The contexts for the acquisition of Scottish Gaelic have changed significantly in recent decades through the impact of ongoing language shift to English in traditionally Gaelic-speaking communities and different kinds of language revitalisation initiatives, especially in relation to education (for adults as well as schoolchildren). This chapter reviews the sociolinguistic and policy dynamics that have brought about these changes and presents key findings from a range of studies involving linguistic demography, community language use, intergenerational language change, dialect maintenance, family language policy, language acquisition and attainment, and issues of affinity and identity.

Irish is the first official language of the Republic of Ireland. However, it is spoken by just 1.4 per cent of the population on a daily basis outside of the educational system (Central Statistics Office 2023). Irish is taught as a compulsory subject to students in three educational contexts: English-medium, Irish-medium, and Gaeltacht (Irish heartland areas) schools. The education system was given a key role in the revival of Irish when the Irish Free State was established in 1922 and the policy enjoyed some initial success. We argue that the policy was too narrowly focussed and had unrealistic expectations given the amount of instructional time and lack of exposure to Irish outside the school. We critically analyse key studies on the teaching and learning of Irish conducted in primary schools. A common theme that emerges from the studies is the success of immersion approaches to Irish and the disappointing outcomes where Irish is taught as a subject. If the education system in Ireland is to reach its potential in terms of Irish language achievement, then it needs to be transformed by increasing the intensity of exposure to Irish to take full advantage of an early start to language learning.

This chapter reviews current studies focusing on the production, comprehension, and processing of words and idiomatic expressions in neurotypical and neurodiverse Gaelic-speaking children and adults. The review of the literature highlights that the majority of studies on word learning have focused on primary school children attending Gaelic-medium education. This is not surprising given that the revitalisation of Gaelic is pursued through Gaelic-medium education (GME). The majority of new speakers, that is second language learners of Gaelic without prior cultural affiliation to Gaelic, are children or adults from non-Gaelic-speaking homes attending GME. The studies targeting lexical processing or asking how multiword expressions in the form of idioms are acquired highlight that many questions about Gaelic word learning and processing in the early years and across the lifespan are yet to be addressed. The chapter concludes by highlighting where the major research gaps are and by putting forward suggestions for future research.

Irish has a number of features such as VSO word order and initial mutations that make study of the acquisition of Irish morphosyntax particularly interesting to theories of child language development and, more recently, to language change. The chapter opens with a brief overview of Irish morphosyntax. We then outline and critically review studies of Irish morphosyntactic development over four main periods: (1) historical informal research on Irish acquisition; (2) studies of monolingual or strongly Irish-dominant acquisition; (3) a transition phase; and (4) more recent studies of acquisition in what have now become mainly simultaneous bilingual contexts. The findings of these studies are discussed in the light of the international literature and their contribution to our understanding of child language acquisition in general and Celtic languages in particular. The implications of these studies for language support and education are discussed, and future areas for research are considered.

Acquisition of vocabulary in Irish is of interest for many reasons. For example, Irish has a verb–subject–object word order, placing verbs in a more salient sentence position compared to nouns, and lexical verbs are repeated/negated in response to a yes/no question. Lexical items in Irish carry rich inflectional information, the acquisition of which may slow down the overall acquisition of words. Furthermore, Irish vocabulary is acquired in a context of universal bilingualism, so can inform us about bilingual language acquisition in a minority language context. The chapter will review how children acquire comprehension and expression of Irish vocabulary categories compared to other languages, and how Irish vocabulary develops in line with that of English. Using data from longitudinal and cross-sectional research collected through parent diaries, corpus data, parent report, and direct testing, the chapter reviews the internal and external factors that influence overall vocabulary attainment as well as the changes in Irish vocabulary knowledge that have been observed across the generations. Finally, future directions for research that have emerged from these studies will be explored.

Welsh grammar is characterised by an interesting set of morphosyntactic structures. Unique features within these structures distinguish Welsh – along with Irish and Scottish Gaelic – from other Indo-European varieties, and these differences offer a novel lens through which we can explore how language is learned. How children acquire the structures of Welsh, and how these structures are used by adults, has been the focus of a growing body of research over the past few years. The results of these studies have helped shape our understanding of the linguistic profiles of different types of bilingual Welsh-English speakers, in terms of their rate and pattern(s) of learning, and have highlighted some of the key factors influencing potential and achieved linguistic outcomes when learning within a minoritised bilingual context, contributing new and important insights into the various theoretical debates in the field. In this chapter, we outline how various morphosyntactic structures work in Welsh, and provide an overview of what is known from the current literature about L1 and L2 acquisition of Welsh morphosyntax, as spoken by both typically and atypically developing bilinguals. The different types of methodologies that have been applied to the study of Welsh grammar with adults and children will be discussed throughout, and suggestions for future studies presented at the end.

This chapter firstly outlines the phonological structure of Gaelic and aspects of phonetic implementation. I then consider methods used so far in the study of Gaelic phonological acquisition and review work in this area. The journey of language acquisition is varied across different sectors of the Gaelic-speaking population, as well as individuals. For example, while some children acquire Gaelic and English virtually simultaneously in the home, other children acquire Gaelic sequentially through a form of immersion schooling known as Gaelic Medium Education (GME). Many lie somewhere on a simultaneous-sequential continuum. Adult acquirers of Gaelic are a hugely diverse population, which naturally leads to a range of differing outcomes in the acquisition of phonology. In this overview of the field, I consider the different factors associated with multilingual phonological acquisition, and how they have predicted or challenged results obtained from data-driven studies of Gaelic. The chapter ends with a discussion about the multiple future directions needed for research in this area, including larger studies of primary-aged populations, and more focus on universities as an important locus of adult language acquisition.