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Gaelic, the old Celtic tongue of the Scots, is now spoken by little more than 75,000 people, most of them in the Highlands and the Hebrides. By their acceptance and use of the English translation of the Bible, the Scottish reformers of the 16th century in effect adopted English as the national language. But as any singer of "Auld Lang Syne" knows, the Scots have made the English they speak peculiarly their own. They have retained a high percentage of vocabulary derived from Old Norse and Anglo-Saxon, and they speak with a lilt. Indeed, " Scots " is an actual " language " all on its own. |
Scottish
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