Quote Originally Posted by longshadows
I'm confused. I thought is was a simple "north/south" thing: the "North" (Highlands) spoke Gaelic (a Celtic language, like Welsh and Irish) and the "South" (lowlands) spoke Scots (a Germanic langauge, like English and Dutch). Seems like "Scots," because it's not too far off from English gets lumped in with English and the Gaelic has become the "2nd langauge."

Now, is it simply of a matter of geography where one can find Gaelic and Scots and where does Gaidhlig come it?

The thing is to picture Scotland diagonally. Look at the map and join the rifts on each coast. There's sort of three diagonal sections. As a rough rule, the first level, takes in the border countries, has a milder accent and more English. The second diagonal has stronger accents and more Gaelic, this is what Oor Wullie and others (oor p1m) are trying to describe when they write funny/quaint/cute/authentic/whatever. The top diagonal is very thick accent and little English. The islands are even less English, darn close to Pagan (ha).

It's a rough guide, don't make too much of it, the thing is not to be thinking of North and South. For each of these diagonals, there were few crossings so each area developed its own culture. The divisions are basically gone in the past century.