingdom of Dál Riata around the 4th century, linking the ancient province of Ulster in the north of Ireland and western Scotland, accelerated the expansion of the language, as did the success of the Gaelic-speaking church establishment, started by St Columba, and place-name evidence shows that Gaelic was spoken in the Rhinns of Galloway by the 5th or 6th century.^{[citation needed]} The language was maintained by the trade empire of the Lordship of the Isles the geographic and cultural descendant of Dál Riata, which continued to control parts of Ulster until the 1500s.

From the Middle Ages to the end of Classical Gaelic education

The Gaelic language eventually displaced Pictish north of the River Forth, and until the late 15th century was known in the Scots' English language as Scottis, and in England as Scottish. Gaelic began to decline in mainland Scotland from the beginning of the 13th century, accompanying its decline in its status as a national language, and by the beginning of the 15th century, the highland-lowland line was beginning to emerge.^{[citation needed]}

From around the early 16th century, Scottish-English speakers gave the Gaelic language the name Erse (meaning Irish in Scottish-English), and thereafter it was invariably the collection of Middle English dialects spoken within the Kingdom of Scotland, that they referred to as Scottis (see Scots language). This in itself was ironic, as it was at this time that Gaelic was developing its distinct and characteristic Scottish forms of the modern period.[12]

Scottish Gaelic was called "Erse" partly because educated Gaelic speakers in Ireland and Scotland all used the literary dialect (sometimes called Classical Gaelic) so that there was little or no difference in usage. When Classical Gaelic stopped being used in schools in both countries, colloquial usage began to predominate, and the languages diverged.

The Modern Era

Scottish Gaelic has a rich oral and written tradition, referred to as beul-aithris in Scottish Gaelic, having been the language of the bardic culture of the Highland clans for many years.^{[citation needed]} The language preserves knowledge of and adherence to pre-feudal 'tribal' laws and customs (as represented, for example, by the expressions tuatha and dùthchas). The language suffered particularly as Highlanders and their traditions were persecuted after the Battle of Culloden in 1746, and during the Highland Clearances, but pre-feudal attitudes were still evident in the complaints and claims of the Highland Land League of the late 19th century. This political movement was successful in getting members elected to the Parliament of the United Kingdom. The Land League was dissipated as a parliamentary force by the 1886 Crofters' Act and by the way the Liberal Party was seen to become supportive of Land League objectives.^{[citation needed]}

An Irish Gaelic translation of the Bible dating from the Elizabethan period was in use until the Bible was translated into Scottish Gaelic.[13] Author David Ross notes in his 2002 history of Scotland that a Scottish Gaelic version of the Bible was published in London in 1690 by the Rev. Robert Kirk, minister of Aberfoyle; however it was not widely circulated.[14] The first well-known translation of the Bible into Scottish Gaelic was made in 1767 when Dr James Stuart of Killin and Dugald Buchanan of Rannoch produced a translation of the New Testament. Very few European languages have made the transition to a modern literary language without an early modern translation of the Bible. The lack of a well-known translation until the late 18th century may have contributed to the decline of Scottish Gaelic.[13]

Defunct dialects

Scottish Gaelic may be more correctly known as Highland Gaelic to distinguish it from the now defunct dialects of Lowland Gaelic. Of these Galwegian Gaelic was spoken in Galloway and seems to have been the last dialect of Gaelic to have been spoken in Lowland Scotland, surviving until the Early Modern Period. By the end of the Middle Ages, Lowland Gaelic had been replaced by Middle English/Lowland Scots^{[citation needed]} across much of Lowland Scotland, while the Brythonic language had disappeared. According to a reference in The Carrick Covenanters by James Crichton [15], the last place in the Lowlands where Scottish Gaelic was still spoken was the village of Barr in Carrick (only a few miles inland to the east of Girvan, but at one time very isolated). Crichton gives neither date nor details.