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Scottish Language

The majority of Scotland's population speak English, a consequence of England's political and cultural domination during 3-400 years. But there are two other - lesser known - languages that have been there far longer, and they are still there. That's Gaelic and Scots.

Gaelic
A thousand years ago the majority of the Scottish population spoke Gaelic. Nowadays the language has largely been reduced to the Highlands and Islands. By the latest census in 1991 the language was brought down to 66.000, a poor 1,5% of a population of 5+ million. And it is still falling, since the 66.000 are mainly elderlies.

Scots
After Gaelic, it was Scots' turn to become the main language of Scotland. For 400 years, Scots was the spoken and written language of the Scottish state. When Great Britain came to be established in 1707, Scotland's government moved to London, and Scots lost its political status to English. And even when Scotland's national poet, Robert Burns, was writing in Scots - "Should auld acquaintance be forgot" among other things - the language was being rapidly reduced to a purely spoken one, to the status of an everyday colloquial language, not something one could use in school, e.g.