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Scottish Gaelic Language: North America
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St. Francis Xavier University has a long history of support for Gaelic and in 1891 became the first university in North America to offer Scottish Gaelic courses. In 1958 it became the first university in Canada to establish a Department of Celtic Studies. The StFX Celtic Studies Department has an active undergraduate program, including an honours degree. The Department offers four full years of Gaelic on a yearly basis and it is the only Celtic Department in North America whose faculty members use Gaelic as the working language of their department. The Department holds numerous events for the promotion of Gaelic in the Province, most notably their popular Gaelic Days and annual Gaelic Immersion Weekend. The StFX Celtic faculty have been active members of the Nova Scotia Gaelic Steering Committee.
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Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a Q-Celtic language. Today it is spoken as a community language in the Outer Hebrides and in some areas of the Inner Hebrides and north west Scotland. The language was historically widely spoken thoughout Scotland but since medieval times has been spoken mainly in the Highlands.
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The Gaelic language eventually displaced Pictish north of the Forth, and until the late 15th century it was known in English as Scottis. Gaelic began to decline in mainland Scotland by the beginning of the 13th century, and with this went a decline in its status as a national language. By the beginning of the 15th century, the highland-lowland line was beginning to emerge.
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Scotland (Alba in Scottish Gaelic) is a country in northwest Europe, occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain. The nation shares a land border to the south with England and is bounded by the North Sea on the east and the Atlantic Ocean on the west.
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By the 1970s the Gaelic language was largely confined to the northwest islands of Scotland but most families in the Western Isles continued to use it as part and parcel of everyday family life. Since then many families in the Western Isles have stopped speaking in Gaelic and many parents there are no longer passing their native language on to their children.
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