Diminishing numbers of Gàidhlig speakers from 1891 to 2001. Presumably the latest census will show how much further the language has diminished in the last two decades.
by ewenmax
Diminishing numbers of Gàidhlig speakers from 1891 to 2001. Presumably the latest census will show how much further the language has diminished in the last two decades.
by ewenmax
26 comments
It would also be interesting to see the numbers of speakers in the Central Belt, particularly around the Park Bar.
Be interesting to see how that compares with the Irish language when Ireland didn’t have other country ruling it?
Good job we spent all that money updating the signs and ambulances, really.
I think the numbers stabilised from 2001 to 2011 and there was a slight rise up to 2021. I imagine with the current effort to teach it in schools, it will be fairly stable in the next census as well.
That’s the thing about language, it doesn’t stand still – it’s ever changing.
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English is the dominant one now, not just here, in pretty much all of the Western World.
It would be silly to lament the decline of a language that doesn’t currently serve much purpose, outwith those who wish to pursue it as a hobby.
Such is life. It’s a sad thing to see, but continual decline of L1 speakers of Gaelic seems inevitable. School programs might correct that, but I don’t see us having a turn-around in use of the language as has happened in Wales. Personally, I’m more interested in preserving use of Scots and Scottish English in the Lowlands, due to, as far as I’m aware, schools continuing to treat it as “incorrect English” rather than a dialect/language.
My wife’s English, we were on a bus going to Glasgow and she asked me ‘what’s Gaelic?’ I said ‘it’s basically a dead language up here that barely anyone speaks anymore, words hadn’t left my mouth and two randoms sat near us started ranting to each other in what I can only presume was Gaelic.
That’s my cool story for the day.
That’s so sad.
what’s the scale on the maps?
Good thing the Scottish Government haven’t cut Gaelic funding recently! Oh wait; they have.
It’s still possible for Scotland to repair the damage but it will take time, effort and intelligence, so I’m not optimistic
The language of the military conqueror dying off, supplanted by the language of the cultural conqueror.
Interesting, if not unexpected, but not sure this is really worth mourning. Actual native languages are long dead, extinguished by the slavers who brought this one.
The white areas on that graphic are anything between 0-25%
What is the colour scaling for this map representative of? I presume this means ‘native/first language’ speakers?
Maps like this always seem to exclude Caithness as having a Gaelic-speaking population even though most of the place names in West Caithness are Gaelic (from there myself and me and my neighbour would often speak some Gaelic). Thurso has a Gaelic medium primary school. There’s plenty of sound archive on Tobar an Dualchais which illustrates Caithness Gaelic speech from the 20th-21st centuries. I’m not sure these illustrations are entirely accurate and mostly just seem to inspire doom or bolster the anti-Gaelic crowd into saying it’s too late to do anything without a massive cost (which is eternally unjustifiable due to other issues that money should go into, according to them).
It’d be interesting to see a comparison with a learning population.
All the more reason for Scottish independence, and also is the SNP doing anything to mitigate this?
Stats say there are still around 2000 speakers here in Nova Scotia!
Personally, I blame the axing of Dòtaman.
Gaelic sounds a lot like Iranian to me. Many words are extremely similar, just a pixel shift so Gaelic will never really vanish.
My mum and grandfather both know it, but they didn’t put down that they did on the Census because they don’t actually speak it day to day.
I suspect there will probably be a fair number that does it that way.
I’m English, though my mum and all of her side of the family are from Scotland, and I think this is very sad. It should be held onto not for function but to preserve culture and history. Somebody said they don’t want to learn a language nobody uses… People are taught French or German in school, realistically how much are people really gaining from this?
To hold onto any Celtic language is a matter of preserving a completely unique yet almost extinct family of languages. It’s about much more than simply learning a language, it’s the preservation of history and culture.
Not sure how accurate this map is. Highland Perthshire had many Gaelic speakers in the late 19th century, but it was ‘discouraged’ at school and church. Gaelic names were effectively banned by the clergy so Iain became John and school pupils punished. Whoever took this survey back then probably wanted to minimise acknowledgment of Gaelic being spoken.
Same for the Scots language. When a hear young folk talking the “Queens” in Glasgow it sends shivers down ma spine. Still using education to completely disassociate the next gen from their roots and heritage.
From what I can personally say learning from 2021 it definitely feels like there’s much more attention on it in recent times which is great, it’s frustrating when people are so pessimistic about Gàidhlig because it’s an optimistic mind set that will help the language grow
Also people saying “It’s a dead language” or “it’s useless” perpetuate the cultural destruction of the country and are no help in themselves, a country without its language is a country without a soul
Aye, fada beò gàidhlig… it’s sad, honestly. I hope that with the new semi-renaissance Gàidhlig has seen that we’ll have the language come back stronger, but with all the push and no support for years under West minister, it’s looking grim.
Inverse relationship with the amount of ScotRail signs in Gaelic
My 12 year old is learning scottish gaelic and I think our younger kids will want to learn it too one day. We don’t live in Scotland, we’re not even Scottish, we’re Irish, but their Granny is Scottish and she’s fluent. She loves the language. She’s always been teaching the kids songs in scottish gaelic, they know some words and phrases and they all speak irish so it’s not that hard for them. And even though they don’t really know the language and can’t use it they still love it and I truly believe they will learn it one day.
I’m quite optimistic hahah. It’s taught is schools now too isn’t it?