Scots Battle for Ancient Gaelic Language : Culture: Tongue is spoken primarily in the Outer Hebrides, but its use is declining. The government is sponsoring an effort to teach it using TV and games.

ISLE OF SKYE, Scotland —  Call it a Gaelic irony. When Donald Lamont first applied for college, he was turned down by universities in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen.

Although he speaks good English--with a mild brogue--the young native of this island in the Inner Hebrides couldn’t satisfy the schools’ exacting English-language requirements. He scored higher in Gaelic, his native tongue.

Gaelic, Lamont explained with a wry grin, was the subject he wished to study at these venerable institutions.

Instead, Lamont settled for Sabhal Mor Ostaig, Scotland’s only Gaelic-language college, on Skye. Lamont, now 22, graduated last year and works at the college, which operates in a group of converted stone barn buildings and trailers.

Sabhal Mor Ostaig is in the vanguard of a last-ditch effort in Scotland, much of it underwritten by the British government, to preserve this nation’s ancient tongue from obliteration, a fate many predict it will suffer if current trends continue.

“While the progress we’ve made has been dramatic and encouraging, we’re under no illusions that we’ve just started, and the situation is still extremely critical,” said Allan Campbell, director of Comunn Na Gaidhlig (CNAG), a quasi-governmental agency based in Inverness that seeks to promote Scotland’s Celtic culture and language.

Many indigenous languages have been scoring comebacks around the globe. The European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages, based in Dublin, estimates that 42 million people in Europe speak minority tongues.

In Ireland, just over 1 million people, or 31% of the population, speak that country’s dialect of Gaelic--a close relative of Scottish Gaelic. In Wales, more than half a million people, 19% of the population, speak Welsh--a more distant linguistic cousin.

But Gaelic continues to decline in Scotland, where until the 13th Century it was spoken throughout the country. By 1891, just 175,000 Highlanders spoke the language. The 1991 census found only 66,000 Gaelic speakers in all of Scotland: 1.2% of the population, a drop of 15,000 since the previous census.

Today the fortress of Gaelic culture is the Outer Hebrides, with their 29,500 inhabitants.

Scholars trace the beginnings of Scottish Gaelic’s slide toward extinction to 1746, when a British army crushed a Highlands uprising led by the Catholic pretender Charles Edward Stuart, “Bonnie Prince Charlie.”

After the rout at the Battle of Culloden, British troops ruthlessly suppressed the people of the Highlands and western isles, killing many on the spot and imprisoning or deporting many more.

In the century that followed, depopulation of Scotland’s rural Highlands and islands continued as a result of economic bad times and evictions of tenant farmers by landholders, who found it more cost-effective to raise sheep than crops. Severe losses of young men from small villages during World War I further accelerated the decline.

At the same time, English became the language of commerce and prosperity for Scots as they joined in forging the British Empire. Many of them equated Gaelic with Catholicism, poverty and insurrection.

“So many of the symbols by which we differentiate ourselves as Scots are in fact the Highland symbols: the bagpipe, the whiskey and the tartan,” said Professor William Gillies, who holds the Celtic chair at Edinburgh University. “That has made it more respectable, more hip, more exciting to be Gaelic and to think Gaelic.”

CNAG estimates that as many as 5,000 Scots have been studying Gaelic for a year or more through various organizations and through classes conducted by local authorities and self-improvement groups.

During the first three months of a British Broadcasting Co. television language course, 21,000 viewers wrote in requesting study materials or further information.

More Gaelic television programs than ever are being broadcast in Scotland. Since 1989 the British government has spent about $16 million a year to produce as much as six hours a week of Gaelic programming.

Gaelic arts, especially traditional music and dance, have experienced a revival. Since the first officially sanctioned feil (festival) held on the Outer Hebrides island of Barra five years ago, about 30 such events have sprung up across the Highlands and islands.

A Scottish rock group, Runrig, and a folk ensemble, Capercaille, use Gaelic in their performances. They have attracted many young followers.

But perhaps the most serious effort to rescue Gaelic as a living language has been taking place among the youngest Scots.

Since 1982 about 120 “play groups” have been established, immersing more than 2,000 preschoolers in Gaelic, bringing them fluency through a carefully structured program of games and fun.

For parents who want their children to continue their education in Gaelic, 40 primary schools offer that option to more than 1,000 children--an increase from only two schools and 24 children in 1985.

Skye’s Sabhal Mor Ostaig points the way. Essentially a business college, it teaches students the fundamentals of industry and commerce in the old tongue.

Gaelic advocates also have their eyes on Scotland’s healthy tourist industry. Later this year CNAG plans to join the regional, economic council, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, in a pilot project on Skye to promote “cultural tourism.”