Scottish Gaelic 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, or Gàidhlig, is a Goidelic Celtic language brought to S…

Scottish Gaelic 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, or Gàidhlig, is a Goidelic Celtic language brought to Scotland from Ireland around the 4th or 5th century. It gave Scotland its name. The Latin Scoti simply meant “Gaelic speaker”, and by around 1018 it was the dominant language across most of the country. The decline began when Malcolm III married the Anglo-Saxon princess Margaret in the 11th century, and English slowly took over at court, in trade and in the burghs. The Highland Clearances, the banning of Gaelic in schools, and mass emigration to Canada and Australia gutted what was left, taking speaker numbers from over 250,000 in 1891 to just 57,000 by 2011. The 2022 census showed that around 70,000 people reported being able to speak it. Its heartland remains the Outer Hebrides, where over half the population still speaks it.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​