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.
Sutherland
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Sutherland is a county in the Highlands of Scotland. Sutherland borders Caithness to the east, Ross-shire to the south, in Gaelic the area is referred to according to its traditional areas, Dùthaich MhicAoidh in the northeast, Asainte in the west, and Cataibh in the east. Cataibh is also used to refer to the area as a whole. The name Sutherland dates from the era of Norwegian Viking rule and settlement over much of the Highlands and Islands, although it contains some of the northernmost land in the island of Great Britain, it was called Suðrland from the standpoint of Orkney and Caithness. The northwest corner of Sutherland, traditionally known as the Province of Strathnaver, was not incorporated into Sutherland until 1601 and this was the home of the powerful and warlike Clan Mackay, and as such was named in Gaelic, Dùthaich Ic Aoidh, the Homeland of Mackay. Like its southern neighbour Ross-shire, Sutherland has some of the most dramatic scenery in the whole of Europe and these include high sea cliffs, and very old mountains composed of Precambrian and Cambrian rocks. Much of the population is based in towns, such as Helmsdale and Lochinver. Much of Sutherland is poor relative to the rest of Scotland, with few job opportunities beyond government funded employment, agriculture, further education is provided by North Highland College, part of the University of the Highland and Islands. The Ross House Campus in Dornoch was the first establishment in the UK to provide a degree in Golf Management, the Burghfield House Campus, also in Dornoch, is a hotel school. The inland landscape is rugged and very sparsely populated, despite being Scotlands fifth-largest county in terms of area, it has a smaller population than a medium-size Lowland Scottish town. It stretches from the Atlantic in the west, up to the Pentland Firth, the sea-coasts boast very high cliffs and deep fjords in the east and north, ragged inlets on the west and sandy beaches in the north. The remote far northwest point of Sutherland, Cape Wrath, is the most northwesterly point in Scotland, Sutherland has many rugged mountains such as Ben Hope, the most northerly Munro. The western part comprises Torridonian sandstone underlain by Lewisian gneiss, the spectacular scenery has been created by denudation to form isolated sandstone peaks such as Foinaven, Arkle, Cùl Mór and Suilven. Such mountains are attractive for hill walking and scrambling, despite their remote location, together with similar peaks to the south in Wester Ross, such as Stac Pollaidh, they have a unique structure with great scope for exploration. On the other hand, care is needed when bad weather occurs owing to their isolation, Sutherland has many fine beaches, a remote example being Sandwood Bay, which can only be reached by foot along a rough track. The number of visiting tourists is, naturally, minimal, there are pockets of the native Scots Pine, remnants of the original Caledonian Forest. Owing to its isolation from the rest of the country, Sutherland was reputedly the last haunt of the native wolf, the last survivor being shot in the 18th century. However, other wildlife has survived, including the eagle, sea eagle
4.
United Kingdom Census 2001
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A nationwide census, known as Census 2001, was conducted in the United Kingdom on Sunday,29 April 2001. This was the 20th UK census and recorded a resident population of 58,789,194, the 2001 UK census was organised by the Office for National Statistics in England and Wales, the General Register Office for Scotland and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. Detailed results by region, council area, ward and output area are available from their respective websites. Similar to previous UK censuses, the 2001 census was organised by the three agencies, ONS, GROS, and NISRA, and coordinated at the national level by the Office for National Statistics. In England and Wales these regulations were made by the Census Order 2000, in Scotland by the Census Order 2000, the census was administered through self-completion forms, in most cases delivered by enumerators to households and communal establishments in the three weeks before census night on 29 April. For the first time return by post was used as the collection method. The postal response rate was 88% in England and Wales, 91% in Scotland, a total of 81,000 field staff were employed across the UK. The census was conducted at the height of the crisis, which led to extra precautions being adopted by the field staff. However, it was reported that the outbreak did not affect the effectiveness of the collection process. The census was estimated to cost £259m over its 13-year cycle from the start of planning in 1993 to the delivery of results in 2006. Printing of the 30 million census forms was subcontracted to Polestar Group, the forms were initially scanned into digital format, then read with OMR and OCR, with manual entry where the automatic process could not read the forms. The forms were then pulped and recycled, and the copies printed onto microfilm for storage. Once the data were returned to the statistics agencies it underwent further processing to ensure consistency and this was due to a number of factors, households with no response, households excluding residents from their returns, and addresses not included in the enumeration. In Manchester for example 25,000 people from 14,000 addresses were not enumerated because the database was two years out of date. The Local Authority with the lowest response was Kensington and Chelsea with 64%, hackney had the next lowest response at 72%. Out of all authorities, the ten lowest response rates were all in London. The results from the 2001 census were produced using a known as the One Number Census. This was an attempt to adjust the census counts and impute answers to allow for estimated under-enumeration measured by the Census Coverage Survey, resulting in a single set of population estimates
5.
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
6.
Edinburgh
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Edinburgh is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 local government council areas. Located in Lothian on the Firth of Forths southern shore, it is Scotlands second most populous city and the seventh most populous in the United Kingdom. The 2014 official population estimates are 464,990 for the city of Edinburgh,492,680 for the authority area. Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is home to the Scottish Parliament and it is the largest financial centre in the UK after London. Historically part of Midlothian, the city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scots law, literature, the sciences and engineering. The University of Edinburgh, founded in 1582 and now one of four in the city, was placed 17th in the QS World University Rankings in 2013 and 2014. The city is famous for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe. The citys historical and cultural attractions have made it the United Kingdoms second most popular tourist destination after London, attracting over one million overseas visitors each year. Historic sites in Edinburgh include Edinburgh Castle, Holyrood Palace, the churches of St. Giles, Greyfriars and the Canongate, Edinburghs Old Town and New Town together are listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, which has been managed by Edinburgh World Heritage since 1999. It appears to derive from the place name Eidyn mentioned in the Old Welsh epic poem Y Gododdin, the poem names Din Eidyn as a hill fort in the territory of the Gododdin. The Celtic element din was dropped and replaced by the Old English burh, the first documentary evidence of the medieval burgh is a royal charter, c. 1124–1127, by King David I granting a toft in burgo meo de Edenesburg to the Priory of Dunfermline. In modern Gaelic, the city is called Dùn Èideann, the earliest known human habitation in the Edinburgh area was at Cramond, where evidence was found of a Mesolithic camp site dated to c.8500 BC. Traces of later Bronze Age and Iron Age settlements have found on Castle Rock, Arthurs Seat, Craiglockhart Hill. When the Romans arrived in Lothian at the end of the 1st century AD, at some point before the 7th century AD, the Gododdin, who were presumably descendants of the Votadini, built the hill fort of Din Eidyn or Etin. Although its location has not been identified, it likely they would have chosen a commanding position like the Castle Rock, Arthurs Seat. In 638, the Gododdin stronghold was besieged by forces loyal to King Oswald of Northumbria and it thenceforth remained under their jurisdiction. The royal burgh was founded by King David I in the early 12th century on land belonging to the Crown, in 1638, King Charles Is attempt to introduce Anglican church forms in Scotland encountered stiff Presbyterian opposition culminating in the conflicts of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. In the 17th century, Edinburghs boundaries were defined by the citys defensive town walls
7.
London
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London /ˈlʌndən/ is the capital and most populous city of England and the United Kingdom. Standing on the River Thames in the south east of the island of Great Britain and it was founded by the Romans, who named it Londinium. Londons ancient core, the City of London, largely retains its 1. 12-square-mile medieval boundaries. London is a global city in the arts, commerce, education, entertainment, fashion, finance, healthcare, media, professional services, research and development, tourism. It is crowned as the worlds largest financial centre and has the fifth- or sixth-largest metropolitan area GDP in the world, London is a world cultural capital. It is the worlds most-visited city as measured by international arrivals and has the worlds largest city airport system measured by passenger traffic, London is the worlds leading investment destination, hosting more international retailers and ultra high-net-worth individuals than any other city. Londons universities form the largest concentration of education institutes in Europe. In 2012, London became the first city to have hosted the modern Summer Olympic Games three times, London has a diverse range of people and cultures, and more than 300 languages are spoken in the region. Its estimated mid-2015 municipal population was 8,673,713, the largest of any city in the European Union, Londons urban area is the second most populous in the EU, after Paris, with 9,787,426 inhabitants at the 2011 census. The citys metropolitan area is the most populous in the EU with 13,879,757 inhabitants, the city-region therefore has a similar land area and population to that of the New York metropolitan area. London was the worlds most populous city from around 1831 to 1925, Other famous landmarks include Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, Piccadilly Circus, St Pauls Cathedral, Tower Bridge, Trafalgar Square, and The Shard. The London Underground is the oldest underground railway network in the world, the etymology of London is uncertain. It is an ancient name, found in sources from the 2nd century and it is recorded c.121 as Londinium, which points to Romano-British origin, and hand-written Roman tablets recovered in the city originating from AD 65/70-80 include the word Londinio. The earliest attempted explanation, now disregarded, is attributed to Geoffrey of Monmouth in Historia Regum Britanniae and this had it that the name originated from a supposed King Lud, who had allegedly taken over the city and named it Kaerlud. From 1898, it was accepted that the name was of Celtic origin and meant place belonging to a man called *Londinos. The ultimate difficulty lies in reconciling the Latin form Londinium with the modern Welsh Llundain, which should demand a form *lōndinion, from earlier *loundiniom. The possibility cannot be ruled out that the Welsh name was borrowed back in from English at a later date, and thus cannot be used as a basis from which to reconstruct the original name. Until 1889, the name London officially applied only to the City of London, two recent discoveries indicate probable very early settlements near the Thames in the London area
8.
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
9.
Highland (council area)
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Highland is a council area in the Scottish Highlands and is the largest local government area in the United Kingdom. It shares borders with the areas of Aberdeenshire, Argyll and Bute, Moray and Perth. Their councils, and those of Angus and Stirling, also have areas of the Scottish Highlands within their administrative boundaries, according to the 2011 UK census, there are nearly 12,000 Scottish Gaelic speakers in the Highland area. The act also abolished county and burgh councils, in 1996, under the Local Government etc. Act 1994, the Highland Regional Council and the councils were wound up. The Highland Council adopted the districts as management areas and created committees to represent them. However, the boundaries of committee areas ceased to be aligned exactly with those of management areas as a result of changes to ward boundaries in 1999, the names of these areas are also names of constituencies, but boundaries are different. To many people within the area, using the name Highland as a noun sounds wrong, dingwall in Highland, for example, sounds strange and is not idiomatic usage. To refer specifically to the covered by the council, people tend to say the Highland Council area or the Highland area or the Highland region. Otherwise, they tend to use the county names, such as Ross-shire. Highlands sometimes refers to the Highland council area, more usually it refers to a somewhat larger or overlapping area. The Highland Council headquarters is located in Inverness with most previous district council offices retained as outstations, Highland Council covers an area of 25,657 square kilometres — which is 11. 4% of the total size of Great Britain and is 20% larger than Wales. Highland Councils highest point is Ben Nevis, the tallest mountain in both Scotland and the United Kingdom as a whole and its northernmost point is Stroma, a small island in the Pentland Firth. Its southernmost point is on the Morvern peninsula, Highland contains the westernmost point of the island of Great Britain, at Corrachadh Mòr. Despite the name, not all of Highland is mountainous, the areas east of Inverness, as well as the Black Isle, eastern Sutherland, and all of Caithness are, in fact, low-lying. The Coalition had 45 councillors and the other 35 councillors were Independents, the current ruling administration was formed by the Independent group in June 2015. Three of the constituencies, each electing one MSP, are within the Highland area, Caithness, Sutherland and Ross, Inverness and Nairn and Skye, Lochaber. Each constituency elects one MP by the first past the post system of election
10.
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
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