UNESCO lists Gaelic as threatened language
A U.N. agency lists Gaelic, the language once spoken throughout Scotland, as one of the hundreds of languages in danger of disappearing.
The U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization released an Atlas of the World's Languages in Danger. The atlas, published Thursday, says that about 6,700 languages are now spoken around the world with about half at risk of dying out, The Scotsman reports.
Gaelic, a close relative of Irish, has been losing ground since the 13th century. By the end of the Middle Ages, it was spoken mostly in the Scottish Highlands and the number of speakers was 58,552 in the 2000 census, down from 250,000 in 1881, when 7 percent of the Scottish population were Gaelic speakers.
Arthur Cormack, who heads the national Gaelic board, told The Scotsman that efforts to reverse the decline appear to be successful. BBC Alba, a Gaelic TV channel launched in September, has 400,000 viewers, well above the 250,000 predicted. Thousands of children are learning Gaelic, including several hundred enrolled in Gaelic nursery schools.
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