Scottish Gaelic

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Scottish Gaelic
Scots Gaelic Gaelic
Gàidhlig
Pronunciation	[ˈkaːlɪkʲ]
Native to	United Kingdom, Canada
Region	Scotland; Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia
Ethnicity	Scottish Gaels
Speakers	70,000 L1 and L2 speakers in Scotland (2022)[1] 130,000 people in Scotland reported having some Gaelic language ability in 2022;[1] 1,300 fluent in Nova Scotia[2]
Language family	Indo-European Celtic Insular Celtic Goidelic Scottish Gaelic
Early forms	Primitive Irish Old Irish Middle Irish
Dialects	Argyll Arran † Beurla Reagaird Canadian Deeside † East Sutherland † Galwegian † Glaswegian Kintyre Hebridean Lewis Mid-Minch Perthshire Skye West Sutherland others
Writing system	Latin (Scottish Gaelic alphabet) Insular script (historically) Ogham (historically)
Official status
Recognised minority language in	Canada Nova Scotia
Language codes
ISO 639-1	gd
ISO 639-2	gla
ISO 639-3	gla
Glottolog	scot1245
ELP	Scottish Gaelic
Linguasphere	50-AAA
2011 distribution of Gaelic speakers in Scotland
This article contains IPA phonetic symbols. Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Unicode characters. For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA.

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Scottish Gaelic (/ˈɡælɪk/, GAL-ik; endonym: Gàidhlig [ˈkaːlɪkʲ] ^ⓘ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as both Irish and Manx, developed out of Old Irish.^[3] It became a distinct spoken language sometime in the 13th century in the Middle Irish period, although a common literary language was shared by the Gaels of both Ireland and Scotland until well into the 17th century.^[4] Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced especially by Gaelic-language place names.^[5][6]

In the 2011 census of Scotland, 57,375 people (1.1% of the Scottish population aged over three years old) reported being able to speak Gaelic, 1,275 fewer than in 2001. The highest percentages of Gaelic speakers were in the Outer Hebrides. Nevertheless, there is a language revival, and the number of speakers of the language under age 20 did not decrease between the 2001 and 2011 censuses.^[7] In the 2022 census of Scotland, it was found that 2.5% of the Scottish population had some skills in Gaelic,^[8] or 130,161 persons. Of these, 69,701 people reported speaking the language, with a further 46,404 people reporting that they understood the language, but did not speak, read, or write in it.^[9]

Outside of Scotland, a dialect known as Canadian Gaelic has been spoken in Canada since the 18th century. In the 2021 census, 2,170 Canadian residents claimed knowledge of Scottish Gaelic, a decline from 3,980 speakers in the 2016 census.^[10][11] There exists a particular concentration of speakers in Nova Scotia, with historic communities in other parts of Canada having largely disappeared.^[12]

Scottish Gaelic is classed as an indigenous language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which the UK Government has ratified, and the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 established a language-development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig.^[13] The Scottish Parliament is considering a Scottish Languages Bill which proposes to give the Gaelic and Scots languages official status in Scotland.^[14]