A commercial trade in Welsh books required a certain level of literacy in Welsh. Between 1540 and 1642 some 2,200 Welsh students were registered at Oxford and Cambridge, well over four-fifths of them at Oxford. The sense of crisis was intensified by the rapid decline of the bardic order, the traditional custodian of the Welsh language and traditions. Despite the poverty, underdevelopment, and relative isolation of Wales, Welsh was the only Celtic language to respond positively to the challenge of print, roughly two hundred Welsh-language titles appearing during the first century and a half of Welsh-language printing. The main difference between Wales and the other Celtic-speaking areas was that Welsh became the language of public worship. As literacy in Welsh became more widespread, monoglot Welsh-speakers made ever-increasing use of the printed word, a development which culminated in the flourishing vernacular press of the mid-nineteenth century.

Insular West Germanic speech was first established in what is now Scotland in the sixth century. Uniquely among Old English-derived speech forms other than standard literary English, Scots has a claim to be regarded as a distinct language rather than a dialect, or latterly a group of dialects, of English. The distinction between Scots and Scottish English, which though not always clear in practice, is soundly based on historical facts. Germanic speech was established in what had been an area of Celtic language and culture. The growing complexity of the Scottish linguistic situation, with French and English emerging as functioning languages of the kingdom, can be deduced from official documents of the eleventh, twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The chapter also discusses the spread of English in the Gaidhealtachd and the Northern Isles, and looks at phonology morphology, syntax, and dialect variation of Scottish English. Language adds a distinctive colouring to the contemporary Scottish cultural scene.