Within
a day or so a group of our young students will have a chance to further expand
their knowledge of foreign languages. In addition to practicing their English
while travelling around Scotland, UK, and the students will notice something
that most people don’t know even exists – the Scottish Gaelic.
Scottish
Gaelic, sometimes also referred to as Gaelic, is a Celtic langugae native to Scotland.
The 2011 census of Scotland showed that a total of 57,375 people
(1.1% of the Scottish population aged over three years old) in Scotland could
speak Gaelic at that time, The census results indicate a decline of 1,275
Gaelic speakers from 2001. A total of 87,056 people in 2011 reported having
some facility with Gaelic compared to 93,282 people in 2001, a decline of 6,226.
Despite this decline, revival efforts exist and the number of speakers of
the language under age 20 has increased.
Scottish
Gaelic is not an official language of the European Union or the United
Kingdom. However, it is classed as an Indigenous language under the European Charter of Regional or Minority Languages, which the British government has ratified, and the Gaelic Languages (Scotland) Act 2005 established a language development
body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, "with a view to
securing the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland.
Outside
Scotland, a dialect known as Canadian Caelic is spoken in
parts of Eastern Canada. In 2011, there were approximately 1,500
Gaelic-speakers in Canada with the vast majority in the province of Nova Scotia.
About 350 Canadians in 2011 claimed Gaelic as their "mother tongue".
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