Scottish Gaelic is a minority language of Scotland spoken by approximately 58,000 people, or 1% of the Scottish population (speaker numbers from the 2011 Census available in National Records of Scotland 2015). Here, we refer to the language as ‘Gaelic’, pronounced in British English as /ɡalɪk/, as is customary within the Gaelic-speaking community. In Gaelic, the language is referred to as Gàidhlig /kaːlɪc/. Gaelic is a Celtic language, closely related to Irish (MacAulay 1992, Ní Chasaide 1999, Gillies 2009). Although Gaelic was widely spoken across much of Scotland in medieval times (Withers 1984, Clancy 2009), the language has recently declined in traditional areas such as the western seaboard and western islands of Scotland and is now considered ‘definitely endangered’ by UNESCO classification (Moseley 2010). Analysis of the location of Gaelic speakers in Scotland and maps from the most recent Census in 2011 can be found in National Records of Scotland (2015). Figure 1 shows the location of Gaelic speakers in Scotland as a percentage of the inhabitants aged over three in each Civil Parish who reported being able to speak Gaelic in the 2011 Census.

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苏格兰盖尔语

苏格兰盖尔语是苏格兰的一种少数民族语言，约有 58,000 人使用，占苏格兰人口的 1%（2011 年人口普查的使用者人数可在 2015 年苏格兰国家记录中获得）。在这里，我们将这种语言称为“盖尔语”，在英式英语中发音为 /ɡalɪk/，这是盖尔语社区的习惯。在盖尔语中，该语言被称为盖德利格/kaːlɪc/. 盖尔语是一种凯尔特语，与爱尔兰语密切相关（MacAulay 1992，Ní Chasaide 1999，Gillies 2009）。尽管盖尔语在中世纪时期在苏格兰的大部分地区被广泛使用（Withers 1984, Clancy 2009），但该语言最近在传统地区如西海岸和苏格兰西部岛屿已经下降，现在被联合国教科文组织列为“绝对濒危”（莫斯利 2010）。苏格兰盖尔语使用者位置分析和 2011 年最近一次人口普查中的地图可在苏格兰国家记录 (2015) 中找到。图 1 显示了在 2011 年人口普查中每个公民教区报告说能够说盖尔语的 3 岁以上居民在苏格兰的位置，占人口百分比。