Gaelic language

Member of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family, spoken in Ireland, Scotland, and (until 1974) the Isle of Man. Gaelic has been in decline for several centuries, though efforts are being made to keep it alive, for example by means of the government's Gaelic Broadcasting Fund, established in 1993, which subsidises television and radio programmes in Gaelic for transmission in Scotland.

In Scotland in 1991 there were about 70,000 speakers of Gaelic (1.4% of the population), concentrated in the Western Isles and in parts of the northwest coast. See also Scottish Gaelic literature.

It is, along with English, one of the national languages of the Republic of Ireland, with over half a million speakers, and is known there as both Irish and Irish Gaelic.