Scottish American Research Paper

Scots Gaelic Separately, Scots and Gaelic are two distinct languages, but Scots Gaelic is a completely different language on its own (Hahn 1999). The language family that Scots or Scottish Gaelic descends from is the Indo-European language family, being further defined in the sub-branch of Celtic languages (Ager 2015). There are two main types of Gaelic, Irish and Scottish, which are mutually intelligible. As the names might suggest, Irish Gaelic is largely spoken in Ireland while Scottish Gaelic is primarily spoken in Scotland. However, Scotland is not the only geographic region that Scottish Gaelic is being spoken. Scottish Gaelic is spoken in four countries, two of which consider it a recognized minority language (Ager 2015). In 2011, around 58,000 people living in Scotland were speaking Scottish Gaelic (Macleod 2013; Lewis 2015). Scottish Gaelic is a moribund language, but with recent efforts to keep the language alive, it is receiving increased attention and thus is starting to decline at a slower rate (BBC News 2013). Scotland is not the only place Scottish Gaelic is being spoken. There are a few small communities of Scottish Gaelic speakers in Canada, Australia, the United State and even New …show more content…
Scottish Gaelic was spoken in the South and Northeast parts of Scotland between until the 11th century and then it moved towards the North and West during the. Despite its early beginnings as a spoken language, written Scottish Gaelic was not used until the 12th century. However, at this time it was difficult to distinguish between the Irish Gaelic and Scottish Gaelic due to the use of Classical Gaelic in their writing (Lewis 2015). Thousands of years ago, Scottish Gaelic was spoken by the majority of people living in Scotland. Now, unfortunately, it is only a minority language and is vanishing (Hahn