Scots is the Germanic The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a language In the philosophy of language, a natural language is any language which arises in an unpremeditated fashion as the result of the innate facility for language possessed by the human intellect. A natural language is typically used for communication, and may be spoken, signed, or written. Natural language is distinguished from constructed languages variety In sociolinguistics a variety, also called a lect, is a form of a language used by speakers of that language. This may include dialects, accents, registers, styles or other sociolinguistic variation, as well as the standard language variety itself. "Variety" avoids the terms language, which many people associate only with the standard traditionally spoken in Lowland The Scottish Lowlands , although not officially a geographical area of the country, in normal usage is generally meant to include those parts of Scotland not referred to as the Highlands (or Gàidhealtachd), that is, everywhere due south and east of a line (the Highland Boundary Fault) between Stonehaven and Helensburgh (on the Firth of Clyde) Scotland Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the southwest. In addition to the mainland, Scotland and parts of Ulster Ulster is one of the four provinces of Ireland, located in the north of the island. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic 92,400 people aged three and over in Scotland had some Gaelic language ability in 2001 with an additional 2,000 in Nova Scotia. 1,610 speakers in the United States in 2000. 822 in Australia in 2001. 669 in New Zealand in 2006, the Celtic language The Celtic languages are descended from Proto-Celtic, or "Common Celtic", a branch of the greater Indo-European language family. The term "Celtic" was used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, having much earlier been used by Greek and Roman writers to describe tribes in central Gaul. During the 1st variety spoken in most of the western Highlands The Scottish Highlands include the rugged and mountainous regions of Scotland north and west of the Highland Boundary Fault, although the exact boundaries are not clearly defined, particularly to the east. The Great Glen divides the Grampian Mountains to the southeast from the Northwest Highlands. The Scottish Gaelic name of A' Ghàidhealtachd and in the Hebrides The Hebrides comprise a widespread and diverse archipelago off the west coast of Scotland. There are two main groups: the Inner and Outer Hebrides. These islands have a long history of occupation dating back to the Mesolithic and the culture of the residents has been affected by the successive influences of Celtic, Norse and English speaking.

Since there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages Language is a term most commonly used to refer to so called "natural languages" — the forms of communication considered peculiar to humankind. By extension the term also refers to the type of human thought process which creates and uses language. Essential to both meanings is the systematic creation, maintenance and use of systems of from dialects The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors, such as social class. A dialect that is associated, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots.^[1] Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not include Scots depending on the observer at the other.^[2] Consequently, Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into South-East Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria. Following the economic, political, military, scientific, cultural, and colonial influence of Great Britain and the United Kingdom from the 18th century, and of, but with its own distinct dialects.^[1] Alternatively Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language The Germanic languages are a group of related languages that constitute a branch of the Indo-European language family. The common ancestor of all the languages in this branch is Proto-Germanic, spoken in approximately the mid-1st millennium BC in Iron Age northern Europe. Proto-Germanic, along with all of its descendants, is characterized by a, in the way Norwegian Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language. Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants (see Danish language) is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish Danish (dansk, pronounced [d̥ænˀsɡ̊] ) is one of the North Germanic languages (also called Scandinavian languages), a sub-group of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages. It is spoken by around 6 million people, mainly in Denmark; the language is also used by the 50,000 Danes in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein in Germany.^[1]

After the union of Scotland and England The Acts of Union were a pair of Parliamentary Acts passed in 1707 by the Parliament of Scotland and the Parliament of England to put into effect the terms of the Treaty of Union that had been agreed on 22 July 1706, following negotiation between commissioners representing the parliaments of the two countries. The Acts joined the Kingdom of (1707), the use of Standard English was encouraged and the use of Scots discouraged. Due to the widespread use of Standard English in the media, many now believe they are merely using badly-spoken English, rather than Scots.^{[citation needed]}

Nomenclature

Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular A vernacular, mother tongue or mother language, and less frequently one sense of idiom and dialect, is the native language of a population located in a country or in a region defined on some other basis, such as a locality. For example, Navajo is a local language in the southwest of the United States, and English is the state language of a number as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English)^[3] or use a dialect name such as the "Doric"^[4], "Teri"^[5] or the "Buchan Claik".^[6] The old-fashioned Scotch, an English loan,^[7] occurs occasionally. The term Lallans, a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands [ˈlo̜ːlən(d)z, ˈlɑːlənz],^[8] is also used (though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans Lallans , a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands [ˈlo̜ːlən(d)z, ˈlɑːlənz] meaning the lowlands of Scotland, was also traditionally used to refer to the Scots language as a whole. More recent interpretations assume it refers to the dialects of south and central Scotland[citation needed] and Doric, a term once used to refer to Scots literary form A literary language is a register of a language that is used in literary writing. This may also include liturgical writing. The difference between literary and non-literary forms is more marked in some languages than in others. Where there is a strong divergence, the language is said to exhibit diglossia^[9]). Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as "Ulster Scots Ulster Scots generally refers to the dialects of Scots spoken in parts of Ulster. Some definitions of Ulster Scots may also include Standard English spoken with an Ulster Scots accent – where lexical items have been re-allocated to the phoneme classes that are nearest to the equivalent standard classes – a situation equivalent to that of" or "Ullans", a recent neologism A neologism ; from Greek νέος (neos 'new') + λόγος (logos 'speech') is a newly coined word that may be in the process of entering common use, but has not yet been accepted into mainstream language. Neologisms are often directly attributable to a specific person, publication, period, or event. According to Oxford English Dictionary the merging "Ulster" and "Lallans"^[10].

Etymology

Scots is a contraction of Scottis, the Older Scots Early Scots describes the emerging literary language of the Northern Middle English speaking parts of Scotland in the period before 1450. The northern forms of Middle English descended from Northumbrian Old English. During this period, speakers referred to the language as "English"^[11] and northern version of late Old English Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon Scottisc (modern English "Scottish"), which replaced the earlier i-mutated In linguistics, umlaut is a process whereby a vowel is pronounced more like a vowel or semivowel in a following syllable. The term umlaut was originally coined and is principally used in connection with the study of the Germanic languages. In umlaut, a back vowel is modified to the associated front vowel when the following syllable contains [i], [ version Scyttisc.^[12][13]

Prior to the 15th century the vernacular of Lowland Scotland was known as Ynglis or Inglis from Old English englisc, the modern form Ingles [ˈɪŋlz] surviving in personal and place names such as Ingles and Ingleston. At the time it was Gaelic which was named Scottis.

By the beginning of the 15th century, the Lowland vernacular had arguably become a distinct language, albeit lacking a name which clearly distinguished it from the English of southern Britain. From 1495 the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular^[1] and Erse, meaning Irish, as a name for Gaelic. For example, towards the end of the 15th century William Dunbar was using Erse to refer to Gaelic and in the early 16th century Gavin Douglas Gavin Douglas was a Scottish bishop, makar and translator. Although he had an important political career, it is for his poetry that he is now chiefly remembered. His principal pioneering achievement was the Eneados, a full and faithful vernacular translation of the Aeneid of Virgil and the first successful example of its kind in the British Isles was using Scottis as a name for the Lowland vernacular.^[14][15] The term Erse is usually considered pejorative, and the Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic 92,400 people aged three and over in Scotland had some Gaelic language ability in 2001 with an additional 2,000 in Nova Scotia. 1,610 speakers in the United States in 2000. 822 in Australia in 2001. 669 in New Zealand in 2006.

History

Northumbrian Northumbrian was a dialect of the Old English language spoken in the English Kingdom of Northumbria. Together with Mercian, Kentish and West Saxon, it forms one of the sub-categories of Old English invented and employed by modern scholars Old English Old English or Anglo-Saxon is an early form of the English language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons and their descendants in parts of what are now England and south-eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. What survives through writing represents primarily the literary register of Anglo-Saxon had been established in southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth The River Forth , 47 km (29 miles) long, is the major river draining the eastern part of the central belt of Scotland by the seventh century^[16]. It remained largely confined to this area until the thirteenth century, continuing in common use while Gaelic Middle Irish is the name given by historical philologists to the Goidelic language used from the 10th to 12th centuries; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old English and early Middle English. The modern Goidelic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, are all descendants of Middle Irish was the language of the Scottish court. The succeeding variety of Early northern Middle English Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the English language in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when the Chancery Standard, a form of London-based English, began to become widespread, a process aided by the introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s spoken in southeastern Scotland, also known as Early Scots Early Scots describes the emerging literary language of the Northern Middle English speaking parts of Scotland in the period before 1450. The northern forms of Middle English descended from Northumbrian Old English. During this period, speakers referred to the language as "English", began to diverge from that of Northumbria Northumbria or Northhumbria was a medieval kingdom of the Angles, in what is now Northern England and South-East Scotland, becoming subsequently an earldom in a united Anglo-Saxon kingdom of England. The name reflects the approximate southern limit to the kingdom's territory: the Humber Estuary due to twelfth and thirteenth century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Old Norse is a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and inhabitants of their overseas settlements during the Viking Age, until about 1300 Middle English-speakers from the North and Midlands of England^[17]. Later influences on the development of Scots were from Romance languages extinct: Anatolian · Paleo-Balkan (Dacian, via ecclesiastical and legal Latin Latin or sometimes Roman is an Italic language originally spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Although often considered a dead language, in view of the fact that it has no native, fluent speakers, Latin continues to be taught in schools and has been, and currently is, used in the process of new word production in modern languages from many, Norman Norman is a Romance language and one of the Oïl languages. Norman can be classified in the northern Oïl languages with Picard and Walloon. The name Norman-French is sometimes used to describe not only the Norman language, but also the administrative languages of Anglo-Norman and Law French used in England^[18] and later Parisian French French is a Romance language spoken as a first language by about 136 million people worldwide. Around 190 million people speak French as a second language, and an additional 200 million speak it as an acquired foreign language. French speaking communities are present in 57 countries and territories. Most native speakers of the language live in due to the Auld Alliance The Auld Alliance (French: Vieille Alliance, Norwegian: auld-alliansen) refers to a series of treaties, offensive and defensive in nature, between Scotland and France (until 1326 also Norway), aimed specifically against England. The first such agreement was signed in Paris on 23 October 1295 – subsequently ratified at Dunfermline the following as well as Dutch Dutch ( Nederlands ) is a West Germanic language spoken by over 22 million people as a native language and over 5 million people as a second language. Most native speakers live in the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, with smaller groups of speakers in parts of France, Germany and several former Dutch colonies. It is closely related to other and Middle Low German Middle Low German is a language that is the descendant of Old Saxon and is the ancestor of modern Low German. It served as the international lingua franca of the Hanseatic League. It was spoken from about 1100 to 1600 influences due to trade and immigration from the low countries^[19]. Scots also includes loan words resulting from contact with Gaelic. Early medieval legal documents include a body of Gaelic Middle Irish is the name given by historical philologists to the Goidelic language used from the 10th to 12th centuries; it is therefore a contemporary of late Old English and early Middle English. The modern Goidelic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx, are all descendants of Middle Irish legal and administrative loans^[20]. Contemporary Gaelic 92,400 people aged three and over in Scotland had some Gaelic language ability in 2001 with an additional 2,000 in Nova Scotia. 1,610 speakers in the United States in 2000. 822 in Australia in 2001. 669 in New Zealand in 2006 loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ceilidh In modern usage, a céilidh is a traditional Gaelic social gathering, which usually involves playing Gaelic folk music and dancing. It originated in Ireland and Scotland, but is now common throughout the Irish and Scottish diaspora. Before discos and nightclubs, there were céilidhs in most town and village halls on Friday or Saturday nights; they, loch and clan.

From the thirteenth century Early Scots spread further into Scotland via the burghs, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I. The growth in prestige of Early Scots in the fourteenth century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland, made Scots the prestige language of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England^[21]. From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, settled there.^[22] In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.^[23] Modern Scots is used to describe the language after 1700 when southern Modern English was generally adopted as the literary language though Scots remained the vernacular.

Status

Before the Treaty of Union 1707, when Scotland and England joined to form the Kingdom of Great Britain, there is ample evidence that Scots was widely held to be an independent language^[24] forming a pluricentric diasystem with English.

The linguist Heinz Kloss considered Modern Scots a Halbsprache (half language) in terms of a Ausbausprache - Abstandsprache - Dachsprache framework^[25] although today, in Scotland, most people's speech is somewhere on a continuum ranging from traditional broad Scots to Scottish Standard English. Many speakers are either diglossic and/or able to code-switch along the continuum depending on the situation in which they find themselves. Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine. Since standard English now generally has the role of a Dachsprache, disputes often arise as to whether or not the varieties of Scots are dialects of Scottish English or constitute a separate language in their own right.

The UK government now accepts Scots as a regional language and has recognised it as such under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.

Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in the extensive body of Scots literature, its independent — if somewhat fluid — orthographic conventions and in its former use as the language of the original Parliament of Scotland.^[27] Since Scotland retained distinct political, legal and religious systems after the Union, many Scots terms passed into Scottish English. For instance, libel and slander, separate in English law, are bundled together as defamation in Scots law.

Language shift

From the mid sixteenth century written Scots was increasingly influenced by the Standard English of England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England^[28] and the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, and so most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion^[29]. In 1603 King James VI of Scotland became King James I of England. The Protestant reformation in Scotland adopted the 1611 Authorized King James Version of the Bible and the Acts of Union 1707 which led to England joining Scotland to form the United Kingdom of Great Britain, having a single Parliament of Great Britain based in London. After the Union and the shift of political power to England, the use of Scots was discouraged by many in authority and education, as was the notion of Scottishness itself.^[30] Many leading Scots of the period, such as David Hume, considered themselves Northern British rather than Scottish.^[31] They attempted to rid themselves of their Scots in a bid to establish standard English as the official language of the newly formed Union. Nevertheless Scots was still spoken across a wide range of domains until the end of the seventeenth century^[29], illustrated for example, in the summary by F. Pottle, James Boswell's twentieth century biographer, concerning James' view of the speech habits of his father Alexander Boswell, a judge of the supreme courts of Scotland :

He scorned modern literature, spoke broad Scots from the bench, and even in writing took no pains to avoid the Scotticisms which most of his colleagues were coming to regard as vulgar.

Others did however scorn Scots, such as intellectuals from the Scottish Enlightenment like David Hume and Adam Smith, who went to great lengths to get rid of every Scotticism from their writings.^[32] Following such examples, many well-off Scots took to learning English through the activities of those such as Thomas Sheridan, who in 1761 gave a series of lectures on English elocution. Charging a guinea at a time (about £100 in today's money^[33]), they were attended by over 300 men, and he was made a freeman of the City of Edinburgh. Following this, some of the city's intellectuals formed the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland. From such eighteenth century activities grew Scottish Standard English^[34]. Scots remained the vernacular of many rural communities and the growing number of urban working class Scots^[35].

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries the use of Scots as a literary language was revived by several prominent Scotsmen such as Robert Burns. Such writers establishing a new cross-dialect standard literary norm.

During the first half of the twentieth century, knowledge of eighteenth and nineteenth century literary norms waned and currently there is no institutionalised standard literary form.^[36] By the 1940s the Scottish Education Department's language policy was that Scots had no value "...it is not the language of 'educated' people anywhere, and could not be described as a suitable medium of education or culture"^[37]. Students, of course, reverted to Scots outside the classroom, but the reversion was not complete. What occurred, and has been occurring ever since, is a process of language attrition, whereby successive generations have adopted more and more features from Standard English. This process has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English, and increased population mobility, became available after the Second World War^[38]. It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale language shift, sometimes also termed language change, convergence or merger. By the end of the twentieth century Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland^[39]. Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang.

Language revitalisation

Recently, attitudes have somewhat changed, although no education takes place through the medium of Scots. Scots may be covered superficially in English lessons, which usually entails reading some Scots literature and observing the local dialect. Much of the material used is often Standard English disguised as Scots, which has upset proponents of Standard English and proponents of Scots alike.^[40] One example of the educational establishment's approach to Scots is "Write a poem in Scots. (It is important not to be worried about spelling in this – write as you hear the sounds in your head.)",^[41] whereas guidelines for English require teaching pupils to be "writing fluently and legibly with accurate spelling and punctuation."^[42] Scots can also be studied at university level.

The use of Scots in the media is scant and is usually reserved for niches where local dialect is deemed acceptable, e.g. comedy, Burns Night, or representations of traditions and times gone by. Serious use for news, encyclopaedias, documentaries, etc. rarely occurs in Scots, although the Scottish Parliament website offers some information in it.

Number of speakers

It has been difficult to determine the number of speakers of Scots via census, because many respondents might interpret the question "Do you speak Scots?" in different ways. Campaigners for Scots pressed for this question to be included in the 2001 U.K. National Census. The results from a 1996 trial before the Census, by the General Register Office for Scotland^[45], suggested that there were around 1.5 million speakers of Scots, with 30% of Scots responding "Yes" to the question "Can you speak the Scots language?", but only 17% responding "Aye" to the question "Can you speak Scots?". (It was also found that older, working-class people were more likely to answer in the affirmative.) The University of Aberdeen Scots Leid Quorum performed its own research in 1995, suggesting that there were 2.7 million speakers. The GRO questions, as freely acknowledged by those who set them, were not as detailed and as systematic as the Aberdeen University ones, and only included reared speakers, not those who had learned the language. Part of the difference resulted from the central question posed by surveys: "Do you speak Scots?". In the Aberdeen University study, the question was augmented with the further clause "… or a dialect of Scots such as Border etc", which resulted in greater recognition from respondents. The GRO concluded that there simply wasn't enough linguistic self-awareness amongst the Scottish populace, with people still thinking of themselves as speaking badly pronounced, grammatically inferior English rather than Scots, for an accurate census to be taken. The GRO research concluded that "[a] more precise estimate of genuine Scots language ability would require a more in-depth interview survey and may involve asking various questions about the language used in different situations. Such an approach would be inappropriate for a Census." Thus, although it was acknowledged that the "inclusion of such a Census question would undoubtedly raise the profile of Scots", no question about Scots was, in the end, included in the 2001 Census.^[46][47][48] The Scottish Government's Pupils in Scotland Census 2008^[49] found that 306 pupils spoke Scots as their main home language.

Literature

Among the earliest Scots literature is John Barbour's Brus (fourteenth century), Wyntoun's Cronykil and Blind Harry's Wallace (fifteenth century). From the fifteenth century, much literature based on the Royal Court in Edinburgh and the University of St Andrews was produced by writers such as Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas and David Lyndsay. The Complaynt of Scotland was an early printed work in Scots. The Eneados is a Middle Scots translation of Virgil's Aeneid, completed by Gavin Douglas in 1513.

After the seventeenth century, anglicisation increased. At the time, many of the oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down. Writers of the period were Robert Sempill, Robert Sempill the younger, Francis Sempill, Lady Wardlaw and Lady Grizel Baillie.

In the eighteenth century, writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson and Walter Scott continued to use Scots. Scott introduced vernacular dialogue to his novels. Other well-known authors like Robert Louis Stevenson, William Alexander, George MacDonald, J. M. Barrie and other members of the Kailyard school like Ian Maclaren also wrote in Scots or used it in dialogue.

In the Victorian era popular Scottish newspapers regularly included articles and commentary in the vernacular, often of unprecedented proportions.^[50]

In the early twentieth century, a renaissance in the use of Scots occurred, its most vocal figure being Hugh MacDiarmid whose benchmark poem A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle (1926) did much to demonstrate the power of Scots as a modern idiom. Other contemporaries were Douglas Young, John Buchan, Sidney Goodsir Smith, Robert Garioch and Robert McLellan. The revival extended to verse and other literature.

In 1955 three Ayrshire men, 'Sandy' MacMillan, an English teacher at Ayr Academy, Thomas Limond, noted town Chamberlain of Ayr, and A.L. (Ross) Taylor, Rector of Cumnock Academy collaborated to write Bairnsangs (Child Songs),^[51] a collection of children's nursery rhymes and poems in Scots. The book contains a five page glossary of contemporary Scots words and their pronunciations.

Alexander Gray's translations into Scots constitute the greater part of his work, and is the main basis for his reputation.

In 1983 William Laughton Lorimer's translation of the New Testament from the original Greek was published.

Highly anglicised Scots is sometimes used in contemporary fiction, for example, the Edinburgh dialect of Scots in Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh (later made into a motion picture of the same name).

But'n'Ben A-Go-Go by Matthew Fitt is a cyberpunk novel written entirely in what Wir Ain Leid (Our Own Language) calls "General Scots". Like all cyberpunk work, it contains imaginative neologisms.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam has been translated into Scots by Rab Wilson (published in 2004). Alexander Hutchison has translated the poetry of Catullus into Scots, and in the 1980s, Liz Lochhead produced a Scots translation of Tartuffe by Molière. J. K. Annand translated poetry and fiction from German and medieval Latin into Scots.

The strip cartoons Oor Wullie and The Broons in the Sunday Post use some Scots.

Orthography

The orthography of Older Scots had become more or less standardised^[52]by the middle to late sixteenth century.^[53] After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 the Standard English of England came to have an increasing influence on the spelling of Scots^[54] through the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England. After the Acts of Union in 1707 the emerging Scottish form of Standard English replaced Scots for most formal writing in Scotland.^[29]

The eighteenth-century Scots revival saw the introduction of a new literary language descended from the old court Scots, but with an orthography that had abandonded some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings^[55], adopted many standard English spellings, although from the rhymes it was clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended^[56], and introduced what came to be known as the apologetic apostrophe^[57], generally occurring where a consonant exists in the Standard English cognate. This Written Scots drew not only on the vernacular but also on the King James Bible and was also heavily influenced by the norms an conventions of Augustan English poetry.^[58] Consequently this written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries.^[59] This modern literary dialect, ‘Scots of the book’ or Standard Scots^[60][61] once again gave Scots an orthography of its own, lacking neither “authority nor author.”^[62] This literary language used throughout Lowland Scotland and Ulster^[63], embodied by writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Murray, David Herbison, James Orr, James Hogg and William Laidlaw among others, is well described in the 1921 Manual of Modern Scots^[64].

Other authors developed dialect writing, preferring to represent their own speech in a more phonological manner rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots.^[56], especially for the northern^[65] and insular dialects of Scots.

During the twentieth century a number of proposals for spelling reform were presented. Commenting on this, John Corbett (2003: 260) writes that "devising a normative orthography for Scots has been one of the greatest linguistic hobbies of the past century." Most proposals entailed regularising the use of established eighteenth and nineteenth century conventions, in particular the avoidance of the apologetic apostrophe which supposedly represented "missing" English letters. Such letters were never actually missing in Scots. For example, in the fourteenth century, Barbour spelt the Scots cognate of 'taken' as tane. Since there has been no k in the word for over 700 years, representing its omission with an apostrophe seems pointless. The current spelling is usually taen.

Through the twentieth century, with the decline of spoken Scots and knowledge of the literary tradition, phonetic (often humorous) representations became more common.

See also

• Billy Kay
• Dictionary of the Scots Language
• Doric
• Lallans
• Languages of the United Kingdom
• Modern Scots
• Phonological history of Scots
• Report and Recommendations of the Scots Spelling Committee
• Scotticism
• Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech
• Scottish English
• Scottish literature
• Wikipædia (Scots)

References

1. ^ ^{a b c d} A.J. Aitken in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press 1992. p.894
2. ^ Stuart-Smith J. Scottish English: Phonology in Varieties of English: The British Isles, Kortman & Upton (Eds), Mouton de Gruyter, New York 2008. p.47
3. ^ SND:Scots
4. ^ SND:Doric
5. ^ Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech
6. ^ Peter Buchan, David Toulmin, Buchan Claik: A Compendium of Words and Phrases from the North-east of Scotland, Steve Savage Publishers Limited
7. ^ A.J. Aitken in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press 1992. p.892
8. ^ SND: Lawland
9. ^ Ethnologue
10. ^ Tymoczko M. & Ireland C.A. (2003) Language and Tradition in Ireland: Continuities and Displacements, Univ of Massachusetts Press. p.159
11. ^ SND: Scots
12. ^ [dictionary.oed.com OED online], Scots, a. (n.)
13. ^ OED online, Scottish, a. and n.
14. ^ The Stewart Kingdom of Scotland 1371 - 1603, Caroline Bingham, 1974
15. ^ Companion to the Oxford English Dictionary, Tom McArthur, Oxford University Press, 1994
16. ^ A History of Scots to 1700, DOST Vol. 12 p. xxxvi
17. ^ A History of Scots to 1700, DOST Vol. 12 p. xliii
18. ^ A History of Scots to 1700, pp. lxiii-lxv
19. ^ A History of Scots to 1700, pp. lxiii
20. ^ A History of Scots to 1700, pp. lxi
21. ^ "A Brief History of Scots" in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. pp. 9ff
22. ^ Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 572
23. ^ Adams 1977: 57
24. ^ Nostra Vulgari Lingua: Scots as a European Language 1500 - 1700 By Dr. Dauvit Horsbroch
25. ^ Kloss, Heinz, ²1968, Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800, Düsseldorf: Bagel. pp.70, 79]
26. ^ Second Report submitted by the United Kingdom pursuant to article 25, paragraph 1 of the framework convention for the protection of national minorities Available here [1]
27. ^ See for example Confession of Faith Ratification Act 1560, written in Scots and still part of British Law
28. ^ "A Brief History of Scots in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. pp. 10ff
29. ^ ^{a b c} "A Brief History of Scots in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. p. 11
30. ^ Jones, Charles (1995) A Language Suppressed: The Pronunciation of the Scots Language in the 18th Century, Edinburgh, John Donald, p.vii
31. ^ Jones, Charles (1995) A Language Suppressed: The Pronunciation of the Scots Language in the 18th Century, Edinburgh, John Donald, p.2
32. ^ "Scuilwab" (PDF). http://www.scuilwab.org.uk/14PlusNew/TheHistoryOScots.pdf.
33. ^ UK CPI inflation numbers based on data available from Measuring Worth: UK CPI.
34. ^ "A Brief History of Scots in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. p. 13
35. ^ "A Brief History of Scots in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. p. 14
36. ^ Eagle, Andy (2006) Aw Ae Wey - Written Scots in Scotland and Ulster. Available at http://www.scots-online.org/airticles/AwAeWey.pdf
37. ^ Primary education: a report of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland, Scottish Education Deptartment 1946, p. 75
38. ^ "A Brief History of Scots in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. p. 15
39. ^ Macafee C. "Studying Scots Vocabulary in Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2. p. 51
40. ^ "Exposed to ridicule". The Scotsman. 7 February 2004. http://news.scotsman.com/opinion/Exposed-to-ridicule.2501212.jp. Retrieved 2009-05-21.
41. ^ "''Scots - Teaching approaches'' Learning and Teaching Scotland Online Service". Ltscotland.org.uk. 2005-11-03. http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/5to14/specialfocus/scots/ideas/index.asp. Retrieved 2009-05-21.
42. ^ "''National Guidelines 5-14: ENGLISH LANGUAGE'' Learning and Teaching Scotland Online Service". Ltscotland.org.uk. http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/5to14/htmlunrevisedguidelines/Pages/englang/main/elng1003.htm. Retrieved 2009-05-21.
43. ^ Grant, William (1931) Scottish National Dictionary
44. ^ Gregg R.J. (1972) The Scotch-Irish Dialect Boundaries in Ulster in Wakelin M.F., Patterns in the Folk Speech of The British Isles, London
45. ^ [Iain Máté] (1996) Scots Language. A Report on the Scots Language Research carried out by the General Register Office for Scotland in 1996, Edinburgh: General Register Office (Scotland).
46. ^ (PDF) The Scots Language in education in Scotland. Mercator-Education. 2002. ISSN 1570-1239. http://www1.fa.knaw.nl./mercator/regionale_dossiers/PDFs/scots_in_scotland.PDF.
47. ^ T. G. K. Bryce and Walter M. Humes (2003). Scottish Education. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 263–264. ISBN 074861625X.
48. ^ Jane Stuart-Smith (2004). "Scottish English: phonology". in Bernd Kortmann and Edgar W. Schneider. A Handbook of Varieties of English. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 48–49. ISBN 3110175320.
49. ^ [2]
50. ^ William Donaldson, The Language of the People: Scots Prose from the Victorian Revival, Aberdeen University Press 1989.
51. ^ Bairnsangs ISBN 9780907526117
52. ^ Agutter, Alex (1987) “A taxonomy of Older Scots orthography” in Caroline Macafee and Iseabail Macleod eds. The Nuttis Schell: Essays on the Scots Language Pesented to A. J. Aitken, Aberdeen University Press, p. 75.
53. ^ Millar, Robert McColl (2005) Language, Nation and Power An Introduction, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. pp. 90-91
54. ^ Wilson, James (1926) The Dialects of Central Scotland, Oxford University Press. p.194
55. ^ Tulloch, Graham (1980) The Language of Walter Scott. A Study of his Scottish and Period Language, London: Deutsch. p. 249
56. ^ ^{a b} William Grant and David D. Murison (eds) The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) (1929–1976), The Scottish National Dictionary Association, vol. I Edinburgh, p.xv
57. ^ William Grant and David D. Murison (eds) The Scottish National Dictionary (SND) (1929–1976), The Scottish National Dictionary Association, vol. I Edinburgh, p.xiv
58. ^ J.D. McClure in The Oxford Companion to the English Language, Oxford University Press 1992. p.168
59. ^ McClure, J. Derrick (1985) “The debate on Scots orthography” in Manfred Görlach ed. Focus on: Scotland, Amsterdam: Benjamins, p. 204
60. ^ Mackie, Albert D. (1952) “Fergusson’s Language: Braid Scots Then and Now” in Smith, Syndney Goodsir ed. Robert Fergusson 1750–1774, Edinburgh: Nelson, p. 123-124, 129
61. ^ Mairi Robinson (editor-in-chief), The Concise Scots Dictionary, Aberdeen University Press, 1985 p.xiii
62. ^ Stevenson, R.L. (1905) The Works of R.L. Stevenson Vol. 8, “Underwoods”, London: Heinemann, P. 152
63. ^ Todd, Loreto (1989) The Language of Iish Lieature, London: MacMillan, p. 134
64. ^ Grant, William; Dixon, James Main (1921) Manual of Modern Scots. Cambridge, University Press
65. ^ McClure, J. Derrick (2002). Doric: The Dialect of North–East Scotland. Amsterdam: Benjamins, p.79

External links

• Scots-online
• The Scots Language Society
• Scots Language Centre
• The Linguist List, Eastern Michigan University and Wayne State University
• Scots at Omniglot
• Gordon, Raymond G., Jr. (ed.), 2005. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Fifteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online
• Dictionary of the Scottish Language – Phonetic Description of Scottish Language and Dialects
• Words Without Borders Peter Constantine: Scots: The Auld an Nobill Tung
• Scots in Schools
• Emily SJE Kilborn (2007), The Politics of Language in Europe Case Studies in Scots, Occitan, Moldovan, & Serbo‐Croatian

Dictionaries and linguistic information

• The Dictionary of the Scots Language
• Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd.
• Dialect Map
• SAMPA for Scots
• Scottish words - illustrated
• Abstract: Vowel height harmony and blocking in Buchan Scots, Mary Paster, University of California, Phonology Vol. 21, Issue 3
• Scots Language Recordings

Collections of texts

• ScotsteXt - books, poems and texts in Scots
• A Tait Wanchancie - a collection of texts
• Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech - Multimedia corpus of Scots and Scottish English
• BBC Voices, Scots section - The BBC Voices Project is a major though informal look at UK language and speech

Categories: Scots language | Languages of Ireland | Languages of Scotland | English languages

See Also:

• History of The Scots Language: Encyclopedia
• Phonological History of The Scots Language: Encyclopedia
• English Languages
• Medieval Languages
• Old English Language

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