The languages of the UK and Ireland

The English Language of course, dominates the British Isles but several other indigenous languages are still widely spoken in various parts of the Islands. These older, mainly Celtic languages include:

Welsh
The language of Wales, more properly called Cymraeg, belongs to a branch of Celtic, a language that has been spoken in Europe for over 4,000 years and which was once the dominant language of Europe, from the British Isle in the North to the Middle East in the south. The Welsh themselves are descendants of the Galatians, to whom Paul wrote his famous letter. Their language is a distant cousin to Irish and Scots Gaelic and a close brother to Breton. Welsh is still used by about half a million people within Wales and possibly another few hundred thousand in England and other areas overseas. Strangely, there is an indian tribe in South America that speak Welsh!

Irish Gaeilge
Irish is a Celtic language spoken in a number of small communities, mostly in the west of Ireland, and by larger numbers of people scattered across the country. It has been the spoken language of Ireland for over two thousand years, and has an extensive literature stretching back to the seventh century. While Irish speakers are very much a minority in the Ireland of today, they have an importance to the cultural life of the nation far out of proportion to their numbers. Irish is by constitutional law the first official language of the Irish Republic, and was recently awarded official status in the Six Counties of Northern Ireland as a central part of the Good Friday Agreement. In the most recent censuses (1991), over a million people in the Republic and over 140,000 in the Six Counties reported themselves as having a reasonable proficiency in the language.

Manx Gailick
Manx was being spoken on the island when new invaders, the English, came to settle here. By the 17th century, by which time Manx literature had developed and was flourishing, the language was written using an Anglicised spelling (which is still used in Manx). But by the next century the necessity of using English, to read and speak it, led directly to the disappearance of the native language. Manx speakers were never too numerous, and in the 19th century they all spoke English, many of them as a first language. The last people to speak this Celtic tongue were recorded on tapes in the early 1950s of this century. Since then Manx has become extinct. Although the last 'native speaker' of Manx died in 1974 the language was revived and began to be formally taught in the Island's schools since 1992.

Scottish Gaelic
The Gaelic Language is spoken by around 86,000 individuals primarily in the North of Scotland and in the Western Isles (e.g.. Skye, Lewis, Harris). The vast majority of Gaelic speakers are bilingual Gaelic / English. Today there are very few people who do not speak English. Gaelic (or Scottish Gaelic as it is sometimes known outside Scotland) has similarities to the other Celtic languages, and is particularly close to Irish (or Irish Gaelic) to the extent that a mutual understanding is possible.

Cornish
Cornish, a Celtic language closely related to Welsh and Breton, died out in the late 19th or early 20th Century, although Cornish fishermen still counted their catches in Cornish till late in the century. It was revived during the 20th Century. It is estimated that there are now approximately 3,500 Cornish speakers and many more speak some Cornish or have some knowledge of the language. Cornish exists in place names, and a knowledge of the language helps to read the landscape. Many Cornish names are adopted for children, pets, houses and boats.

Scots
The Scots language is a Germanic language related to English. It is not a dialect but a language in it's own right. It is not Celtic, but has been influenced by Gaelic. The Scots language has a wide range of dialects. In Shetland and Orkney, there is strong Norse influence. Mainland Scotland has three main dialect divisions: Northern, Central and Southern. Central is further divided into East Central (north and south of the Forth), West Central (Glasgow and surrounding area) and South-West (mainly Dumfries and Galloway). Southern covers most of the Borders area. Scots is also spoken in Northern Ireland, the result of many crossings of the waters by populations over the centuries, in particular from the settlements of the early seventeenth century. As well as being the everyday language of an estimated 1.5 million people in Scotland, Scots is "the classical language of Scotland", and many of the historical epics written in Scots, such as The Bruce, Wallace, The Complaynt of Scotland, etc

Romany
is the language of the Roma and Sinti, travelling peoples often referred to in English as "gypsies". They came originally from northern India and parts of Pakistan, and their language belongs to the Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European language group. Analysis of the Romany language has shown that it is related to those spoken in northern India, such as Hindi and Punjabi, which is believed to indicate their true geographical origin. Loanwords in Roma make it possible to trace the pattern of their migration west.

Shelta
a language spoken by parts of the Irish Traveller people. Shelta's vocabulary is based largely on Irish Gaelic while its structure contains many similarities with English. It also contains elements of Romany languages, though the Travellers are not actual Roma. There are anywhere from 6,000-25,000 in Ireland itself according to various sources. The language is spoken almost exclusively by Travellers.

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