Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that can help answer the question.
Query: Is gaelic still spoken?
In the 2011 census of Scotland, 57,375 people (1.1% of the Scottish population aged over three years old) reported as able to speak Gaelic, 1,275 fewer than in 2001. The highest percentages of Gaelic speakers were in the Outer Hebrides. Only about half of speakers were fully fluent in the language.[1] Nevertheless, there are revival efforts, and the number of speakers of the language under age 20 did not decrease between the 2001 and 2011 censuses.[3] Outside Scotland, Canadian Gaelic is spoken mainly in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island.
The two comparatively "major" Gaelic nations in the modern era are Ireland (which in the 2002 census had 185,838 people who spoke Irish "daily" and 1,570,894 who were "able" to speak it) and Scotland (58,552 fluent "Gaelic speakers" and 92,400 with "some Gaelic language ability" in the 2001 census). Communities where the languages still are spoken natively are restricted largely to the west coast of each country and especially the Hebrides islands in Scotland. However, a large proportion of the Gaelic-speaking population now lives in the cities of Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland, and Donegal, Galway, Cork and Dublin in Ireland. There are about 2,000 Scottish Gaelic speakers in Canada (Canadian Gaelic dialect), although many are elderly and concentrated in Nova Scotia and more specifically Cape Breton Island. According to the U.S. Census in 2000, there are more than 25,000 Irish-speakers in the United States, with the majority found in urban areas with large Irish-American communities such as Boston, New York City and Chicago.
Dál Riata grew in size and influence, and Gaelic language and culture was eventually adopted by the neighbouring Picts (a group of peoples who may have spoken a Brythonic language) who lived throughout Scotland. Manx, the language of the Isle of Man, is closely akin to the Gaelic spoken in the Hebrides and the Irish spoken in northeast and eastern Ireland and the now-extinct Galwegian Gaelic of Galloway (in southwest Scotland), with some influence from Old Norse through the Viking invasions and from the previous British inhabitants.
By the early modern era Gaelic had been in geographical decline for three centuries and had begun to be a second class language, confined to the Highlands and Islands. The tradition of classic Gaelic poetry survived longer in Scotland than in Ireland, with the last fully competent member of the MacMhuirich dynasty, who were hereditary poets to the Lords of the Isles and then the Donalds of Clanranald, still working in the early eighteenth century. Nevertheless, interest in the sponsorship of panegyric Gaelic poetry was declining among the clan leaders. Gaelic was gradually being overtaken by Middle Scots, which became the language of both the nobility and the majority population. Middle Scots was derived substantially from Old English, with Gaelic and French influences. It was usually called "Inglyshe" and was very close to the language spoken in northern England, Unlike many of his predecessors, James VI actively despised Gaelic culture. As the tradition of classical Gaelic poetry declined, a new tradition of vernacular Gaelic poetry began to emerge. While Classical poetry used a language largely fixed in the twelfth century, the vernacular continued to develop. In contrast to the Classical tradition, which used syllabic metre, vernacular poets tended to use stressed metre. However, they shared with the Classic poets a set of complex metaphors and role, as the verse was still often panegyric. A number of these vernacular poets were women, such as Mary MacLeod of Harris (c. 1615-1707). Iain Lom (c. 1624–c. 1710) was a Royalist Scottish Gaelic poet appointed poet laureate in Scotland by Charles II at the Restoration. He delivered a eulogy for the coronation, and remained loyal to the Stuarts after 1688, opposing the Williamites and later, in his vituperative "Oran an Aghaidh an Aonaidh", the 1707 Union of the Parliaments.
East Sutherland Gaelic ( ) is an obsolescent dialect of Scottish Gaelic which was spoken in fishing villages on the eastern coast of Sutherland, especially in Brora, Golspie, and Embo.
The Scottish Gaelic language has been in decline since the fourteenth century, when its speakers were a majority of Scotland's population, due to the higher prestige of English. The East Sutherland dialect was spoken in coastal villages by fisherfolk descended from Gaelic speakers who had been evicted from the fertile interior valleys of Sutherland during the Highland Clearances of the early nineteeth century. Because of their occupational, social, and geographical isolation, the fisherfolk retained the use of the Gaelic language about half a century longer than surrounding communities, in the process becoming isolated from other dialects of Gaelic. East Sutherland speakers could only understand other dialects of Gaelic with difficulty, if at all. By the turn of the twentieth century, Gaelic was still the community language; there were even a few monolingual speakers. Although the decline of the fishing industry following World War II had impacted the local dialect's viability, when Nancy Dorian started studying the dialect in 1963, there were still more than 200 speakers in Brora, Golspie and Embo, including 105 in Embo, where they were more than a third of the population.
Canadian Gaelic was spoken as the first language in much of "Anglophone" Canada, such as Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Glengarry County in Ontario. Gaelic was the third most commonly spoken language in Canada.
Historically, Inverness had a solidly Scottish Gaelic speaking population, with the majority of the population having Gaelic as their first language. From approximately the end of the 19th century, following the 1872 Education Act, Inverness suffered a decline in the number of Gaelic speakers in line with the rest of the once Gaidhealtachd / Scottish Highlands. Despite the local dialect of Scottish Gaelic gradually falling out of use (although it continued to affect local English language dialect), the language is still spoken in other dialects and standardised forms. By the end of the 19th century, some rural areas to the south east of Inverness still had completely Gaelic speaking populations, such as Strath Dearn where almost 100% of the population were still Gaelic speaking.
All surviving dialects are Highland and/or Hebridean dialects. Dialects of Lowland Gaelic have become defunct since the demise of Galwegian Gaelic, originally spoken in Galloway, which seems to have been the last Lowland dialect and which survived into the Modern Period. By the 18th century Lowland Gaelic had been largely replaced by Lowland Scots across much of Lowland Scotland. According to a reference in "The Carrick Covenanters " by James Crichton, 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.
The island's residents can be grouped into five main cultures: Scottish, Mi'kmaq, Acadian, Irish, English, with respective languages Scottish Gaelic, Mi'kmaq, French, and English. English is now the primary language, including a locally distinctive Cape Breton accent, while Mi'kmaq, Scottish Gaelic and Acadian French are still spoken in some communities.
Also Breton is still spoken to a lesser extent in Cape Breton, it is also home to the only Celtic language outside of Europe, Canadian Gaelic.
It is quite possible that even as late as the twelfth century, Cumbric (a Brythonic language related to Welsh) was still spoken in Annandale and lower Strathnith (where a man called Gille Cuithbrecht has the Gaelic nickname "Bretnach" [=Welshman]), but these areas seem to have been thoroughly Gaelicised by the end of that century. A couple of legal terms also survive in medieval documents. The demise of Cumbric in the region is even harder to date than that of Gaelic.
There is no single British language, though English is by far the main language spoken by British citizens, being spoken monolingually by more than 70% of the UK population. English is therefore the "de facto" official language of the United Kingdom. However, under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Irish Gaelic, Ulster Scots, Manx, Scots and Lowland Scots languages are officially recognised as Regional or Minority languages by the UK Government. As indigenous languages which continue to be spoken as a first language by native inhabitants, Welsh and Scottish Gaelic have a different legal status from other minority languages. In some parts of the UK, some of these languages are commonly spoken as a first language; in wider areas, their use in a bilingual context is sometimes supported or promoted by central or local government policy. For naturalisation purposes, a competence standard of English, Scottish Gaelic or Welsh is required to pass the life in the United Kingdom test. However, English is used routinely, and although considered culturally important, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are much less used.
Gaelic is still spoken by a few elderly residents, as many Highland Scots emigrated to Christmas Island during the Highland Clearances.
The Goidelic language currently spoken in Scotland is Scottish Gaelic. It is widely spoken in the Outer Hebrides, and also in parts of the Inner Hebrides and Scottish Highlands, and by some people in other areas of Scotland. It was formerly spoken over a far wider area than today, even in the recent past, as evidenced by placenames. Galwegian Gaelic is the extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic formerly spoken in southwest Scotland. It was spoken by the independent kings of Galloway in their time, and by the people of Galloway and Carrick until the early modern period. It was also once spoken in Annandale and Strathnith.
Underneath the club's name reads the Scottish Gaelic motto, "Ar Cala, Ar Dachaigh, Ar n-Anam", which translates to Our Harbour, Our Home, Our Soul. Scottish Gaelic is used to signify that Nova Scotia is one of the few places remaining where the language is still spoken.
In the 1891 census, 59.2% of the population of Braemar spoke the Gaelic language "habitually", the percentage of those actually able to speak the language (despite not having much opportunity to) would have been somewhat higher. The small crofting township of Inverey ("Inbhir Èidh") was 86.3% Gaelic-speaking, most non-speakers being originally from Lower Deeside. The Gaelic spoken in the Aberdeenshire Highlands shared most features in common with the Gaelic of Strathspey and East Perthshire. The last native-speaker of the local Gaelic dialect died in 1984, though there are still surviving native-speakers of the similar Strathspey dialect.
At the 2001 census, out of a total population of 839 in Crathie and Braemar Civil Parish, only 5 (0.6%) claimed to be Gaelic-speakers.
Canadian Gaelic dialects of Scottish Gaelic are still spoken by Gaels in other parts of Atlantic Canada, primarily on Cape Breton Island and adjacent areas of Nova Scotia. In 2011, there were 1,275 Gaelic speakers in Nova Scotia, and 300 residents of the province considered a Gaelic language to be their "mother tongue".
Regular church services were held locally in Gaelic up until 1930, Today the generation which remembers native Gaelic being spoken is fast dying out, and any Gaelic speakers are likely to be either learners or incomers from Gaelic-speaking heartlands. To this day, though, "Church Gaelic" is based on the Perthshire Gaelic dialect. The first Gaelic Bible was translated by Balquhidder minister Robert Kirk.
Gaelic was still spoken widely on Arran at the beginning of the 20th century. The 1901 Census reported 25–49 per cent Gaelic speakers on the eastern side of the island and 50–74 per cent on the western side of the island. By 1921 the proportion for the whole island had dropped to less than 25 per cent. However, Nils Holmer quotes the Féillire (a Gaelic almanack) reporting 4,532 inhabitants on the island in 1931 with 605 Gaelic speakers, showing that Gaelic had declined to about 13 per cent of the population. It continued to decline until the last native speakers of Arran Gaelic died in the 1990s. Current Gaelic speakers on Arran originate from other areas in Scotland. In 2011, 2.0 per cent of Arran residents aged three and over could speak Gaelic.
The dialect of Caithness is generally spoken in the lowlying land to the east of a line drawn from Clyth Ness to some 4 miles west of Thurso. To the west of that Scottish Gaelic used to be spoken. The Caithness varieties have been influenced by both Gaelic and Norn. The dialect spoken in the neighbourhood of John o' Groats resembles that of Orkney to some extent.
Between c. 1150 and c. 1400, most of the Scottish Lowlands became English culturally and linguistically through immigration from England, France and Flanders and from the resulting assimilation of native Gaelic-speaking Scots although Lowland Gaelic was still spoken in Galloway until the 18th century. The Scots language is the resulting Germanic language still spoken in parts of Scotland and is very similar to the speech of the Northumbrians of northern England. Between the 15th and 17th centuries Scots spread into more of mainland Scotland at the expense of Scottish Gaelic although Gaelic maintained a strong hold over the Scottish Highlands, and Scots also began to make some headway into the Northern Isles. The latter, Orkney and Shetland, though now part of Scotland, were nominally part of the Kingdom of Norway until the 15th century. A version of the Norse language was spoken there from the Viking invasions until replaced by Scots in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Canadian Gaelic or Cape Breton Gaelic (), known in English as often simply Gaelic, is the dialects of Scottish Gaelic spoken by people in Atlantic Canada who have their origins in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.
What is known as Scottish Gaelic is essentially the Gaelic spoken in the Outer Hebrides and on Skye. Generally speaking, the Gaelic spoken across the Western Isles is similar enough to be classed as one major dialect group, although there is still regional variation. For example, the slender 'r' is pronounced in Lewis, where the Gaelic is thought to have been influenced by Norse, and had a pitch accent system.
Gaelic is an adjective that means "pertaining to the Gaels". As a noun, it refers to the group of languages spoken by the Gaels, or to any one of the languages individually. Celtic languages are spoken in both Ireland and Scotland, in Scotland it is very often referred to just as "Gaelic", but in Ireland it is referred to as "Irish".
The coastline is part of the Celtic fringe. Gaelic is spoken as a minority language in many parts of the area with strongholds in the Outer Hebrides and Tyrconnel in Donegal. Scottish Gaelic is declining in Scotland although the compulsory teaching of the Irish language in Irish schools means that most Irish citizens understand it to some extent. The variant of Gaelic spoken in Donegal is distinctive, and shares traits with Scottish Gaelic. Its Gaeltacht (Irish speaking area) uses the West Ulster dialect. Inishowen, which lost its Gaeltacht areas in the early 20th century, used the East Ulster dialect.