Editing Scottish Gaelic (section)

===Modern era===

A steady shift away from Scottish Gaelic continued into and through the modern era. Some of this was driven by policy decisions by government or other organisations, while some originated from social changes. In the last quarter of the 20th century, efforts began to encourage use of the language.

The [[Statutes of Iona]], enacted by [[James VI and I|James VI]] in 1609, was one piece of legislation that addressed, among other things, the Gaelic language. It required the heirs of clan chiefs to be educated in lowland, Protestant, English-speaking schools. James VI took several such measures to impose his rule on the Highland and Island region. In 1616, the [[Privy Council of Scotland|Privy Council]] proclaimed that schools teaching in English should be established. Gaelic was seen, at this time, as one of the causes of the instability of the region. It was also associated with Catholicism.<ref name="Devine 1994">{{cite book |last1=Devine |first1=T. M. |title=Clanship to Crofters' War: The social transformation of the Scottish Highlands |date=1994 |publisher=Manchester University Press |isbn=978-0-7190-9076-9 |edition=2013 }}</ref>{{rp|110–113}}

The [[Society in Scotland for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge]] (SSPCK) was founded in 1709. They met in 1716, immediately after the failed [[Jacobite rising of 1715]], to consider the reform and civilisation of the Highlands, which they sought to achieve by teaching English and the Protestant religion. Initially, their teaching was entirely in English, but soon the impracticality of educating Gaelic-speaking children in this way gave rise to a modest concession: in 1723, teachers were allowed to translate English words in the Bible into Gaelic to aid comprehension, but there was no further permitted use. Other less prominent schools worked in the Highlands at the same time, also teaching in English. This process of anglicisation paused when evangelical preachers arrived in the Highlands, convinced that people should be able to read religious texts in their own language. The first well known translation of the [[Bible]] into Scottish Gaelic was made in 1767, when James Stuart of Killin and [[Dugald Buchanan]] of [[Rannoch]] produced a translation of the New Testament. In 1798, four tracts in Gaelic were published by the Society for Propagating the Gospel at Home, with 5,000 copies of each printed. Other publications followed, with a full Gaelic Bible in 1801. The influential and effective Gaelic Schools Society was founded in 1811. Their purpose was to teach Gaels to read the Bible in their own language. In the first quarter of the 19th century, the SSPCK (despite their anti-Gaelic attitude in prior years) and the British and Foreign Bible Society distributed 60,000 Gaelic Bibles and 80,000 New Testaments.{{r|Hunter1976|p=98}} It is estimated that this overall schooling and publishing effort gave about 300,000 people in the Highlands some basic literacy.{{r|Devine 1994|pp=110–117}} Very few European languages have made the transition to a modern literary language without an early modern translation of the Bible; the lack of a well known translation may have contributed to the decline of Scottish Gaelic.{{r|Mackenzie1992 |pages=168–202}}

[[File:1891 Scotland Languages.jpg|thumb|1891 distribution of [[English language|English]] (including [[Scots language|Scots]]) and Gaelic in Scotland
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{{legend|#aed0cb|75–80% Gaelic, and English}}
{{legend|#e7b0ad|25–75% Gaelic, and English; line indicates the 50% [[wikt:isogloss|isogloss]] |textcolor=#b8544e |text='''━''' }}
{{legend|#d59887|5–25% Gaelic, and English}}
{{legend|#d7927f|0–5% Gaelic, and English}}
{{legend|#b54640|Purely English}}
]]
Counterintuitively, access to schooling in Gaelic increased knowledge of English. In 1829, the Gaelic Schools Society reported that parents were unconcerned about their children learning Gaelic, but were anxious to have them taught English. The SSPCK also found Highlanders to have significant prejudice against Gaelic. T. M. Devine attributes this to an association between English and the prosperity of employment: the Highland economy relied greatly on seasonal migrant workers travelling outside the {{lang|gd|Gàidhealtachd}}. In 1863, an observer sympathetic to Gaelic stated that "knowledge of English is indispensable to any poor islander who wishes to learn a trade or to earn his bread beyond the limits of his native Isle". Generally, rather than Gaelic speakers, it was Celtic societies in the cities and professors of Celtic from universities who sought to preserve the language.{{r|Devine 1994|pp=116–117}}

The [[Education (Scotland) Act 1872]] provided universal education in Scotland, but completely ignored Gaelic in its plans. The mechanism for supporting Gaelic through the Education Codes issued by the Scottish Education Department were steadily used to overcome this omission, with many concessions in place by 1918. However, the members of Highland school boards tended to have anti-Gaelic attitudes and served as an obstacle to Gaelic education in the late 19th and early 20th century.{{r|Devine 1994|pp=110–111}}

Loss of life due to [[World War I]] and the 1919 sinking of the [[HMY Iolaire|HMY {{Lang|gd|Iolaire|nocat=y}}]], combined with emigration, resulted in the 1910s seeing unprecedented damage to the use of Scottish Gaelic, with a 46% fall in [[monolingual]] speakers and a 19% fall in [[bilingual]] speakers between the [[1911 United Kingdom census|1911]] and [[1921 United Kingdom census|1921]] Censuses.<ref name="Scotsman 2022-12-20">{{cite news |url=https://www.scotsman.com/news/national/the-decade-when-scotland-lost-half-its-gaelic-speaking-people-3957569 |title=The decade when Scotland lost half its Gaelic speaking people |first=Alison |last=Campsie |work=The Scotsman |date=20 December 2022 |access-date=20 December 2022 |archive-date=20 December 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221220081358/https://www.scotsman.com/news/national/the-decade-when-scotland-lost-half-its-gaelic-speaking-people-3957569 |url-status=live }}</ref> Michelle MacLeod of [[Aberdeen University]] has said that there was no other period with such a high fall in the number of monolingual Gaelic speakers: "Gaelic speakers became increasingly the exception from that point forward with bilingualism replacing monolingualism as the norm for Gaelic speakers."<ref name="Scotsman 2022-12-20"/>

The [[Linguistic Survey of Scotland]] (1949–1997) surveyed both the dialect of the Scottish Gaelic language, and also mixed use of English and Gaelic across the Highlands and Islands.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://sgeulnagaidhlig.ac.uk/professor-cathair-o-dochartaigh/?lang=en |title=The Gaelic Story at the University of Glasgow |access-date=11 August 2019 |archive-date=24 November 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20211124224701/https://sgeulnagaidhlig.ac.uk/professor-cathair-o-dochartaigh/?lang=en |url-status=live }}</ref>