Editing Scots language (section)

==History==
{{main|History of the Scots language}}
[[File:History of Scots in Scotland and Ulster.png|thumb|left|The growth and distribution of Scots in Scotland and Ulster:<ref>{{cite map|url=http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/historical/shepherd/british_isles_802.jpg|title=The British Isles about 802|scale=1:7 500 000}}</ref><ref>{{cite encyclopedia|url=https://www.scots-online.org/dictionary/read_dictionary.php?letter=C&CurPage=5|dictionary=The Online Scots Dictionary|title=cairt n. v.}}</ref>
{{legend|Red|[[:w:Old English|Old English]] by the beginning of the 9th century in the northern portion of the [[:w:Anglo-Saxons|Anglo-Saxon]]<ref name="scotslanguage.com">{{Cite web|url=https://www.scotslanguage.com/articles/node/id/660/type/referance|title=550-1100 Anglo-Saxon (Pre-Scots)|website=Scotslanguage.com }}</ref> kingdom of [[:w:Northumbria|Northumbria]], now part of Scotland}}
{{legend|Orange|[[:w:Early Scots|Early Scots]] by the beginning of the 15th century}}
{{legend|Yellow|[[:w:Modern Scots|Modern Scots]] by the mid-20th century}}]]

[[Northumbrian Old English]] had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the [[River Forth]] by the seventh century, as the region was part of the [[Anglo-Saxon]] kingdom of [[Northumbria]].<ref name="DictionaryScots">{{cite encyclopedia |year=2002 |title=A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue |publisher=[[Dictionary of the Scots Language]] |access-date=18 October 2015 |volume=12 |page=xxxvi |last2=Aitken |first2=A.J. |last1=Macafee |first1=Caroline |chapter=A History of Scots to 1700 - 2. The origins and spread of Scots (CM) |chapter-url=https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/history-of-scots/origins/}}</ref> Some historians have traditionally argued that the regions later known as [[Lothian]] and the [[Scottish Borders]] became attached to the [[Kingdom of Scotland]] in the tenth and early eleventh centuries,<ref>{{cite book |last=Rollason |first=David W. |author-link=David Rollason |title=Northumbria, 500 – 1100: Creation and Destruction of a Kingdom |year=2003 |publisher=Cambridge University Press |isbn=0-521-81335-2 |p=275}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |last=Barrow |first=G. S. W. |title=The Kingdom of the Scots: Government, Church and Society from the Eleventh to the Fourteenth Century |publisher=Edinburgh University Press |year=2003 |isbn=978-0-7486-1803-3 |location=Edinburgh |page=121}}</ref> but this is no longer accepted and the takeover that does take place is not fully evident until the twelfth century and probably incomplete until at least the thirteenth century.<ref>{{citation |last=Stringer |first=Keith | author-link = | contribution="Middle Britain in Context, c. 900-c1300  |title=Northern England and Southern Scotland in the Central Middle Ages |editor-last=Stringer  |editor-first=Keith J. |editor2-last=Winchester |editor2-first=Angus |editor2-link=  |year=2019 |publisher=Boydell & Brewer |location=Woodridge |isbn=9781787441521 | url= |pages=1–30}}, at pp. 4-5</ref><ref>{{citation |last=McGuigan |first=Neil | contribution=Donation and Conquest: The Formation of Lothian and the Origins of the Anglo-Scottish Border |title= Offa's Dyke Journal 4: Borders in Early Medieval Britain | editor-last=Guy  |editor-first=Ben |editor2-last= Williams  |editor2-first= Howard |editor3-last= Delaney |editor3-first= Liam  |publisher= JAS Arqueología |location=Chester |year=2022|volume=4 | issn=2695-625X |pages= 36–65 |doi=10.23914/odj.v4i0.352 |s2cid=257501905 |url=http://revistas.jasarqueologia.es/index.php/odjournal/article/view/352|doi-access=free }}, pp. 36–65.</ref> The common use of English remained largely confined to Lothian and the Borders until the thirteenth century, where the local varieties were reshaped in response to migration from the [[Danelaw|Scandinavian-influenced]] [[Northern England|North]] and [[Midlands]] of England that came with the foundation of the first [[burgh]]s in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Smith |first=Jeremy |title=Scots: an outline history - Influence of Old Norse |url=https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/an-outline-history-of-scots/origins/ |archive-date= |access-date=31 March 2025 |website=Dictionaries of the Scots Language}}</ref> The Scots language scholar [[Robert McColl Millar]] framed Early Scots as a ''[[Koiné language|koine]]'' of the varieties of English spoken in [[Bernicia]] and the [[Danelaw]] that had been brought to the new burghs.<ref>{{Cite book |last=McColl Millar |first=Robert |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ecLSEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&hl=source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false |title=A History of the Scots Language |date=29 March 2025 |publisher=[[Oxford University Press]] |isbn=9780198863991 |location=Oxford |publication-date=2023 |pages=36–38 |language=English |chapter=3.4 The Creation and spread of ''Inglis'' / 3.5 Formation of ''Inglis''}}</ref>

Later influences on the development of Scots came from the [[Romance language]]s via [[Ecclesiastical Latin|ecclesiastical]] and legal [[Latin]], [[Norman French]],{{r|DictionaryScots|page=lxiii–lxv}} and later [[Parisian French]], due to the [[Auld Alliance]]. Additionally, there were [[Dutch language|Dutch]] and [[Middle Low German]] influences due to trade with and immigration from the [[Low Countries]].{{r|DictionaryScots|page=lxiii}} Scots also includes loan words in the legal and administrative fields resulting from contact with [[Middle Irish]], and reflected in early medieval legal documents.{{r|DictionaryScots|page=lxi}} Contemporary [[Scottish Gaelic]] loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ''[[cèilidh]]'', ''[[loch]]'', ''[[whisky]]'', ''[[glen]]'' and ''[[Scottish clan|clan]]''. [[Cumbric]] and [[Pictish]], the medieval [[Brittonic languages]] of Northern England and Scotland, are the suspected source of a small number of Scots words, such as ''lum'' (derived from Cumbric) meaning "chimney".<ref name="dictscotvocab">{{cite web |title=Dictionaries of the Scots Language – vocabulary |url=https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/history-of-scots/vocabulary/ |access-date=30 April 2021}}</ref> From the thirteenth century, the [[Early Scots]] language spread further into Scotland via the [[burgh]]s, which were proto-urban institutions first established by King [[David I of Scotland|David I]]. In fourteenth-century Scotland, the growth in prestige of Early Scots and the complementary decline of French made Scots the [[prestige dialect]] of most of eastern Scotland. By the sixteenth century, [[Middle Scots]] had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England.<ref name=EdinburghCompanion>{{cite book|chapter=A Brief History of Scots|editor-last1=Corbett|editor-first1=John|editor-last2=McClure|editor-first2=Derrick|editor-last3=Stuart-Smith|editor-first3=Jane|year=2003|title=The Edinburgh Companion to Scots|location=Edinburgh|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=0-7486-1596-2|page=9}}</ref>

From 1610 to the 1690s during the [[Plantation of Ulster]], some 200,000 Scots-speaking Lowlanders settled as colonists in Ulster in Ireland.<ref name="Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 572">Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 572</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=July 2020}} In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.<ref>Adams 1977: 57</ref>{{Full citation needed|date=July 2020}}

The name [[Modern Scots]] is used to describe the Scots language after 1700.{{citation needed|date=September 2020}}

A seminal study of Scots was undertaken by [[JAH Murray]] and published as ''Dialect of the Southern Counties of Scotland''.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924026538938|title=The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland : its pronunciation, grammar, and historical relations; with an appendix on the present limits of the Gaelic and lowland Scotch, and the dialectical divisions of the lowland tongue; and a linguistical map of Scotland|last=Murray|first=James Augustus Henry|year=1873|publisher=Asher & Co}}</ref> Murray's results were given further publicity by being included in [[Alexander John Ellis]]'s book [[On Early English Pronunciation, Part V]] alongside results from Orkney and Shetland, as well as the whole of England. Murray and Ellis differed slightly on the border between English and Scots dialects.<ref>{{cite book|last=Ellis|first=Alexander John|title=On early English pronunciation: with especial reference to Shakspere and Chaucer, containing an investigation of the correspondence of writing with speech in England from the Anglosaxon period to the present day means of the ordinary printing types|publisher=Trübner & Co|pages=20–21|url=https://archive.org/details/onearlyenglishpr00elliuoft/page/20/mode/2up?q=murray}}</ref>

Scots was studied alongside English and Scots Gaelic in the ''[[Linguistic Survey of Scotland]]'' at the [[University of Edinburgh]], which began in 1949 and began to publish results in the 1970s.<ref>{{cite book |last=Petyt |first=Keith Malcolm |title=The Study of Dialect: An introduction to dialectology |publisher=Andre Deutsch |year=1980 |pages=94–98 |isbn=0-233-97212-9}}</ref> Also beginning in the 1970s, the ''[[Atlas Linguarum Europae]]'' studied the Scots language used at 15 sites in Scotland, each with its own dialect.<ref>{{cite book |last=Eder |first=Birgit |title=Ausgewählte Verwandtschaftsbezeichnungen in den Sprachen Europas: untersucht anhand der Datensammlungen des Atlas Linguarum Europae |publisher=Peter Lang |year=2004 |page=301 |isbn=978-3-631-52873-0}}</ref>

===Language shift===
From the mid-sixteenth century, written Scots was increasingly influenced by the developing [[Standard English]] of Southern England due to developments in royal and political interactions with England.{{r|EdinburghCompanion|p=10}} When [[William Flower (officer of arms)|William Flower]], an [[Chester Herald|English herald]], spoke with [[Mary of Guise]] and her councillors in 1560, they first used the {{lang|enm|"Scottyshe toung"}}. As he found this hard to understand, they switched into her native French.<ref>Joseph Bain, [https://archive.org/details/calendarstatepa00baingoog/page/322/mode/2up ''Calendar State Papers Scotland'', vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1898), 322 no. 662]</ref> King [[James VI and I|James VI]], who in 1603 became [[James I of England]], observed in his work ''[[Some Reulis and Cautelis to Be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie]]'' that {{lang|enm|"For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk is lykest to our language..."}} (''For though several have written of ''(the subject)'' in English, which is the language most similar to ours...''). However, with the increasing influence and availability of books printed in England, most writing in Scotland came to be done in the English fashion.{{r|EdinburghCompanion|p=11}} In his first speech to the [[Parliament of England|English Parliament]] in March 1603, King James VI and I declared, {{lang|enm|"Hath not God first united these two Kingdomes both in Language, Religion, and similitude of maners?"}}.<ref>"A Speach in Parliament. Anno 1603" in "The Workes of the Most High and Mightie Prince Iames, by the Grace of God" (1616), pg. 485</ref> Following James VI's move to London, the [[Protestantism in Scotland|Protestant]] [[Church of Scotland]] adopted the 1611 [[Authorized King James Version]] of the Bible; subsequently, the [[Acts of Union 1707]] led to Scotland joining England to form the [[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.<ref name=LangSuppressed>{{cite book|last=Jones|first=Charles|year=1995|title=A Language Suppressed: The Pronunciation of the Scots Language in the 18th Century|location=Edinburgh|publisher=J. Donald Publishers|page=vii|isbn=0-85976-427-3}}</ref> Many leading Scots of the period, such as [[David Hume]], defined themselves as [[North Britain|Northern British]] rather than Scottish.{{r|LangSuppressed|page=2}} 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 eighteenth century.{{r|EdinburghCompanion|page=11}} [[Frederick Albert Pottle|Frederick Pottle]], the twentieth-century biographer of [[James Boswell]] (1740–1795), described James's view of the use of Scots by his father [[Alexander Boswell (judge)|Alexander Boswell]] (1706–1782) {{when|date=September 2020}}<!-- can the half-century or decade(s) of this time be clarified? --> in the eighteenth century while serving as a judge of the [[College of Justice|Supreme Courts of Scotland]]:

{{blockquote|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.}}

However, others did scorn Scots, such as [[Scottish Enlightenment]] intellectuals David Hume and [[Adam Smith]], who went to great lengths to get rid of every Scotticism from their writings.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.scuilwab.org.uk/assets/TheHistoryOScots-1.pdf|title=Scuilwab, p.3}}</ref> Following such examples, many well-off Scots took to learning English through the activities of those such as [[Thomas Sheridan (actor)|Thomas Sheridan]], who in 1761 gave a series of lectures on English [[elocution]]. Charging a [[Guinea (British coin)|guinea]] at a time (about £{{formatnum:{{inflation|UK|1.05|1761|r=-2}}}} in today's money{{inflation-fn|UK}}), they were attended by over 300 men, and he was made a [[:wikt:freeman|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. These eighteenth-century activities would lead to the creation of [[Scottish English|Scottish Standard English]].{{r|EdinburghCompanion|p=13}} Scots remained the vernacular of many rural communities and the growing number of urban working-class Scots.{{r|EdinburghCompanion|p=14}}
[[File:AU Burns Canberra.jpg|thumb|Statue of [[Robert Burns]] in [[Canberra, Australia]]]]

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the use of Scots as a [[literary language]] was revived by several prominent Scotsmen{{citation needed|date=September 2020}} such as [[Robert Burns]].<!-- R. Burns is so well known, that claim (almost) does not greatly need a citation; but the claim about others clearly does --> Such writers established a new cross-dialect literary norm.

Scots terms were included in the [[English Dialect Dictionary]], edited by [[Joseph Wright (linguist)|Joseph Wright]]. Wright had great difficulty in recruiting volunteers from Scotland, as many refused to cooperate with a venture that regarded Scots as a dialect of English, and he obtained enough help only through the assistance from a Professor Shearer in Scotland.<ref name=Bradford>{{cite news|title=The Dialect Dictionary: meeting in Bradford|newspaper=Bradford Observer|date=7 October 1895}}</ref> Wright himself rejected the argument that Scots was a separate language, saying that this was a "quite modern mistake".<ref name=Bradford/>

During the first half of the twentieth century, knowledge of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century literary norms waned, and {{as of|2006|lc=y}}, there is no institutionalised standard literary form.<ref>{{cite web|last=Eagle|first=Andy|year=2006|title=Aw Ae Wey – Written Scots in Scotland and Ulster|url=http://www.scots-online.org/articles/contents/AwAeWey.pdf|access-date=18 October 2015}}</ref> 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".<ref>Primary education: a report of the Advisory Council on Education in Scotland, Scottish Education Department 1946, p. 75</ref> Students 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]].{{r|EdinburghCompanion|p=15}} It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale [[language shift]], sometimes also termed language [[Language change|change]], [[Language convergence|convergence]] or [[Language merger|merger]]. By the end of the twentieth century, Scots was at an advanced stage of [[language death]] over much of [[Scottish Lowlands|Lowland Scotland]].<ref>{{cite book|last=Macafee|first=C.|chapter=Studying Scots Vocabulary|editor-last1=Corbett|editor-first1=John|editor-last2=McClure|editor-first2=Derrick|editor-last3=Stuart-Smith|editor-first3=Jane|year=2003|title=The Edinburgh Companion to Scots|location=Edinburgh|publisher=Edinburgh University Press|isbn=0-7486-1596-2|page=51}}</ref> Residual features of Scots are often regarded as slang.<ref name=EdinburghHistory>{{cite book|title=The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language|last=Jones|first=Charles|year=1997|publisher=[[Edinburgh University Press]]|location=[[Edinburgh]]|isbn=978-0-7486-0754-9|page=518|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0ldowI6VgeMC&q=%22scots+language%22+slang&pg=PA518|access-date=9 August 2010|quote=Menzies (1991:42) also found that in her sample of forty secondary-school children from Easterhouse in Glasgow, there was a tendency to describe Scots words as 'slang' alongside the use of the term 'Scots'}}</ref> A 2010 [[Scottish Government]] study of "public attitudes towards the Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals in a [[representative sample]] of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language", also finding "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)".<ref name="Public Attitudes">{{cite web|last=The Scottish Government|title=Public Attitudes Towards the Scots Language|url=http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2010/01/06105123/0|access-date=18 October 2015|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160102091527/http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2010/01/06105123/0|archive-date=2016-01-02|url-status=dead}}</ref>

===Decline in status===
[[File:John Knox House - Edinburgh Fringe.jpg|thumb|{{lang|sco|Lufe God abufe al and yi nychtbour as yi self}} ("Love God above all and thy neighbour as thyself"), an example of [[Early Scots]], on [[John Knox House]], Edinburgh]]

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 [[sister language]]<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.scots-online.org/articles/Nostra_Vulgari_Lingua.php |title=Nostra Vulgari Lingua: Scots as a European Language 1500–1700 |first=Dauvit |last=Horsbroch |publisher=www.scots-online.org |access-date=18 October 2015 }}</ref> forming a [[pluricentric language|pluricentric]] [[diasystem]] with English.

German linguist {{lang|de|[[Heinz Kloss]]|italic=no}} considered Modern Scots a {{lang|de|Halbsprache}} ('half language') in terms of an [[abstand and ausbau languages|{{lang|de|abstand|nocat=y}} and {{lang|de|ausbau|nocat=y}} languages]] framework,<ref>Kloss, Heinz, ²1968, ''Die Entwicklung neuer germanischer Kultursprachen seit 1800'', Düsseldorf: Bagel. pp.70, 79</ref> although today in Scotland most people's speech is somewhere on a continuum ranging from traditional broad Scots to [[Scottish English|Scottish Standard English]]. Many speakers are [[diglossia|diglossic]] and may be able to [[code-switching|code-switch]] along the continuum depending on the situation. Where on this continuum English-influenced Scots becomes Scots-influenced English is difficult to determine. Because standard English now generally has the role of a {{lang|de|[[Dachsprache]]}} ('roofing language'), disputes often arise as to whether the varieties of Scots are dialects of Scottish English or constitute a separate language in their own right.<ref name="Stuart-Smith"/><ref name="Maggie Mcott">{{cite web |last=Scott |first=Maggie |title=The Scots Continuum and Descriptive Linguistics |url=http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/ScotLit/ASLS/SWE/TBI/TBIIssue2/ScotsContinuum.html |work=The Bottle Imp |publisher=[[Association for Scottish Literary Studies]] |access-date=21 July 2011|date=November 2007}}</ref>

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]].<ref>{{cite web |title=Second Report submitted by the United Kingdom pursuant to article 25, paragraph 2 of the framework convention for the protection of national minorities |url=http://www.coe.int/t/dghl/monitoring/minorities/3_fcnmdocs/PDF_2nd_SR_UK_en.pdf |publisher=[[Council of Europe]] |access-date=16 August 2013 }}</ref>

{{blockquote|Notwithstanding the UK government's and the Scottish Executive's obligations under part II of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Scottish Executive recognises and respects Scots (in all its forms) as a distinct language, and does not consider the use of Scots to be an indication of poor competence in English.}}

Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in the extensive body of Scots literature, its independent – if somewhat fluid – [[orthography|orthographic conventions]], and in its former use as the language of the original [[Parliament of Scotland]].<ref>See for example {{cite web |url=https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aosp/1560/1/contents |title=Confession of Faith Ratification Act 1560 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200826030235/https://www.legislation.gov.uk/aosp/1560/1/contents |archive-date=26 August 2020 }}, written in Scots and still part of British Law</ref> Because Scotland retained distinct political, legal, and religious systems after the Union, many Scots terms passed into Scottish English.