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Where is Scots Gaelic spoken?
What language is spoken in Scotland?
What is Scottish Gaelic?
Is Scottish Gaelic An official language of Scotland?
Scottish Gaelic is distinct from Scots, the Middle English-derived language which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the early modern era. Prior to the 15th century, this language was known as Inglis ("English") by its own speakers, with Gaelic being called Scottis ("Scottish").
Gaelic, like English and Scots, belongs to the Indo-European language family. This is the most widespread language family in the world. The family contains some of the languages with the greatest number of speakers (English, Spanish, Hindi and Urdu). It also includes critically endangered languages like Gaelic.
It is estimated that there were 50,000 Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia in 1901, more than one-sixth of all Gaelic-speakers in the world at the time. Gaels also emigrated to North Carolina in the 1700s and Gaelic was regularly spoken there until the American Civil War.
Apr 23, 2024 · Scots Gaelic language, a member of the Goidelic group of Celtic languages, spoken along the northwest coast of Scotland and in the Hebrides islands. Australia, the United States, and Canada (particularly Nova Scotia) are also home to Scots Gaelic communities.
- The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Today, the Highlands and Islands region accounts for 55 percent of Scotland’s 58,652 Gaelic speakers. It is the island communities of Skye, the Western Isles and, to a lesser extent, the Argyll Islands, which are now regarded as the ‘Gaelic heartlands’.
The Gaelic language originates from the fifth century in areas including North Eastern Ulster (a small, northern province in Ireland), the Islands of Caledonia, and the north western coastlines of Ireland.
May 17, 2024 · Scots language, historic language of the people of Lowland Scotland and one closely related to English. Scots is directly descended from Northern English, which displaced Scots Gaelic in portions of Scotland in the 11th–14th centuries as a consequence of Anglo-Norman rule there.
