"Gaelic can't rank higher than sixth in Scotland - behind English, Scots, Polish, Urdu and Italian, possibly lower than Chinese as well."

You often see this (ie about Urdu) quoted but it simply can't be true. The stats for ethnicity show that less than 50,000 people in Scotland's ethnicity comes fom the Indian sub-continent and of course only a proportion of these will be Urdu speakers. The Chinese population of Scotland amounts to lower than 20,000 people. There are still almost 60,000 Gaelic speakers. Though of course it is not the fact that Gaelic is spoken by more people than all the sub-continent's languages put together that makes it important within Scotland - surely it is the fact that it is one of Scotland's traditional languages that makes it important within Scotland?

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2004/02/18876/32939