More people speak Urdu in Scotland than Gaelic. Where will it all end?
Alan Taylor investigates. When a language dies, it is not with a bang but with a whimper, as if it has been suffering from an incurable but non-aggressive illness. Its decline is gentle and slow, like the retreat of a glacier. At first it is unnoticeable, but measured over time, it is undeniable. The number of people who speak it drops – it becomes suffocated under the weight of a majority language. Eventually it is silenced, another victim of homogeneity. This, I fear, may be the fate of Gaelic. In the late 1920s, H. V. Morton, the inveterate traveller, visited Skye in the west of Scotland. On the boat from the mainland, he heard all around him Gaelic – “a live, vivid language” – being spoken. Were he to go there today he might catch a phrase or two of Gaelic. The language was introduced to Scotland from Ireland around the 6th century and has long suffered persecution. In 1616, for example, James VI decreed that Gaelic should be “abolisheit and removit” and replaced with “the vulgar I
