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Scottish Gaelic, sometimes also referred to as Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish, and thus is ultimately descended from Old Irish.

The 2011 census of Scotland showed that a total of 57,375 people (1.1% of the Scottish population aged over three years old) in Scotland could speak Gaelic at that time, with the Outer Hebrides being the main stronghold of the language. The census results indicate a decline of 1,275 Gaelic speakers from 2001. A total of 87,056 people in 2011 reported having some facility with Gaelic compared to 93,282 people in 2001, a decline of 6,226.Despite this decline, revival efforts exist and the number of speakers of the language under age 20 has increased.

Scottish Gaelic is not an official language of the European Union or the United Kingdom. However, it is classed as an Indigenous language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, which the British government has ratified, and the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 established a language development body, Bòrd na Gàidhlig, “with a view to securing the status of the Gaelic language as an official language of Scotland.

Outside Scotland, a dialect known as Canadian Gaelic is spoken in parts of Eastern Canada. In 2011, there were approximately 1,500 Gaelic-speakers in Canada with the vast majority in the province of Nova Scotia. About 350 Canadians in 2011 claimed Gaelic as their “mother tongue”.

Aside from “Scottish Gaelic”, the language may also be referred to simply as “Gaelic”. In Scotland, the word “Gaelic” in reference to Scottish Gaelic specifically is pronounced [ˈɡalɪk], while outside Scotland it is often pronounced /ˈɡeɪlɨk/. Outside Ireland and Great Britain, “Gaelic” may refer to the Irish language.

Scottish Gaelic should not be confused with Scots, the English-derived language varieties which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the early modern era. Prior to the 15th century, these dialects were known as Inglis (“English”) by its own speakers, with Gaelic being called Scottis (“Scottish”). From the late 15th century, however, 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.

Many historians mark the reign of King Malcom Canmore (Malcolm III) as the beginning of Gaelic’s eclipse in Scotland. In either 1068 or 1070, the king married the exiled Princess Margaret of Wessex. This future Saint Margaret of Scotland was a member of the royal House of Wessex which had occupied the English throne from its founding until the Norman Conquest. Margaret was thoroughly Anglo-Saxon and is often credited (or blamed) for taking the first significant steps in anglicising the Scottish court. She spoke no Gaelic, gave her children Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic names, and brought many English bishops, priests, and monastics to Scotland. Her family also served as a conduit for the entry of English nobles into Scotland. When both Malcolm and Margaret died just days apart in 1093, the Gaelic aristocracy rejected their anglicised sons and instead backed Malcolm’s brother Donald as the next King of Scots. Known as Donald Bàn (“the Fair”), the new king had lived 17 years in Ireland as a young man and his power base as an adult was in the thoroughly Gaelic west of Scotland. Upon Donald’s ascension to the throne, in the words of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, “the Scots drove out all the English who had been with King Malcolm”. Malcolm’s sons fled to the English court, but in 1097 returned with an Anglo-Norman army backing them. Donald was overthrown, blinded, and imprisoned for the remaining two years of his life. Because of the strong English ties of Malcolm’s sons Edgar, Alexander, and David – each of whom became king in turn – Donald Bàn is sometimes called the ‘last Celtic King of Scotland’. He was last Scottish monarch to be buried on Iona, the one-time centre of the Scottish Gaelic Church and the traditional burial place of the Gaelic Kings of Dàl Riada and the Kingdom of Alba.

During the reigns of the sons of Malcolm Canmore (1097-1153), Anglo-Norman names and practices spread throughout Scotland south of the Forth-Clyde line and along the north-eastern coastal plain as far north as Moray. Norman French became dominant among the new feudal aristocracy, especially in southern Scotland, and completely displaced Gaelic at court. The establishment of royal burghs throughout the same area, particularly under David I, attracted large numbers of foreigners speaking ‘Inglis’, the language of the merchant class. This was the beginning of Gaelic’s status as a predominantly rural language in Scotland. The country experienced significant population growth in the 1100s and 1200s in the expanding burghs and their nearby agricultural districts. These economic developments surely helped spread English as well.

Gaelic still retained some of its old prestige in medieval Scotland. At the coronation of King Alexander III in 1249, a traditional seanchaidh or story-teller recited the king’s full genealogy in Gaelic all the way back to Fergus Mòr, the mythical progenitor of the Scots in Dál Riata, “in accordance with the custom which had grown up in the kingdom from antiquity right up to that time”. Clan chiefs in the northern and western parts of Scotland continued to support Gaelic bards who remained a central feature of court life there. The semi-independent Lordship of the Isles in the Hebrides and western coastal mainland remained thoroughly Gaelic since the language’s recovery there in the 12th century, providing a political foundation for cultural prestige down to the end of the 15th century.

That being said, it seems clear that Gaelic had ceased to be the language of Scotland by 1400 at the latest. It disappeared from the central lowlands by c1350 and from the eastern coastal lowlands north of the Mounth not long afterwards. By the mid-1300s English in its Scottish form – what eventually came to be called Scots—emerged as the official language of government and law. Scotland’s emergent nationalism in the era following the conclusion of the Wars of Scottish Independence was organized using Scots as well. For example, the nation’s great patriotic literature including John Barbour’s The Brus (1375) and Blind Harry’s The Wallace(bef. 1488) was written in Scots, not Gaelic. It was around this time that the very name of Gaelic began to change. Down through the 14th century, Gaelic was referred to in English as ‘Scottis’, i.e. the language of the Scots. By the end of the 15th century, however, the Scottish dialect of Northern English had absorbed that designation. English/Scots speakers referred to Gaelic instead as ‘Yrisch’ or ‘Erse’, i.e. Irish. King James IV(d. 1513) thought Gaelic important enough to learn and speak. However, he was the last Scottish monarch to do so.