17 Facts About Canadian Gaelic

Canadian Gaelic or Cape Breton Gaelic, often known in Canadian English simply as Gaelic, is a collective term for the dialects of Scottish Gaelic spoken in Atlantic Canada.

Canadian Gaelic has been spoken since then in Nova Scotia on Cape Breton Island and on the northeastern mainland of the province.

Scottish Gaelic is a member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages and the Canadian dialectics have their origins in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

The Canadian Gaelic branch is a close cousin of the Irish language in Newfoundland.

Canadian Gaelic cultural identity community is a part of Nova Scotia's diverse peoples and communities.

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Thousands of Nova Scotians attend Canadian Gaelic-related activities and events annually including: language workshops and immersions, milling frolics, square dances, fiddle and piping sessions, concerts and festivals.

Canadian Gaelic-speaking poets in communities across Canada have produced a large and significant branch of Scottish Canadian Gaelic literature comparable to that of Scotland itself.

The group of Highlanders – all of whom were Canadian Gaelic-speaking – were settled at what is presently known as Port Royal, on the western shore of Nova Scotia.

Unlike in the Canadian Gaelic-speaking settlements along the Cape Fear River in North Carolina, there was no Canadian Gaelic printing press in Canada.

In 1917, Rev Murdoch Lamont, a Canadian Gaelic-speaking Presbyterian minister from Orwell, Queen's County, Prince Edward Island, published a small, vanity press booklet titled, An Cuimhneachain: Orain Ceilidh Gaidheal Cheap Breatuinn agus Eilean-an-Phrionnsa in Quincy, Massachusetts.

Canadian Gaelic has faced widespread prejudice in Great Britain for generations, and those feelings were easily transposed to British North America.

Politicians who themselves spoke the language held opinions that would today be considered misinformed; Lunenburg Senator Henry Kaulback, in response to Thomas Robert McInnes's Canadian Gaelic bill, described the language as only "well suited to poetry and fairy tales".

The government believed Canadian Gaelic was used by subversives affiliated with Ireland, a neutral country perceived to be tolerant of the Nazis.

In Prince Edward Island and Cape Breton where the Canadian Gaelic language was strongest, it was actively discouraged in schools with corporal punishment.

St Francis Xavier University in Antigonish has a Celtic Studies department with Canadian Gaelic-speaking faculty members, and is the only such university department outside Scotland to offer four full years of Scottish Canadian Gaelic instruction.

Several important leaders in the recent Canadian Gaelic revival, including the poet Lewis MacKinnon, have credited Nilsen with sparking their interest in learning the Gaelic language and in actively fighting for its survival.

Phonology of some Canadian Gaelic dialects have diverged in several ways from the standard Gaelic spoken in Scotland, while others have remained the same.