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No. 4526
Celtic Languages (Goidelic): Scottish-Gaelic (Gàidhlig, about 70k native speakers) and Irish (Gaeilge, over 50k native speakers) are the two primary branches of Gaelic that 99% of the people out there think of when they think Gaelic. They are alsothe two most widely spoken Goidelic languages. In fact, at least in Ireland (not sure about Scotland), there are still a few communities and schools that are primarily in the native tongue. I would love to learn either one of these more in-depth and, as they are are very similar to each other (like english in rural America versus rural England, if we were to write how we spoke, trust me), it would be possible to do a little cross-learning later on. Manx (Gaelg) was mentioned and is the last of the actual Gaelic languages, but good luck finding someone to learn that from. There are probably only 1 or 2k of them left.
Celtic Languages (Brythonic): Welsh is a close cousin to Gaelic, much like Spanish to Portuguese and has the largest speaking population (3/4 of a million). It would probably be the easiest of em all to learn because of this, but there would be more difficulty in cross-learning. Welsh also has two smaller sister languages: Cornish (about the size of Manx, dying), and Breton. Breton is spoken in the top left corner of France, in a place called Brittany, and has a very interesting history if you have the time to Wikipedia it. It is also the second largest language (~200k) of all we have mentioned here. I think it would be cool to learn a bit of it, personally.
If you want to learn Gaelic, try to get a listen to what they sound like spoken by various people. I find if you don't like the sound of a language, you tend to lose interest in it pretty quickly. Scottish-Gaelic is harsher sounding than Irish, but, at least spoken-wise, the main difference is accent and pronunciation. The words are almost all the same. Seriously, go try and take a listen to people from Ireland (both speaking English and Irish, you can probably find it on youtube) and do the same with people from Scotland.
I would offer my service to help people learn Gaelic, but I am a novice myself and it has taken a back seat to my other languages. Trying to learn mor
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