Scottish Gaelic is a Goidelic language within the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family.
- Other Goidelic languages include Irish Gaelic and Manx (also known as Manx Gaelic.
- The language is also referred to as Scots Gaelic or simply as Gaelic.
- Scottish Gaelic is a different language from Scots. Scottish Gaelic is derived from Middle Irish, while Scots is derived from Middle English.
As of the 2011 census, there are 57,375 speakers of Scottish Gaelic.
- This means that approximately 1.1% of the Scottish population aged 3 and older are speakers.
- According to the same census, a total 87,100 people reported having some knowledge of the language.
Scottish Gaelic uses the Latin alphabet.
- The language was first written in the 12th century.
- The alphabet has 18 letters, each which are named after a tree or shrub.
- It is written with either Roman or Gaelic type.
- It is an SVO type language. Here’s how the word order compares to English: I ❤ YOU in English word order becomes ❤ I YOU in Gaelic word order.
Scottish Gaelic’s decline was due to the discouragement of its use by children in public schools. However, the language is now taught in public schools both at the primary and the secondary levels.
Here is a video of someone speaking Scottish Gaelic:
If you’re interested in learning the language, I’ve gathered several resources on the Scottish Gaelic page on this blog.
References
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Gaelic
Polyglot in Progress 