Scottish people
Many respondents may have misunderstood the question and the numerous responses for "Canadian" does not give an accurate figure for numerous groups, particularly those of British Isles origins. Scottish-Canadians are the 3rd biggest ethnic group in Canada. Scottish culture has particularly thrived in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia (Latin for "New Scotland"). There, in Cape Breton, where both lowland and highland Scots settled in large numbers, Canadian Gaelic is still spoken by a small number of residents. Cape Breton is the home of the Gaelic College of Celtic Arts and Crafts. Glengarry County in present-day Eastern Ontario is a historic county that was set up as a settlement for Highland Scots, where many from the Highlands settled to preserve their culture in result of the Highland Clearances. Gaelic was the native language of the community since its settlement in the 18th century although the number of speakers decreased since as a result of English migration. As of the modern 21st century, there are still a few Gaelic speakers in the community.
History of Icelandic
Again along with English, Icelandic is unusual among Germanic languages to have conserved, if only at a local level, the pronunciation of the word-initial consonantal cluster : Icelandic "hvað", "hvalur" , more commonly . In English "what", "whale", the is only pronounced in certain dialects. The other Germanic languages have consonantized the cluster: German "was", "Wal-fisch" , Dutch "wat", "wal-vis", Swedish "vad", "val[fisk]". Until the early years of the 20th century Swedish maintained the orthography in words such as "hvad, hvalfisk", which is purely historical. In Danish one writes but does not pronounce : "hvad", "hval-fisk" , while in Nynorsk, in some cases, one writes and pronounces ("kva"), exactly as is usual in modern Icelandic (southern dialect and literary). There are also indications that was originally pronounced .