This article is about the Germanic language of Scotland. For the Gaelic language of Scotland, see
settled in south eastern Scotland
in the 7th century, at which time Celtic
was spoken in the south of Scotland to a little way north of the Firth of Forth
and the Firth of Clyde
was spoken further north: almost nothing is known today about the Pictish language. At the same time Gaelic
speakers began to spread from the Western Coast of Scotland north of the Clyde into the east. Over the next five hundred years with the founding of Scotland
and spread of Christianity across the north of Britain
by the Columban Church
the Gaelic language slowly moved eastwards and southwards across the lowlands. When Northumbrian
lands were incorporated into Scotland in the 11th century Gaelic became the prestige language there and had some influence, but the south east remained largely English speaking. In the far north, Viking incursions brought Old Norse
speakers into Caithness
, Orkney and
Scholars of the
generally use the following chronology:
The nature of early forms of the language are obscure due to
plundering and destruction, Edward I of England
's removal of the national records and their subsequent loss, the destruction of the monasteries in border warfare, and vandalism during the
. It is difficult to assess whether Scots descends largely from the
or the Anglo-Danish
introduced some four hundred years later, which would explain the Norse
elements in Early Scots which are lacking in Northumbrian Old English
Current insights into pre-literary Scots stem largely from place-names, archaeology and a few words in Latin documents.
had been established in south-eastern Scotland as far as the River Forth
by the 7th century. It remained largely confined to this area until the 13th century, continuing in common use while Scottish Gaelic
was the court language until displaced by Norman French in the early 12th century. English then spread further into Scotland via the burgh
After the 12th century early northern
began to spread north and eastwards. It was from this dialect that Early Scots
, known to its speakers as "English" (Inglis
), began to develop, which is why in the late 12th century Adam of Dryburgh described his locality as "in the land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots"
and why the early 13th century author of de Situ Albanie
thought that the Firth of Forth
"divides the kingdoms of the Scots and of the English".
Most of the evidence suggests that English spread further into Scotland via the burgh, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King
. Incoming burghers were mainly English (especially from Northumbria, and the
Earldom of Huntingdon
), Flemish and French. Although the military aristocracy employed French and Gaelic, these small urban communities appear to have been using English as something more than a
by the end of the 13th century. As a consequence of the outcome of the Wars of Independence
though, the English-speaking people of Lothian who lived under the King of Scots had to accept Scottish identity. The growth in prestige of English in the 14th century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland's Royal Court, made English the prestige language
of most of eastern Scotland.
Divergence from Northumbrian Middle English was influenced by the
of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English-speaking immigrants from the North and Midlands of England during the 12th and 13th centuries, Dutch
and Middle Low German
through trade and immigration from the low countries, and Romance
via ecclesiastical and legal Latin
and later Parisian French due to the Auld Alliance
. Some loan words entered the language resulting from contact with
, often for geographical features such as
; however, there are several others like
(moist or damp), twig
(catch on) from tuig
(lots of) from gu leòr
(mouth), and whisky
(water of life).
Eventually the royal court and barons all spoke
. Further spreading of the language eventually led to Scottish Gaelic being confined mostly to the
and islands by the end of the Middle Ages, although some lowland areas, notably in Galloway
, retained the language until the 17th or 18th century. From the late 14th century even Latin was replaced by
as the language of officialdom and literature.
By the early 16th century what was then called
had become the language of government, and its speakers started to refer to it as Scottis
and to Scottish Gaelic, which had previously been titled Scottis
). The first known instance of this was by Adam Loutfut c. 1494. In 1559 William Nudrye was granted a monopoly by the court to produce school textbooks, two of which were
Ane Schort Introduction: Elementary Digestit into Sevin Breve Tables for the Commodius Expeditioun of Thame That are Desirous to Read and Write the Scottis Toung
and Ane Intructioun for Bairnis to be Learnit in Scottis and Latin
. In 1560 an
spoke to Mary of Guise
and her councillors, at first they talked in the "Scottish tongue" but because he could not understand they continued in French.
By this time Scots had diverged significantly from its sister south of the border and had become the vehicle for an extensive and diverse
. Free variation was a prominent and important feature of the Middle Scots spelling system, however, all writers displayed some greater or lesser degree of consistency in their spelling habits.
A literary standard applied but it was less than uniform.
From 1610 to the 1690s during the Plantation of Ulster
some 200,000 Scots settled in the north of Ireland taking what were to become Ulster Scots
dialects with them. From the middle of the 16th century Scots began to become increasingly Anglicized
. With the
came Bibles in English
. By the late 16th century almost all writing was composed in a mixture of Scots and English spellings, the English forms slowly becoming more common so that by the end of the 17th century Scots spellings had almost disappeared completely. This process took slightly longer in unpublished vernacular literature and official records. After the
Union of the Crowns
in 1603 the Scots speaking gentry had increasing contact with English speakers and began to remodel their speech on that of their English peers. It was this remodelling that eventually led to the formation of Scottish English
In the 18th century 'polite society' now considered Scots as 'provincial and unrefined' and much of the gentry endeavoured to rid itself of the former national tongue. This was not universally accepted by all educated Scots of the period and a new literary Scots came into being. Unlike Middle Scots, it was usually based on contemporary colloquial speech. Its orthography was generally an adaptation of the imported standard, though some
features from Middle Scots continued to be used. This modern literary Scots was exemplified by Allan Ramsay
and his followers, and their successors such as Robert Burns
. Many writers and publishers found it advantageous to use English forms and copious
to secure a larger English readership unfamiliar with Scots. The pronunciation undoubtedly remained Scots as the rhymes reveal. Early in the 19th century the publication of John Jamieson
Etymological Dictionary of the Scots Language
was accompanied by a renewed interest in Scots among the middle and upper classes. In this period the absence of an official standard or socially acceptable norm led to further dialect divergence.
Such chronological terminology is widely used, for example, by
Scottish Language Dictionaries Ltd.
(Formally SNDA), Dr. Anne King
16 June 2006 at the Wayback Machine. of
The University of Edinburgh
18 August 2006 at the Wayback Machine.
and by The University of Glasgow
18 December 2005 at the Wayback Machine.. It is also used in
The Oxford Companion to the English Language
and The Cambridge History of English and American Literature.
Anglo-Danish population movement
8 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine.
"in terra Anglorum et in regno Scottorum", Adam of Dryburgh,
De tripartito tabernaculo, II.210, tr. Keith J. Stringer, "Reform Monasticism and Celtic Scotland", in Edward J. Cowan & R. Andrew McDonald (eds.),
Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Middle Ages, (East Lothian, 2000), p. 133.
Early Sources of Scottish History: AD 500–1286, 2 Vols, (Edinburgh, 1922), v.i, pp. cxv–cxix; see also
Dauvit Broun, "The Seven Kingdoms in De Situ Albanie: A Record of Pictish political geography or imaginary Map of ancient Alba”, in E.J. Cowan & R. Andrew McDonald (eds.), Alba: Celtic Scotland in the Medieval Era, (Edinburgh, 2000, rev. 2005), pp. 24–42.
Calendar State Papers Scotland, vol. 1 (1898), 322.
A History of Scots to 1700
in A Dictionary of Older Scots Vol. 12. Oxford University Press 2002. p. lxxi
- A History of Scots to 1700
in A Dictionary of Older Scots Vol. 12. Oxford University Press 2002.
- Aitken, A.J. (1977)
How to Pronounce Older Scots
in Bards and Makars. Glasgow, Glasgow University Press.
- Aitken, A. J. (1987)
The Nuttis Schell: Essays on the Scots Language. Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press.
- Caldwell, S.J.G. (1974)
The Pronoun in Early Scots. Helsinki, Société Néophilique.
- Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003)
The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press.
- Jones, Charles (1997)
The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press.
- Jones, Charles (1995)
A Language Suppressed: The pronunciation of the Scots language in the 18th century. Edinburgh, John Donald.