I am quite interested in Linguistics, and have just discovered something that has shocked me.
I am Irish, and so I am aware of the langusge known as Scots Gealic. I know it is related to the Irish language quite closely, as well as The Manx Language. I also know it is further related to the Welsh, Cornish and Breton Languages. They are all members of the Celtic branch of the Indo-European Language Tree.
However, I was, until now, unaware of another language called Scots, that seems to be part of the Germanic Branch of the same tree. I have come to this conlclusion from the follwing text, the numbers One to Ten in the language:
**Scots: ane twa thrie fower fyve sax seiven aicht nyne ten **
Having never heard of this language before I am intrigued.
Is this language still spoken?
Is/Was it spoken in Scotland?
Is it simply a different branch of Old English?
Yes, you’re pretty much right. Scots is the language that Robert Burns wrote in, for example. If you’re an English speaker you can sort of understand it, even if it can be a bit tricky. Scottish people get very annoyed if you say it is a dialect, so the best way to put is that it is a separate language related to English. Gaelic is a Celtic language, like you said. What’s more, “Scots” never seems to be used to denote the Celtic language in the way that “Irish” does in Ireland. Someone on the board will probably know more about the extact terminology and language groups involved, but I’m fairly sure this is how it is.
Someone will be along to give a far more informative answer than this I think the general gist of it is that Scots is an archaic dialect of English once spoken in Scotland. It’s heavily influenced by Scots Gaelic. Think Robbie Burns.
Ulster Scots (also known as Ullanns?) is another variety brought about by the influence of the Irish language on Scots spoken by scottish planters in the north of Ireland. Language activists would probably claim that both are full blown languages in themselves but that’s a bit contentious.
By the way, using Robert Burns as an example might give the impression that this language is no longer is use, but it is most definitely still spoken in Scotland today.
“We say that the parliament is Scots-language- or Gaelic-friendly, but I find that when you have rules like this you’re saying that the Scots language is sub-standard.”
This would seem to suggest that both languages, Scots and Scots Gaelic, are considered the same. Have they influenced each other so much, that they have combined to give one language, a Germano-Celtic hybrid the likes of which the world has never seen?
Lallans, the lowland dialect of Scots, is one dialect of Scots; Doric, the Scots of the North-East, is another, and Ullans, that of the transplanted Scots of Northern Ireland, yet another. Gaelic is an entirely different language altogether.
There are certainly language activists claiming equal status for these dialects with Gaelic (and English), with strong political overtones. And, it should be said that there are some very good historical and social reasons behind some of their arguments; these are (or were–like many British regional dialects, they are being corroded by Standard Usage) the language used by “the common people in their homes”—which is precisely why Burns wrote in that tongue.
You would get the strap for using it in schools as little as 30 years ago. It isn’t surprising that it can be used as an emotionally-charged issue for politcal ends.
My granny used many, many Lallans terms in her everyday speech (but would never have used them outside the house, in public–her generation had had it pounded into them that you didn’t use common language in polite society); and my mum still uses many. Stoorie for dusty or dirty, blether for gossip, bairn for infant, birl for spin, and so on.
I believe the Scots language was more influenced by the speech of the Angles who dominated northeastern England and southeastern Scotland after the Anglo-Saxon invasions. Furthermore, it’s my impression that Scots was less influenced by major linguistic upheavals that had big effects on the developments of English, such as the Danish and Norman conquests. I believe speakers of Scots generally deny that it is a dialect of English. It is a separate language that developed alongside English from similar roots.
glas onion, I believe you’re misreading that quote. He’s referring to the parliamentary status of two separate languages, Scots and Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig, also known as Erse, as opposed to Irish Gaelic or Gaeilge). There was another major language of Scotland, Norn, which was related to Danish and Norwegian.
I’ve no problem Scots being considered a dialect of English, as long as you understand that a dialect is not a devation from any “norm”. I believe any speaker’s denial of it being a dialect is more of a misguided political stance than any linguistic reasoning. All speakers of English speak a dialect, Scots is just one of the oldest and most unique. I don’t consider it to be different enough from any other English dialect to consitute a totally different language.
Whether you want to argue if Scots is still spoken today or not depends on how you wish to define it. Many purists insist to speak Scots you must speak the language of Burns, which is as ridiculous as demanding a speaker of an English dialect must sound like Shakespeare. Perhaps there was scope for suggesting that Burns’ Scots was a separate language (just), but as that Scots is dead and gone it hardly matters now.
Scots has faded with time and, like all dialects and accents, is converging towards an international standard. This is inevitable. Use of Scots words are still very common, (I still have to replace some in my posts because I know you’ll not understand them.) but they are increasingly surrounded by standard English, all be it accented.
I don’t consider Scots Gaelic to have been a major influence on Scots, no more than any neighbouring language. They have both been in existance for similar periods, but Scots will have had a greater influence from its sister dialects to the South.
Apparently Norn was a language in the Shetlends and Orkney, finally dying out around the 1700s. So I guess it was a similar demise to other British languages such as Cornish and Manx, just slightly earlier.
I don’t think so. The fact that we are actively conversing, where 100 years ago we’d hardly ever come across someone from the other end of the country, never mind from another continent, makes it inevitable that we all start to move towards a similar, shared, dialect.
Dialects only arise through distance and separation. These physical and social restrictions are diminishing.
You overlook the constant creation of new dialects. I’ve no idea wtf is said in most rap records. And plenty of people would have no idea what ‘wtf’ means in the previous sentence. Long-distance communications do not prevent dialects from arising, they just remove the regionality.
I think it was early in the Middle English period when the language went through a minor Vowel Shift. This isn’t the Great Vowel Shift that occurred between Chaucer and Shakespeare, but an earlier one whose main effect was to change long a to long o. But this little vowel shift didn’t affect Scots, and that’s why today Scots has words like laird instead of lord, and twa instead of two.
The Anglicisation of Scots began as far back as the 13th c. as Scottish gentlemen, anxious not to appear uncultured, made tours to Europe. England was an obvious place to start and many acquired English words and phrases. Scots, and Northern English, contain many words of Scandinavian origin, relics of the waves of invaders who came to pillage and stayed to settle. Today many Scottish people still include dialect words in their everyday English, not as a conscious effort but because they grew up like that. As Hollywood continues its conquest of the English-speaking world we are likely to see the younger generations using these words less and less.
