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The Goidelic languages or Gaelic languages (Scottish Gaelic: cànanan Goidhealach, Irish: teangacha Gaelacha, Manx: çhengaghyn Gaelgagh) are one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages, the other consisting of the Brythonic languages.^[1] Goidelic languages historically formed a dialect continuum stretching from the south of Ireland through the Isle of Man to the north of Scotland. There are three modern Goidelic languages: Irish (Gaeilge), Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) and Manx (Gaelg).^[2]

The Goidelic languages are part of the Q-Celtic branch of the Celtic languages.

Nomenclature[link]

Although Irish and Manx are often referred to as Irish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic (as they are Goidelic or Gaelic languages), the use of the word Gaelic is unnecessary because the terms Irish and Manx, when referring to language, only ever refer to these languages, whereas Scots has come to refer to a Germanic language, and therefore "Scottish" can refer to things not at all Gaelic. The word Gaelic by itself is sometimes used to refer to Scottish Gaelic and is thus ambiguous.

The names used in the languages themselves (Gaeilge/Gaolainn/Gaelic in Irish, Gaelg/Gailck in Manx, and Gàidhlig in Scottish Gaelic) are derived from Old Irish Goídelc, which comes from Old Welsh Guoidel meaning "pirate, raider".^[3][4]

Classification[link]

The family tree of the Goidelic languages is as follows:

• Insular Celtic
  • Primitive Irish
    • Old Irish
      • Middle Irish
        • Modern Irish
        • Scottish Gaelic
        • Manx

History and range[link]

Britain & Ireland in the mid-5th century, between the Roman withdrawal and the founding of Anglo-Saxon kingdoms.

  Mainly Goidelic areas.

  Mainly Pictish areas.

  Mainly Brythonic areas.

Goidelic language and culture would eventually become dominant in the Pictish area and far northern Brythonic area.

Goidelic was once restricted to Ireland, but sometime between the 3rd and 6th centuries groups of Irish, called by the Romans by the general term Scoti, began migrating from Ireland to what is now Cornwall, Wales and Scotland. Those who settled in Cornwall and Wales made little long-term impact. However, the Dál Riada settlers in Scotland eventually assimilated the Picts (a group of peoples who may have spoken a Brythonic language) who lived throughout Scotland.^[5] Manx, the Gaelic language of the Isle of Man, is closely akin to the Irish spoken in northeast and eastern Ireland and the now extinct Gaelic of Galloway (in southwest Scotland), with some influence from Old Norse through the Viking invasions and from the previous British inhabitants.

The oldest written Goidelic language is Primitive Irish, which is attested in Ogham inscriptions up to about the 4th century. The forms of this speech are very close, and often identical, to the forms of Gaulish recorded before and during the Roman Empire. The next stage, Old Irish, is found in the margins of Latin religious manuscripts from the 6th to the 10th century, as well as in archaic texts copied/recorded in Middle Irish texts. Middle Irish, the immediate predecessor of the modern Goidelic languages, is the term for the language as recorded from the 10th to the 12th century: a great deal of literature survives in it, including the early Irish law texts.

Classical Gaelic, otherwise known as Early Modern Irish,^[6] covers the period from the 13th to the 18th century, during which time it was used as a literary language^[7] in Ireland and Scotland.^[8] This is often called Classical Irish, while Ethnologue gives the name "Hiberno-Scottish Gaelic" to this standardised written language. As long as this written language was the norm, Ireland was considered the Gaelic homeland to the Scottish literati.

Later orthographic divergence has resulted in standardised pluricentristic orthographies. Manx orthography, which was introduced in the 16th and 17th centuries, was based on English and Welsh practice and so never formed part of this literary standard.

Irish[link]

Irish is one of Ireland's two official languages (along with English). Historically the predominant language of the island, it is now a minority language in most parts, although Irish-speaking areas still exist in parts of the south, west, and northwest of Ireland. The legally defined Irish-speaking areas are called the Gaeltacht; all government institutions of the Republic of Ireland (in particular, the parliament (Oireachtas), its upper house (Seanad) and lower house (Dáil), and the prime minister (Taoiseach) are officially named in this language, even in English. At present, the Gaeltachtaí are primarily found in Counties Cork, Donegal, Mayo, Galway, Kerry, and, to a lesser extent, in Waterford and Meath. In the Republic of Ireland 1,774,437 (41.4% of the population aged three years and over) regard themselves as able to speak Irish.^[9] Of these, 77,185 (1.8%) speak Irish on a daily basis outside school.^[9] Irish is also undergoing a revival in Northern Ireland and has been accorded some legal status there under the 1998 Belfast Agreement. The 2001 census in Northern Ireland showed that 167,487 (10.4%) people "had some knowledge of Irish". Combined, this means that around one in three people (~1.8 million) on the island of Ireland can understand Irish to some extent, although a large percentage of these do not speak it fluently. The census figures do not take into account those Irish who have emigrated, and it has been estimated (rightly or wrongly) that there are more native speakers of Irish in Britain, the US, Australia, and other parts of the world than there are in Ireland itself.^{[citation needed]}

Before the period of the Great Famine of the 1840s, the language was spoken by the vast majority of the population, but the famine and emigration led to a decline which has begun to reverse only very recently.

As well as the general assumption by the English and Anglicised ruling classes following the Flight of the Earls and disappearance of much of the Gaelic aristocracy that Irish was a language spoken by ignorant peasants.^{[citation needed]}

The Irish language has been officially recognised as a working language by the European Union. Ireland's national language is the twenty-first to be given such recognition by the EU and previously had the status of a treaty language.

Scottish Gaelic[link]

Some people in the north and west of mainland Scotland and most people in the Hebrides still speak Scottish Gaelic, but the language has been in decline. There are now believed to be approximately 1,000 native speakers of Scottish Gaelic in Nova Scotia and 60,000 in Scotland.

Its historical range was much larger. For example, it was the everyday language of most of the rest of the Highlands until little more than a century ago. Galloway was once also a Gaelic-speaking region, but the Galwegian dialect has been extinct there for approximately three centuries. It is believed to have been home to dialects that were transitional between Scottish Gaelic and the two other Goidelic languages. While Gaelic was spoken across the Scottish Borders and Lothian during the early High Middle Ages it doesn’t seem to have been spoken by the majority and was likely the language of the ruling elite, land owners and religious clerics. Some other parts of the Lowlands spoke Cumbric, and others Scots Inglis, the only exceptions being the northern isles of Orkney and Shetland where Norse was spoken.

Scotland takes its name from the Latin word for a Gael, Scotus (of uncertain etymology).^[10] Scotland originally meant Land of the Gaels in a cultural and social sense. Until late in the 15th century, Scottis in Scots English was used to refer only to Gaelic, and the speakers of this language who were identified as Scots. As the ruling elite became Scots Inglis/English-speaking, Scottis was gradually associated with the land rather than the people, and the word Erse Irish was gradually used more and more as an act of culturo-political disassociation with an overt implication that the language was not really Scottish, and therefore foreign.

In the early 16th century the dialects of northern Middle English, also known as Early Scots, which had developed in Lothian and had come to be spoken elsewhere in the Kingdom of Scotland themselves later appropriated the name Scots. By the 17th century Gaelic speakers were restricted largely to the Highlands and the Hebrides. Furthermore, the culturally repressive measures taken against the rebellious Highland communities by the British crown following the 2nd Jacobite Rebellion of 1746 caused still further decline in the language's use – to a large extent by enforced emigration. Even more decline followed in the 19th and early 20th centuries.

The Scottish Parliament has afforded the language a secure statutory status and equal respect (but not full equality in legal status within Scots Law [1]) with English, sparking hopes that Scottish Gaelic can be saved from extinction and perhaps even revived.

Manx[link]

Today Manx is used as the sole medium for teaching at five of the island's pre-schools by a company named Mooinjer Veggey, which also operates the sole Manx primary school—the Bunscoill Ghaelgagh. Manx is taught as a second language at all of the Island's primary and secondary schools and also at the Isle of Man College and Centre for Manx Studies.

Comparison[link]

Numbers[link]

Common phrases[link]

Influence on other languages[link]

There are several languages that show Goidelic influence, although they are not Goidelic languages themselves.

Shelta language is sometimes thought to be a Goidelic language, but is in fact a cant based on Irish and English, with a primarily English-based syntax.

The Bungee language in Canada is an English dialect spoken by Métis that was influenced by Orkney English, Scots English, Cree, Ojibwe, and Scottish Gaelic.

Beurla Reagaird is a cant spoken Scottish travelling folk, which is to a large extent based on Scots Gaelic.

English and especially Highland English have numerous words of both Scots Gaelic and Irish origin.

See also[link]

• Differences between Scottish Gaelic and Irish
• Connacht Irish
• Ulster Irish
• Munster Irish
• Newfoundland Irish
• Canadian Gaelic
• Galwegian Gaelic
• Goidelic substrate hypothesis
• Proto-Celtic
• Éire

References[link]

External links[link]

Look up Goidelic in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• Ethnologue file on Goidelic languages
• Scottish Gaelic Wikipedia
• Irish language Wikipedia
• Manx Wikipedia
• Comparison of Irish and Scottish Gaelic

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Philip Anderson "Phil" Gawne BSc MHK (born 19 February 1965^[1]) is a Manx politician, who is the Member of the House of Keys for Rushen, a constituency in the Isle of Man. He is also the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry and therefore a member of the Council of Ministers.

Early life[link]

Born in 1965 in Douglas to C.R. Gawne CP and E Gawne (née Anderson), he is a fluent speaker of the manx language, the ancient language of the Isle of Man. He has done much to save this minority language in recent years, he once served as the Manx Language Development Officer.

During the 1980s he was involved with a nationalist campaign that ended with an arson attack on an uncompleted luxury home in Tromode. In 1988 he was sent to prison for 16 months, serving 8 months, for his part in this arson attack.^[2]

Personal life[link]

Gawne has been married to Catherine (née Kissack) since 1991, they have 2 children and live in the village of Surby in the south of the Island.

References[link]

• "Untie my Tongue". BBC Isle of Man. 2006-11-30. http://www.bbc.co.uk/isleofman/content/articles/2006/01/11/untie_my_tongue_feature.shtml. Retrieved 2007-02-04. 

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