Gaelic and Scots have now been recognised as official languages as part of a range of new measures coming into force on St Andrew’s Day.<\/p>\n
The Scottish Languages Act, which MSPs voted through in June, also empowers parents to ask for a Gaelic school to be established in their area and aims to ensure that more qualifications are available in Gaelic.<\/p>\n
It includes powers for ministers to commission research into the use of Gaelic and Scots and establish teaching standards for the languages.<\/p>\n
Scotland’s Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes called it a “historic milestone”.<\/p>\n
“St Andrew’s Day is a fitting time to celebrate Scotland’s identity by recognising Gaelic and Scots as official languages,” she said.<\/p>\n
“This is a historic milestone which acknowledges the vital place these languages hold in Scotland’s culture and heritage.”<\/p>\n
Forbes added that the Scottish government had already allocated \u00a335.7m for Gaelic and Scots initiatives this year.<\/p>\n
Other measures in the act include supporting the creation of areas of linguistic significance in Gaelic communities so ministers can better target policies to support the language’s growth.<\/p>\n
The Scottish Languages Bill was introduced on St Andrew’s Day in 2023.<\/p>\n
It was passed at the Scottish Parliament in June this year and received Royal Assent on 1 August 2025.<\/p>\n
Latest census statistics show that 130,161 people in Scotland had some Gaelic skills in 2022, an increase of 43,105 from 2011.<\/p>\n
And it shows that 2,444,659 people in Scotland had some Scots skills in 2022, an increase of 515,215 from 2011.<\/p>\n
The Scottish council with the highest proportion of Gaelic speakers was Na h-Eileanan Siar (Western Isles) with 57.2% having some Gaelic skills. <\/p>\n
This was far higher than the next highest council areas, Highland (8.1%) and Argyll and Bute (6.2%).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gaelic and Scots have now been recognised as official languages as part of a range of new measures…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":167419,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-167418","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167418","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=167418"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/167418\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/167419"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=167418"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=167418"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=167418"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}