Spoken in the UK

Walk through any big British town and you can hear languages as diverse as Cantonese, Spanish, Urdu and Greek. But there are also a number of indigenous, or native, languages spoken within the UK.

According to the 1991 census, 527, 510 people said they spoke Welsh. It is increasingly used in schools and by some local authorities. Public pressure has led to more public services in Welsh. A Welsh television channel, S4C, began broadcasting in 1983 and there are radio stations and newspapers.

In some areas, the use of English in schools and in the media has contributed to the decline of minority languages. There were about 69,000 speakers of Gaelic in Scotland in 1991, according to that year's census. The language, especially strong in the Outer Hebrides, is used in some schools but speakers have limited legal rights. It is not used in the courts, and it plays no part in the national government.

The Scots language, which is different from Scottish Gaelic, is so close a relative of English that it is often regarded as simply a northern dialect. It is spoken in the central belt of Scotland and the Lowlands. It was the everyday language here from the 14th century until the late 17th century. The upper classes slowly turned to English, influenced by the Union of the Crowns of England and Scotland in 1603. Most Scots speak a mixture of Scots and English, but English is the language of education and the government.

There has been a Scots revival in recent years: the New Testament in Scots was published in 1985, and Scots is used in parts of the Scottish press.

There are speakers of the Irish Gaelic in Northern Ireland, but it has no official status there. Other native languages in Britain include Cornish in Cornwall and Manx Gaelic on the Isle of Man. The last native speaker of Cornish died in 1777 and the last speaker of Manx in 1974. There have been recent revivals, although the languages have no legal status. (The Guardian)