Editing Scots language (section)

===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>