The Decline of the Celtic Languages

the Celtic language, the next generation becomes bilingual, and the following generation becomes monoglot English/French speakers) (Durkacz p. 216). The numbers themselves don’t look too terrible, but in context it is clear that this trend is not reversing. Breton had 1.4 million speakers in 1905 and possibly as few as 250,000 today (Crystal p. 13). In Scotland, throughout the 20th century, the number of Gaelic speakers has been declining (Durkacz p. 226). There were about 67,000 Gaelic speakers in 1991, but the expected figure for the 2001 census is around 55,000 (Web of Words, Scottish Gaelic entry). In 1991, there were around 500,000 speakers of Welsh in Wales (Web of Words, Welsh entry), but this number is also much lower than at the beginning of the century (Durkacz p. 226). Ireland has almost 1.5 million people now who claim ‘some knowledge’ of the language, but less than 400,000 of them use it regularly (Web of Words, Irish entry).

Works Cited

Crystal, David. Language Death. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002.

Durkacz, Victor Edward. The Decline of the Celtic Languages. Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, Ltd, 1996.

Exploration Four: Language Death and Language Revival in the British Isles An interesting site with a good discussion of the decline of the Celtic languages in the British Isles. (Part of a course.)

Mohan, Peggy. "The Linguist’s Burden," Biblio: A Review of Books. A review of Crystal’s book which disagrees heartily with his perspective, and provides good food for thought.

Web of Words. European Bureau of Lesser-Used Languages. Statistics and information about minority languages in Europe.

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