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Figure 2: Gaelic Speakers in UK Census Data 1881 - 2011

The rate of decline in Gaelic speakers appears to have decelerated in recent years. The 2001 census reported 58,652 people, having fallen by 11.1% from 65,597 in 1991. In 2011, the decline had slowed to 2.2% to 57,375. This represented 1.1% of the Scottish population recorded as having some ability in the language. Half of these lived in the Outer Hebrides, Highland Region or Argyll and Bute. Gaelic has continued to decline in these core indigenous areas, but this has been partly masked by an increase of speakers in the Lowlands. In 2001, nearly 50% of Gaelic speakers lived in the cities of the Central Belt. Kenneth MacKinnon termed the new distribution ‘a Gaelic archipelago in a Lowland sea’. The 2011 census also recorded the positive result that the number of speakers under twenty years in age had increased by 0.1% - presumably as a result of the growth in Gaelic medium education. In 2005, the language was officially recognised by the Scottish Government, but unlike Welsh, Gaelic is not recognised as an official language of the United Kingdom.