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Data on Scottish Gaelic

Name of the language : Gàidhlig

Alternative names: Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, Scots Gaelic, Scotch Gaelic, Erse (pejorative)

Classification: Indoeuropean language, from the Goidelic branch of the Celtic language family

Area: Traditionally spoken in Scotland, particularly the Scottish Highlands. Today, the Western Isles of Scotland are generally considered to be the Gaelic heartland, although at least fifty percentof speakers live in the urban and suburban communities of Scotland’s Central Belt. Outwith Scotland, the most vital community of Gaelic speakers resides in Nova Scotia, Canada – especially the Cape Breton area.

Number of speakers: Estimated to be approximately 56,000 in Scotland, fewer than 60,000 globally.

Language status: A national language of Scotland; language of communication in the Western Isles of Scotland and in Cape Breton, NovaScotia ; language of education at some Scottish state schools.

Vitality & Transmission: Although Gaelic was once spoken throughout much of what is now Scotland in the medieval period, Gaelic-speaking regions have since undergone considerable language shift. Today, the language is spoken primarily in the Western Isles of Scotland, and within some social networks in the cities of Glasgow, Inverness, Edinburgh, and – to a lesser extent – Aberdeen. A large community of Gaelic speakers also exists in Nova Scotia, Canada – the result of immigration from Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries. Speakers live and work in various other parts of Scotland and the wider world, but in relatively small numbers and usually without engaging in intergenerational transmission of the language. Despite widespread Scottish immigration throughout the British colonies in North America, Africa, South Asia and Australia during the time of the British Empire, the eastern coast of Canada is the only region outwith Scotland that boasts self-sustaining communities of locally born native speakers of Gaelic in the present day.

Since at least the 16th century CE, the language has been geographically associated with the Scottish Highlands, to the extent that the Gaelic word ‘Gàidhealtachd’ means both ‘Gaelic-speaking region’ and ‘Highlands’. However, speaker numbers in that region have declined precipitously in recent centuries as the result of political and economic pressure to adopt the English language, and because of the forced depopulation of Gaelic heartlands during the Highland Clearances. Consequently, most Highland communities are now English-language dominant. Large-scale revitalisation efforts for Gaelichave been underway since the 1970s, most notably at the Gaelic college Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a component institution of the University of the Highlands and Islands located on the Sleat peninsula of Isle of Skye.

Gaelic serves as the dominant language of discourse for the Scottish television channel BBC Alba; and for the Scottish radio station BBC Radio nan Gàidheal. Despite its recognition as a national language of Scotland by the Scottish Parliament in 2005, and its current availability as subject and/or medium of education in many state-run Scottish primary schools and universities, Gaelic remains a highly endangered language. Although its decline has slowed, and might soon be arrested by increasing numbers of language learners, the rate of intergenerational transmission continues to decrease; and, although the language continues to make inroads into urban areas and in popularculture, many of the rural communities in which the language historically thrived are on the verge of social and economic collapse. Furthermore, some observers fear that Gaelic language learners often fail to accurately reproduce the grammar and phonology of the language,and that they hesitate to employ the language outwith academic domains.

Concern has also arisen as to dialect attrition, as despite at least moderately successful efforts to promote the language generally, many dialects (such as those of East Sutherland and Argylle) have only a handful of speakers, and face imminent moribundity if not outright extinction. Meticulous language planning and grassroots mobilisation by and among learners, new speakers, and native speakers of the language will be necessary in the coming years in order to ensure its survival as a language of home and community.

Media/Literature/Education : The television network BBC Alba and the radio station BBC Radio nan Gàidheal broadcast in Gaelic. The language is widely used on social media, and has two prominent online dictionaries, available respectively at faclair.com and learngaelic.net

As to literature, the language boasts one of the oldest literary traditions in Europe – a heritage which it shares with the Irish language, as the two languages used the same writing system until the seventeenth century. In addition to the medieval and early modern manuscript traditions, Gaelic is famous for its poetic tradition, enriched by the works of bards such as Donnchadh Bàn Mac an t-Saoir, Alasdair mac Mhaighstir Alasdair, Somhairle MacGill-Eain, Meg Bateman, and Mark Spencer Turner. The Bible was first translated into Scottish Gaelic by the Reverend Robert Kirk 1690, and the Gaelic metrical translations of the psalms serve as an integral part of worship in some Presbyterian communities. In the current century, the Gaelic novel has begun to proliferate, thanks in large part to the efforts of the publishing company, CLÀR. The first Gaelic science fiction novel, AirCuan Dubh Drilseach by Dr. Timothy Curry Armstrong, was published in 2013.

Gaelic is offered as a subject in many primary and secondary schools in Scotland. At still others, it serves as the language of class instruction. Demand for such programmes continues to increase, drivingtheir proliferation. At the university level, a number of universities offer Gaelic Courses, including the University of Aberdeen, theUniversity of Glasgow, the University of Edinburgh, and the Universityof the Highlands and Islands in Scotland; and St. Francis XavierUniversity in Nova Scotia. Sabhal Mòr Ostaig, a Gaelic collegeaffiliated with the University of the Highlands and Islands, offers immersive Gaelic education, and university degrees in various subjects instructed via the medium of Gaelic.

Historical, sociolinguistic and ethnographic observations

Gaelichas suffered minoritisation since at least the 13th century CE. Sociopolitical events and circumstances instrumental to its decline include the increasing influence of the English government over Scottish political affairs during the late middle ages, and the concomitant increase in trade with England, which saw the rise of Middle English (which later evolved into Lowland Scots) as a lingua franca in the Scottish Lowlands; the Union of Crowns in 1603, which resulted in the removal of the Scottish court to London, which in turn contributed to the further entrenchment of English as an aspirational language in Scotland; the Jacobite uprisings of the 1700s, which caused Gaelic to become associated with political insurrection and led ultimately to its brutal oppression by agents of the British government; the general rurality of Scottish Gaelic speech communities, whose relative poverty and agrarianism invited the unfair derision of Scots- andEnglish-speaking city dwellers; the Highland Clearances, in which unscrupulous landlords forced hundreds of thousands of Gaelic speakersto vacate their homes and emigrate to non-Gaelic-speaking regions; and the Scottish Education Act of 1872, which made no provision for Gaelicin the Scottish education system. In the face of such adversity,Gaelic’s very survival to the present day testafies to the determination of its speakers in maintaining their linguistic heritage.

Linguistic observation

Gaelic is closely related to the other Goidelic languages, Irish and Manx, to the extent that some speakers find the three languages to be mutually intelligible to a high degree. Gaelic also bears some similarities with its Brythonic Celtic cousins, Breton, Cornish and Welsh – although most of the parallels are in grammatical structures and a small percentage of nominal and verbal roots, and Gaelic is not mutually comprehensible with any of these three languages. Notable linguistic features of Gaelic include preaspiration, initial consonant mutation, and verb-subject-object sentence order. Although the latter two characteristics feature in all Celtic languages, the formermost seems to set Gaelic apart.

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Sources, link & Additional bibliography

https://learngaelic.net/

Chapman, Malcolm. 1978. The Gaelic Vision in Scottish Culture (London: Croom Helm)

Dunmore, Stiùbhart S. 2010. ‘Gàidheal, Goill agus coimhearsnachd naGàidhlig: Ideòlasan cànain am measg inbhich a fhuair foghlam tromeadhan na Gàidhlig’ Rannsachadh na Gàidhlig, 8, pp. 285–298 — 2015. ‘Bilingual life after school? Language use, ideologies andattitudes among Gaelic-medium educated adults’ (Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh)

Durkacz, Victor Edward. 1983. The Decline of the Celtic Languages (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers Ltd)

Fishman, Joshua A. 1991. Reversing Language Shift: Theoretical and Empirical Foundations of Assistance to Threatened Languages (Clevedon:Multilingual Matters Ltd)

Glaser, Konstanze. 2006. ‘Reimagining the Gaelic community: ethnicity, hybridity, politics and communication’ in Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: Policy, Planning and Public Discourse, Wilson MacLeod (ed.) (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press), pp. 169–84

MacCaluim, Alasdair. 2007. Reversing language shift: The social identity and role of Scottish Gaelic learners (Belfast: Cló Ollscoil naBanríona)

MacKinnon, Kenneth. 1977. Language, Education and Social Processes in a Gaelic Community (London: Roultledge & Kegan Paul) —.2004. ‘Reversing Language Shift: Celtic Languages Today – Any Evidence?’ in Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 8, pp. 109–132

McEwan-Fujita, Emily. 2006. ‘Gaelic Doomed as Speakers Die Out’? The Public Discourse of Language Death in Scotland’ Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: Policy, Planning and Public Discourse, ed. by Wilson MacLeod (Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press), pp. 279–94 —. 2008. ‘Workingat “9 to 5” Gaelic: Speakers, Context, and Ideologies of an Emerging Minority Language Register’ in Sustaining Linguistic Diversity, Kendall A. King, Natalie Schilling-Estes, Lyn Fogle, Jia Jackie Lou, and Barbara Soukup (eds.) (Washington, D.C.: Georgetown University Press),pp. 81–94

McLeod, Wilson, Bernadette O’Rourke, and Stuart Dunmore. 2015. ‘New Speakers’ of Gaelic in Edinburgh and Glasgow (Edinburgh:Soillse)

Morgan, Peadar. 2000. ‘The Gael is Dead; Long Live the Gaelic: The Changing Relationship between Native and Learner GaelicUsers’, in Aithne na nGael: Gaelic Identities, Gordon McCoy withMaolcholaim Scott (ed.) (Belfast: Iontabhas ULTACH), pp. 126–123

National Records of Scotland. 2015. Scotland’s Census 2011: Gaelic report (part 1) Available online:[accessed 29.8.2016]

Oliver, James.2006. ‘Where is Gaelic? Revitalisation, language, culture andidentity’ in Revitalising Gaelic in Scotland: Policy, Planning and Public Discourse, Wilson McLeod (ed.) (Edinburgh: Dunedin AcademicPress), pp. 155–169