1.
Scottish Gaelic
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Scottish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic, sometimes also referred to as Gaelic, is a Celtic language native to Scotland. A member of the Goidelic branch of the Celtic languages, Scottish Gaelic, like Modern Irish and Manx, developed out of Middle Irish. The 2011 census of Scotland showed that a total of 57,375 people in Scotland could speak Gaelic at that time, the census results indicate a decline of 1,275 Gaelic speakers from 2001. A total of 87,056 people in 2011 reported having some facility with Gaelic compared to 93,282 people in 2001, only about half of speakers were fully literate in the language. Nevertheless, revival efforts exist and the number of speakers of the language under age 20 has increased, Scottish Gaelic is neither an official language of the European Union nor the United Kingdom. Outside Scotland, a group of dialects collectively known as Canadian Gaelic are spoken in parts of Atlantic Canada, mainly Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island. In the 2011 census, there were 7,195 total speakers of Gaelic languages in Canada, with 1,365 in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island where the responses mainly refer to Scottish Gaelic. About 2,320 Canadians in 2011 also claimed Gaelic languages as their mother tongue, with over 300 in Nova Scotia, aside from Scottish Gaelic, the language may also be referred to simply as Gaelic. In Scotland, the word Gaelic in reference to Scottish Gaelic specifically is pronounced, outside Ireland and Great Britain, Gaelic may refer to the Irish language. Scottish Gaelic should not be confused with Scots, the Middle English-derived language varieties which had come to be spoken in most of the Lowlands of Scotland by the modern era. Prior to the 15th century, these dialects were known as Inglis by its own speakers, from the late 15th century, however, it became increasingly common for such speakers to refer to Scottish Gaelic as Erse and the Lowland vernacular as Scottis. Today, Scottish Gaelic is recognised as a language from Irish. Gaelic in Scotland was mostly confined to Dál Riata until the 8th century, when it began expanding into Pictish areas north of the Firth of Forth, by 900, Pictish appears to have become extinct, completely replaced by Gaelic. An exception might be made for the Northern Isles, however, however, though the Pictish language did not disappear suddenly, a process of Gaelicisation was clearly underway during the reigns of Caustantín and his successors. By a certain point, probably during the 11th century, all the inhabitants of Alba had become fully Gaelicised Scots, by the 10th century, Gaelic had become the dominant language throughout northern and western Scotland, the Gaelo-Pictic Kingdom of Alba. Its spread to southern Scotland, was even and totalizing. Place name analysis suggests dense usage of Gaelic in Galloway and adjoining areas to the north and west as well as in West Lothian, less dense usage is suggested for north Ayrshire, Renfrewshire, the Clyde Valley and eastern Dumfriesshire. In south-eastern Scotland, there is no evidence that Gaelic was ever widely spoken, the area shifted from Cumbric to Old English during its long incorporation into the Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Northumbria
2.
Scots language
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Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language which was restricted to most of the Highlands. The language developed during the Middle English period as a distinct entity, although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Broad Scots is at one end of a linguistic continuum. Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish. In the 2011 Scottish census, a question on Scots language ability was featured, native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots or use a dialect name such as the Doric, or the Buchan Claik. The old-fashioned Scotch, an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Northern Ireland, the term Lallans, a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands, is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form. Scots in Ireland is known in circles as Ulster-Scots or Ullans. Scots is a contraction of Scottis, the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English Scottisc, before the end of the 15th century, English speech in Scotland was known as English, whereas Scottish referred to Gaelic. From 1495 the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular and Erse, meaning Irish, the Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic. Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century and it remained largely confined to this area until the thirteenth century, continuing in common use while Gaelic was the language of the Scottish court. Scots also includes loan words resulting from contact with Gaelic, Early medieval legal documents include a body of Gaelic legal and administrative loans. Contemporary Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ceilidh, loch, from the thirteenth century Early Scots spread further into Scotland via the burghs, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I. The growth in prestige of Early Scots in the century. By the sixteenth century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England, from 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, settled there. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one, Modern Scots is used to describe the language after 1700 when southern Modern English was generally adopted as the literary language though Scots remained the vernacular. In Scotland, Scots is spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, the Northern Isles, Caithness, Arran, in Ulster it is spoken in the Counties of Down, Antrim, Londonderry and Donegal. Dialects include Insular Scots, Northern Scots, Central Scots, Southern Scots, many speakers are either diglossic and/or able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation in which they find themselves
3.
Aberdeenshire
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Aberdeenshire is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland. It takes its name from the old County of Aberdeen which had different boundaries. Modern Aberdeenshire includes all of what was once Kincardineshire, as well as part of Banffshire, the old boundaries are still officially used for a few purposes, namely land registration and lieutenancy. Aberdeenshire Council is headquartered at Woodhill House, in Aberdeen, making it the only Scottish council whose headquarters are located outside its jurisdiction, Aberdeen itself forms a different council area. Aberdeenshire borders onto Angus and Perth and Kinross to the south, Highland and Moray to the west, traditionally, it has been economically dependent upon the primary sector and related processing industries. Its land represents 8% of Scotlands overall territory and it covers an area of 6,313 square kilometres. Aberdeenshire has a prehistoric and historic heritage. It is the locus of a number of Neolithic and Bronze Age archaeological sites, including Longman Hill, Kempstone Hill, Catto Long Barrow. The area was settled in the Bronze Age by the Beaker culture, in the Iron Age, hill forts were built. Around the 1st century AD, the Taexali people, who have little history, were believed to have resided along the coast. The Picts were the next documented inhabitants of the area, and were no later than 800-900 AD, the Romans also were in the area during this period, as they left signs at Kintore. Christianity influenced the early on, and there were Celtic monasteries at Old Deer. Since medieval times there have been a number of paths that crossed the Mounth through present-day Aberdeenshire from the Scottish Lowlands to the Highlands. Some of the most well known and historically important trackways are the Causey Mounth, Aberdeenshire played an important role in the fighting between the Scottish clans. Clan MacBeth and the Clan Canmore were two of the larger clans, macbeth fell at Lumphanan in 1057. During the Anglo-Norman penetration, other families such as House of Balliol, Clan Bruce. When the fighting amongst these newcomers resulted in the Scottish Wars of Independence, in 1307, Robert the Bruce was victorious near Inverurie. Along with his victory came new families, namely the Forbeses and these new families set the stage for the upcoming rivalries during the 14th and 15th centuries
4.
Ordnance Survey National Grid
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The Ordnance Survey National Grid reference system is a system of geographic grid references used in Great Britain, different from using Latitude and Longitude. It is often called British National Grid, the Ordnance Survey devised the national grid reference system, and it is heavily used in their survey data, and in maps based on those surveys. Grid references are commonly quoted in other publications and data sources. The Universal Transverse Mercator coordinate system is used to provide references for worldwide locations. European-wide agencies also use UTM when mapping locations, or may use the Military Grid Reference System system, the grid is based on the OSGB36 datum, and was introduced after the retriangulation of 1936–1962. It replaced the previously used Cassini Grid which, up to the end of World War Two, had issued only to the military. The Airy ellipsoid is a regional best fit for Britain, more modern mapping tends to use the GRS80 ellipsoid used by the GPS, the British maps adopt a Transverse Mercator projection with an origin at 49° N, 2° W. Over the Airy ellipsoid a straight grid, the National Grid, is placed with a new false origin. This false origin is located south-west of the Isles of Scilly, the distortion created between the OS grid and the projection is countered by a scale factor in the longitude to create two lines of longitude with zero distortion rather than one. Grid north and true north are aligned on the 400 km easting of the grid which is 2° W. 2° 0′ 5″ W. OSGB36 was also used by Admiralty nautical charts until 2000 after which WGS84 has been used, a geodetic transformation between OSGB36 and other terrestrial reference systems can become quite tedious if attempted manually. The most common transformation is called the Helmert datum transformation, which results in a typical 7 m error from true, the definitive transformation from ETRS89 that is published by the OSGB is called the National Grid Transformation OSTN02. This models the detailed distortions in the 1936–1962 retriangulation, and achieves backwards compatibility in grid coordinates to sub-metre accuracy, the difference between the coordinates on different datums varies from place to place. The longitude and latitude positions on OSGB36 are the same as for WGS84 at a point in the Atlantic Ocean well to the west of Great Britain. In Cornwall, the WGS84 longitude lines are about 70 metres east of their OSGB36 equivalents, the smallest datum shift is on the west coast of Scotland and the greatest in Kent. But Great Britain has not shrunk by 100+ metres, a point near Lands End now computes to be 27.6 metres closer to a point near Duncansby Head than it did under OSGB36. For the first letter, the grid is divided into squares of size 500 km by 500 km, there are four of these which contain significant land area within Great Britain, S, T, N and H. The O square contains an area of North Yorkshire, almost all of which lies below mean high tide
5.
Subdivisions of Scotland
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For local government purposes, Scotland is divided into 32 areas designated as council areas, which are all governed by unitary authorities designated as councils. The council areas have been in existence since 1 April 1996, historically, Scotland has been divided into 34 counties or shires. Although these no longer have any function, they are still used to some extent in Scotland for cultural and geographical purposes. Traditionally burghs have been the key unit of the government of Scotland, being highly autonomous entities. Even after the Acts of Union 1707, burghs continued to be the principal subdivision, until 1889 administration was on a burgh and parish basis. The years following 1889 saw the introduction of a hierarchy of local government administration comprising counties, counties of cities, large burghs, source,2011 Census for Scotland Scotland has several other administrative divisions, some of which are handled by joint boards of the councils. The Police and Fire Reform Act 2012 resulted in the merger of police and fire services on 1 April 2013 to form the Police Service of Scotland. Policing was the responsibility of the Cities and Burghs of Scotland, Police and fire service areas date from the era of regions and districts and island council areas. There are several joint boards for electoral registration and the purposes of property valuation for assessing council tax, see also NHS Scotland Until 1 April 2014 the towns of Cambuslang and Rutherglen were in the Greater Glasgow and Clyde health board area despite being located in South Lanarkshire. They are now part of NHS Lanarkshire, the Scottish Government has created seven Regional Transport Partnerships, for establishing transport policy in the regions. They broadly follow council area groupings and these areas in most cases resemble those of the pre-1975 administrative counties with Glasgow being the only current city to form a registration county. Although they have had no administrative function since 1930, they still exist and are used for statistical purposes such as the census. Many former civil parish areas also continue to form current registration districts and it should be noted that many boundary changes have occurred over the years and that an area currently derived from an old parish might no longer contain a place previously within that parish. The base level of sub-division in Scotland is that of communities, the main role of the CCs is to channel local opinion to larger local-government bodies. Otherwise, they have limited powers. There are around 1,200 communities in Scotland, not all communities have councils, some have joint councils. Scottish communities are the nearest equivalent to parishes in England. List of articles about local government in the United Kingdom ISO 3166-2, GB, subdivision codes for the United Kingdom
6.
Lieutenancy areas of Scotland
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The lieutenancy areas of Scotland are the areas used for the ceremonial lord-lieutenants, the monarchs representatives, in Scotland. The lord-lieutenants titles chosen by the monarch and her advisers are mainly based on placenames of the traditional counties of Scotland. In 1794 permanent lieutenancies were established by Royal Warrant, by the Militia Act 1797, the lieutenants appointed for the Counties, Stewartries, Cities, and Places were given powers to raise and command County Militia Units. Lieutenancy areas are different from the current local government council areas and they also differ from other subdivisions of Scotland including sheriffdoms and former regions and districts. The Lord Provosts of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, and Glasgow also act ex officio as lord-lieutenants and this is a unique right in the United Kingdom, all other lord-lieutenants are appointed by the monarch, rather than being elected politicians. The regions and districts were themselves superseded in 1995, but the lieutenancy areas remain the same, the Lord-Lieutenants Order 1975, Statutory Instrument 1975 No.428. The Lord-Lieutenants Order 1996, Statutory Instrument 1996 No.731, subdivisions of Scotland List of burghs in Scotland List of places in Scotland Media related to Maps of traditional counties of Scotland at Wikimedia Commons
7.
Kincardineshire
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Kincardineshire, also known as the Mearns, is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area on the coast of northeast Scotland. It is bounded by Aberdeenshire on the north and west, the name Kincardine is also used in Kincardine and Mearns, a committee area of the Aberdeenshire Council, although this covers a smaller area than the county. The county town was originally the town of Kincardine, the town of Kincardine, however, ceased to exist during the Middle Ages. The only visible sign of its previous existence is the ruin of Kincardine Castle,2 miles north-east of Fettercairn. In 1296, King John Balliol wrote a letter of surrender from the castle to Edward I of England after a war which marked the beginning of the wars of Scottish independence. In 1600, the Estates of Parliament ordered the government of Kincardineshire to be conducted at the Stonehaven Tolbooth. The county extended to Hill of Fare north of the River Dee, the burgh of Stonehaven became the county town and the county included three other burghs, Banchory, Inverbervie and Laurencekirk. Other settlements include Drumoak, Muchalls, Newtonhill and Portlethen, the county lost its administrative status in 1975. The area of Nigg in the north of the county became part of the City of Aberdeen, when the Grampian region was divided into unitary council areas in 1996, the district was absorbed into the Aberdeenshire council area. It was, Gules, the Sceptre and Sword of Scotland crosswise in saltire, with the Crown of Scotland in chief, the motto was LAUS DEO, Latin for Praise God. Inverbervie was a component of the Aberdeen District of Burghs from 1708 to 1832, in 1918 the Kincardineshire constituency was merged with part of the Western Aberdeenshire constituency to form the Kincardine and Western Aberdeenshire constituency. In 1950 Kincardine and Western Aberdeenshire was divided between the West Aberdeenshire constituency and the North Angus and Mearns constituency, in 1983, eight years after the abolition of the local government county of Kincardineshire, North Angus and Mearns was replaced by new constituencies. The ancient Causey Mounth road was built on ground to make passable this only available medieval route from coastal points south to Aberdeen. This ancient passage connected the Bridge of Dee to Muchalls Castle. The route was taken by the Earl Marischal and Marquess of Montrose when they led a Covenanter army of 9,000 men in the first battle of the Bishops Wars in 1639. Elsick Mounth is a prehistoric trackway used by the Caledonian tribes as well as the Roman army in their invasion of the Scottish Highlands. The author Lewis Grassic Gibbon, born James Leslie Mitchell, was a Scottish writer and his book Sunset Song is one of the most important Scottish novels of the 20th century. It was voted Scotlands favourite book, in a poll announced at the Edinburgh International Book Festival 2005, the book, set in a fictional village in the Mearns, drew heavily from Mitchells upbringing in Arbuthnott
8.
Countries of the United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom comprises four countries, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Within the United Kingdom, a sovereign state, Northern Ireland, Scotland. England, comprising the majority of the population and area of the United Kingdom, England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales are not themselves listed in the International Organization for Standardization list of countries. However the ISO list of the subdivisions of the UK, compiled by British Standards, Northern Ireland, in contrast, is described as a province in the same lists. Each has separate governing bodies for sports and compete separately in many international sporting competitions. Northern Ireland also forms joint All-Island sporting bodies with the Republic of Ireland for most sports, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man are dependencies of the Crown and are not part of the UK. Similarly, the British overseas territories, remnants of the British Empire, are not part of the UK, southern Ireland left the United Kingdom under the Irish Free State Constitution Act 1922. * Figures for GVA do not include oil and gas revenues generated beyond the UKs territorial waters, various terms have been used to describe England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. Wales was described as the country, principality, and dominion of Wales, outside Wales, England was not given a specific name or term. The Laws in Wales Acts have subsequently been repealed, the Acts of Union 1707 refer to both England and Scotland as a part of a united kingdom of Great Britain The Acts of Union 1800 use part in the same way to refer to England and Scotland. The Northern Ireland Act 1998, which repealed the Government of Ireland Act 1920, the Interpretation Act 1978 provides statutory definitions of the terms England, Wales and the United Kingdom, but neither that Act nor any other current statute defines Scotland or Northern Ireland. Use of the first three terms in other legislation is interpreted following the definitions in the 1978 Act and this definition applies from 1 April 1974. United Kingdom means Great Britain and Northern Ireland and this definition applies from 12 April 1927. In 1996 these 8 new counties were redistributed into the current 22 unitary authorities, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are regions in their own right while England has been divided into nine regions. The official term rest of the UK is used in Scotland, for example in export statistics and this term is also used in the context of potential Scottish independence to mean the UK without Scotland. The alternative term Home Nations is sometimes used in sporting contexts, the second, or civic group, contained the items about feeling British, respecting laws and institutions, speaking English, and having British citizenship. Contrariwise, in Scotland and Wales there was a much stronger identification with each country than with Britain, studies and surveys have reported that the majority of the Scots and Welsh see themselves as both Scottish/Welsh and British though with some differences in emphasis. The propensity for nationalistic feeling varies greatly across the UK, and can rise and it reported that 37% of people identified as British, whilst 29% identified as Irish and 24% identified as Northern Irish
9.
Scotland
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Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and covers the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It shares a border with England to the south, and is surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, with the North Sea to the east. In addition to the mainland, the country is made up of more than 790 islands, including the Northern Isles, the Kingdom of Scotland emerged as an independent sovereign state in the Early Middle Ages and continued to exist until 1707. By inheritance in 1603, James VI, King of Scots, became King of England and King of Ireland, Scotland subsequently entered into a political union with the Kingdom of England on 1 May 1707 to create the new Kingdom of Great Britain. The union also created a new Parliament of Great Britain, which succeeded both the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England. Within Scotland, the monarchy of the United Kingdom has continued to use a variety of styles, titles, the legal system within Scotland has also remained separate from those of England and Wales and Northern Ireland, Scotland constitutes a distinct jurisdiction in both public and private law. Glasgow, Scotlands largest city, was one of the worlds leading industrial cities. Other major urban areas are Aberdeen and Dundee, Scottish waters consist of a large sector of the North Atlantic and the North Sea, containing the largest oil reserves in the European Union. This has given Aberdeen, the third-largest city in Scotland, the title of Europes oil capital, following a referendum in 1997, a Scottish Parliament was re-established, in the form of a devolved unicameral legislature comprising 129 members, having authority over many areas of domestic policy. Scotland is represented in the UK Parliament by 59 MPs and in the European Parliament by 6 MEPs, Scotland is also a member nation of the British–Irish Council, and the British–Irish Parliamentary Assembly. Scotland comes from Scoti, the Latin name for the Gaels, the Late Latin word Scotia was initially used to refer to Ireland. By the 11th century at the latest, Scotia was being used to refer to Scotland north of the River Forth, alongside Albania or Albany, the use of the words Scots and Scotland to encompass all of what is now Scotland became common in the Late Middle Ages. Repeated glaciations, which covered the land mass of modern Scotland. It is believed the first post-glacial groups of hunter-gatherers arrived in Scotland around 12,800 years ago, the groups of settlers began building the first known permanent houses on Scottish soil around 9,500 years ago, and the first villages around 6,000 years ago. The well-preserved village of Skara Brae on the mainland of Orkney dates from this period and it contains the remains of an early Bronze Age ruler laid out on white quartz pebbles and birch bark. It was also discovered for the first time that early Bronze Age people placed flowers in their graves, in the winter of 1850, a severe storm hit Scotland, causing widespread damage and over 200 deaths. In the Bay of Skaill, the storm stripped the earth from a large irregular knoll, when the storm cleared, local villagers found the outline of a village, consisting of a number of small houses without roofs. William Watt of Skaill, the laird, began an amateur excavation of the site, but after uncovering four houses
10.
United Kingdom
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The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom or Britain, is a sovereign country in western Europe. Lying off the north-western coast of the European mainland, the United Kingdom includes the island of Great Britain, Northern Ireland is the only part of the United Kingdom that shares a land border with another sovereign state—the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Sea lies between Great Britain and Ireland, with an area of 242,500 square kilometres, the United Kingdom is the 78th-largest sovereign state in the world and the 11th-largest in Europe. It is also the 21st-most populous country, with an estimated 65.1 million inhabitants, together, this makes it the fourth-most densely populated country in the European Union. The United Kingdom is a monarchy with a parliamentary system of governance. The monarch is Queen Elizabeth II, who has reigned since 6 February 1952, other major urban areas in the United Kingdom include the regions of Birmingham, Leeds, Glasgow, Liverpool and Manchester. The United Kingdom consists of four countries—England, Scotland, Wales, the last three have devolved administrations, each with varying powers, based in their capitals, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast, respectively. The relationships among the countries of the UK have changed over time, Wales was annexed by the Kingdom of England under the Laws in Wales Acts 1535 and 1542. A treaty between England and Scotland resulted in 1707 in a unified Kingdom of Great Britain, which merged in 1801 with the Kingdom of Ireland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Five-sixths of Ireland seceded from the UK in 1922, leaving the present formulation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, there are fourteen British Overseas Territories. These are the remnants of the British Empire which, at its height in the 1920s, British influence can be observed in the language, culture and legal systems of many of its former colonies. The United Kingdom is a country and has the worlds fifth-largest economy by nominal GDP. The UK is considered to have an economy and is categorised as very high in the Human Development Index. It was the worlds first industrialised country and the worlds foremost power during the 19th, the UK remains a great power with considerable economic, cultural, military, scientific and political influence internationally. It is a nuclear weapons state and its military expenditure ranks fourth or fifth in the world. The UK has been a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council since its first session in 1946 and it has been a leading member state of the EU and its predecessor, the European Economic Community, since 1973. However, on 23 June 2016, a referendum on the UKs membership of the EU resulted in a decision to leave. The Acts of Union 1800 united the Kingdom of Great Britain, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have devolved self-government
