Scottish Gaelic

Scottish Gaelic (/ˈɡælɪk/ ^ⓘ GAL-ik; endonym: Gàidhlig [ˈkaːlɪkʲ] ^ⓘ), also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a member of the Goidelic branch of Celtic, Scottish Gaelic, alongside both Irish and Manx, developed out of Old Irish. 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. Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced especially by Gaelic-language place names.

In the 2011 census of Scotland, 57,375 people (1.1% of the Scottish population, three years and older) 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. In the 2022 census of Scotland, it was found that 2.5% of the Scottish population had some skills in Gaelic, 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.

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. There exists a particular concentration of speakers in Nova Scotia, with historic communities in other parts of North America, including North Carolina and Glengarry County, Ontario having largely disappeared.

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. With the passing of the Scottish Languages Act 2025, Gaelic, alongside Scots, has become an official language of Scotland.

Aside from "Scottish Gaelic", the language may also be referred to simply as "Gaelic", pronounced /ˈɡælɪk/ GA-lik in English. However, "Gaelic" /ˈɡeɪlɪk/ GAY-lik also refers to the Irish language (Gaeilge) and the Manx language (Gaelg).

Scottish Gaelic is distinct from Scots, the Middle English-derived language which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the early modern era. Prior to the 15th century, this language was known as Inglis ("English") by its own speakers, with Gaelic being called Scottis ("Scottish"). Beginning in the late 15th century, it became increasingly common for such speakers to refer to Scottish Gaelic as Erse ("Irish") and the Lowland vernacular as Scottis. Today, Scottish Gaelic is recognised as a separate language from Irish, so the word Erse in reference to Scottish Gaelic is no longer used.

Based on medieval traditional accounts and the apparent evidence from linguistic geography, Gaelic has been commonly believed to have been brought to Scotland in the 4th and 5th centuries CE by settlers from Ireland who founded the Gaelic kingdom of Dál Riata on Scotland's west coast, in what is present-day Argyll. An alternative view has been voiced by archaeologist Ewan Campbell, who has argued that the putative migration or takeover is not reflected in archaeological or placename data (as pointed out earlier by Leslie Alcock). Campbell has also questioned the age and reliability of the medieval historical sources speaking of a conquest. Instead, he has inferred that Argyll formed part of a common Q-Celtic-speaking area with Ireland, connected rather than divided by the sea, since the Iron Age. These arguments have been opposed by some scholars defending the early dating of the traditional accounts and arguing for other interpretations of the archaeological evidence.

Regardless of how it came to be spoken in the region, Gaelic in Scotland was mostly confined to Dál Riata until the eighth century, when it began expanding into Pictish areas north of the Firth of Forth and the Firth of Clyde. During the reign of Caustantín mac Áeda (Constantine II, 900–943), outsiders began to refer to the region as the kingdom of Alba rather than as the kingdom of the Picts. However, though the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly, a process of Gaelicisation (which may have begun generations earlier) was clearly under way during the reigns of Caustantín and his successors. By a certain point, probably during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, and Pictish identity was forgotten. Bilingualism in Pictish and Gaelic, prior to the former's extinction, led to the presence of Pictish loanwords in Scottish Gaelic and syntactic influence which could be considered to constitute a Pictish substrate.