Do Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland have their own languages?
At the start of the 20th century half the population of Wales spoke Welsh, a language belonging to the Celtic family. However, the numbers of Welsh-speaking people have steadily declined, and today only about a fifth of the population speaks it. Both the government and voluntary groups have taken steps to revive the use of Welsh. It is taught as a first language to all school students between the ages of 5 and 16, and there has been an extended use of Welsh for radio and television programmes. It is widely used for official purposes and is treated equally with English in the work of the Welsh Assembly. Gaelic, also a language of Celtic origin, is still spoken by some 70,000 people in Scotland, with the greatest concentration in the Hebrides. The word whisky, the famous Scottish alcoholic drink, is derived from the Gaelic uiscebeatha or water of life. People in the Scottish Lowlands have for centuries spoken Scots, a dialect derived from the Northumbrian branch of Old English and a comp
