Scots Language »

Useful Notes

Following

Some works that are either in Scots or feature the language prominently:

• Brave: a Running Gag throughout the film is that none of the other characters can understand anything Young MacGuffin says because he can only speak Doric, the northeastern dialect of Scots. The gag is carried over to Ralph Breaks the Internet, where Merida speaks Scots and the other Disney princesses can’t understand her.
• Robert Burns wrote extensively in Scots, with his song Auld Lang Syne being by far the most famous piece of writing in the language.
• Civilization IV: Robert the Bruce, faction leader for Scotland, speaks Early Scots, the earliest form of the language distinct from the Middle English it evolved from.
• Outlander: is riddled with Scots dialogue…which is completely inaccurate, as most 18th century Highlanders would not have spoken Scots.
• Still Game takes place in a Glasgow housing estate, and the characters appropriately speak urban Glaswegian Scots.
• Trainspotting is largely written in urban Edinburgh Scots.
• Thrawn Janet, an early story by Robert Louis Stevenson, is written entirely in Scots apart from the prologue and some English lines of dialogue. Stevenson had ambitions of writing more stories in Scots, but decided to focus on writing in English to appeal to a wider audience, and became pessimistic about the future of the language in his later years, fearing that it would soon go extinct.

Like English, Scots is descended from the language varieties brought to Britain by the invading Anglo-Saxons in the 6th century. Whereas modern English is primarily descended from the Mercian dialect of Anglo-Saxon, Scots is primarily descended from the Northumbrian dialect, which leads to a lot of overlap with northern dialects of English, with words like bairn (child), ken (know), and burn (stream) being common to Scots and Northern English both.

Until the 14th century, people from the Scottish Lowlands and England generally regarded themselves as speakers of the same language, which was referred to Englisch in England and Inglis in Scotland. They gave the name Scottis to the Celtic language spoken by the Highlanders, as the institutions of state were still largely governed by Highland nobles who conducted the state's business in their own language. However, as time went on, and Scottish national identity started to orient around the increasingly prosperous Lowlands, Lowlanders began to refer to their own language as Scottis, and came to regard both English-speakers (whose language they now called Sothron - "Southern") and Gaelic-speakers (whose language they now called Erse - "Irish") as foreign to them. During this period, Scots had become a full national language in the same way that English or French or Spanish were for their respective nations. The government conducted its business through Scots, foreign diplomats learned it and remarked on its difference with English, and every kind of literature from bawdy tavern songs to medical textbooks to trade manifests to the letters of the King were written in Scots.

Unfortunately, the primacy of the language wouldn't last. In the early 17th century, King James VI ascended to the throne of England as James I, and took his court with him. James, who had previously been an ardent proponent of the Scots language, even suggesting that it was outright superior to English as a poetic medium, became an overnight Anglophile. He had all his Scots books taken out of print and rewritten in English, and as part of his ambition to style himself King of Great Britain, he began to insist that England and Scotland were both one nation who spoke the same language. In addition to this, as one of his acts as King of Scots, James had issued a promulgation that all households above a certain income threshold had to own a copy of the Bible. As there were no Scots translations of the entire Bible^note as of 2025, there still isn't one!, the Geneva Bible - an English translation - was selected instead. This had a devastating effect on the psyche of Scots speakers, who were essentially being told that their language wasn't good enough for God or for the King, and so over the course of the next century, Scots began to decline in terms of usage and prestige, being eschewed by the nobility, government and upper classes in favour of English.

A further blow was dealt against Scots in the early 18th century with the Act of Union. Scotland ceased to exist as a distinct political entity, and England, being the much wealthier and more prosperous nation, became the culture everyone wanted to be associated with. Urbane Scots began to identify as 'Northern Britons', spoke English, and put a tremendous amount of effort into excising all trace elements of Scots from their speech. Famous examples include the likes of Adam Smith and David Hume, the latter even writing an instructional treatise on how to sound more English. Organisations that discouraged Scots like the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland were immensely popular among the upper and middle classes of Scottish society, who increasingly came to view Scots as a bastardised patois that should be despised and shunned in favour of English. While this attitude was not universal, and influential figures of the day such as James Boswell railed against the Anglicisation of Scottish speech, it was prevalent enough that for a while, it almost seemed that Scots would die out, at least among certain sections of Scottish society.

However, all was not lost. Inspired by the works of Horace, the Roman poet who extolled the virtues of wholesome provincial life over the hustle and bustle of the metropole, an Edinburgh wig-maker named Allan Ramsay began collecting and composing Scots songs and poems on the subject of country life. Ramsay's work became very popular, and inspired other writers like Robert Fergusson and, most famously, Robert Burns to work in the Scots language as well. In Scottish literary history, this period is known as the Vernacular Revival, and was a crucial turning point in the attitude of Scottish people towards their language. Where previously the upper classes had scorned it as a peasant dialect, Scots poems and songs now became frequent fixtures of their social clubs and voluntary associations. The revival did not quite recapture the previous literary prestige Scots had once held, but it did secure for it a lasting place in the cultural identity of Scotland.

Despite the best efforts of the Vernacular Revivalists, as well as writers like John Galt, Walter Scott and William Alexander, who filled their English language novels full of Scots dialogue, and several very ambitious attempts by Robert Louis Stevenson to write full prose stories in Scots (something that had basically never been done before), the language remained in a kind of linguistic ghetto. It was considered a fine language for poetry, singing, and speaking among your friends and family, but unacceptable for use in school or professional settings or in long form writing or religious writing. A 1946 report on the primary education of Scottish children remarked "Scots is the homely, natural and pithy everyday speech of country and small-town folk...But it is not the language of educated people anywhere, and could not be described as a suitable medium of education or culture." The Scottish Renaissance of the early 20th century had done little to change these attitudes, despite a newfound enthusiasm for writing in the language spearheaded by writers like Hugh MacDiarmid and Lewis Grassic Gibbon, and it continued to decline over the course of the century.

In the 21st century, the condition of Scots is worrying, but not hopeless. While still a minority language on the decline, 1.7 million people in Scotland and Northern Ireland state that they have some degree of ability to speak, read and write Scots. More poems, songs, short stories and even novels are being written in the language than ever before, and many works written in other languages are now translated into Scots, particularly children's books. Online phenomena like the Scottish People Twitter subreddit and the 2020 Scots Wikipedia Gaffe have brought greater awareness to the language from outwith Scotland, and internet influencers like Len Pennie help to promote the language and educate people in its use. As of 2025, the devolved Scottish government has recognised both Scots and Gaelic as the official languages of Scotland and has pleged to protect and promote them, so hopefully things are on the upswing for baith oor lang-tholin leids.

As mentioned in the previous section, Scots and English share a common linguistic origin, and are regarded as "sister languages" (ie. two languages in a family most closely related to one another).

The core vocabulary of Scots is recognisable to English speakers as cognate with their own, which sometimes causes a misunderstanding that Scots words are simply English ones pronounced in a Scottish accent. This is a pretty nonsensical claim if you know anything about accents. For example, the words bone, stone and own pronounced in a Scottish accent would be...bone, stone and own. The reason Scots speakers say bane, stane and ain instead is because Scots has undergone a distinct historical development from English. While the two languages share a common ancestral vocabulary, sound changes and independent linguistic evolution have resulted in divergent forms and pronunciations today. Importantly, these changes are consistent and replicable. For example, if an Old English word had a long 'ahh' vowel sound (eg. bān stān and āgen), then you can be pretty sure its Modern English descendant will have a rounded 'ow' sound, while its Modern Scots descendant will have a sharp 'ey' instead.

The spelling of English words can be a clue to these ancestral relationships as well. Old English possessed the voiceless velar fricative - the phlegmy 'ch' sound still found in languages like German (Bach) and Gaelic (loch) - which Modern English has lost, but Scots has retained. When you see an English word with a 'gh' somewhere in the middle, like might, night or daughter, it's a good indication that they used to feature this sound. Their Scots equivalents, like micht, nicht and dauchter, still do! Other words still exist in both Scots and English in more or less the same form, but have changed drastically in meaning. English uncouth and Scots unco are cognates, but the English word has come to mean "rude" or "ill-mannered", while the Scots one means "strange" or "unsettling".

As well as words that have evolved differently in both languages, there are many words that have fallen out of use in English entirely, but been retained in Scots. Words like gate (way), sark (shirt), carl (fellow), and trow (believe) are considered extremely old fashioned in English, but are still used in Modern Scots. Similarly, Scots retains a lot of Anglo-Saxon vocabulary that in English has been replaced by French; words such as lippen (depend), ettle (intend) and weird (fate). This causes some people to think that Scots is a kind of time capsule of English, or that it gives an idea of what English might have looked like if it had been less influenced by French, but that isn't really accurate, as there are also examples of the opposite process. For example, which is a perfectly common word in Modern English, while its Scots cognate, whilk, is considered archaic and has largely fallen out of use; or consider the famous Scots word bonnie - a loanword from French that replaced the native Anglo-Saxon pretty.

Gramatically, English and Scots are very similar, but Scots has a few key distinguishing features.

• Non-pluralisation of countable nouns.
  • English: "I gave it to him two years ago."
    • Scots: "I gin it tae him twa yeir syne."
• Double modal verbs.
  • English: "She should be able to do it."
    • Scots: "She sud can dae it."
• More strong plurals and verbs.
  • English: cow > cows, shoe > shoes, loaf > loaves; cry > cried, jump > jumped, hook > hooked.
    • Scots: coo > kye, shoe > shoon, loaf > laif; greet > grat, jimp > jamp, cleek > claucht.
• Negative request instruction rather than negative imperative.
  • English: "Don't do that."
    • Scots: "Gonnae no dae that?"
• Definite article preference.
  • English: "He has a cold."
    • Scots: "He's got tha caul."

As mentioned, the Scots language is also spoken in Ireland. Ulster Scots or Ullans (a Portmanteau of "Ulster" and "Lallans", a poetic name for Scots) arrived in force in Ireland with the 17th century plantation of Ulster - an attempt by the English government to pacify the northern part of Ireland by ethnically cleansing the native Irish and replacing them with Protestant settlers from England and the Scottish Lowlands. However, we do know for a fact Scots was spoken to some extent before then, as there are documents from Ireland written in Scots that date to before the plantation, and it isn't exactly a gargantuan undertaking to get from the Scottish Lowlands to northeast Ulster.

Just like in Scotland, Ulster Scots almost immediately came under pressure from the English language. English planters were usually of a much greater social standing than their Scottish fellows, and religiously, Anglicanism was favoured over Presbyterianism, which encouraged the Scottish elements of the plantation to assimilate into English culture. However, this wasn't universal, and areas where the Scottish population was overwhelming enough to resist Anglicisation are the areas that still speak Ulster Scots today, namely Antrim, Down and Donegal. Sadly, as in Scotland, it eventually came to be considered an inappropriate language for certain settings, and today is only really spoken in rural areas among friends and family, and Ulster Scots literature is mostly limited to poems and short stories.

One difference between Ulster Scots and Scots in Scotland is its historical relationship with its neighbouring Celtic language. In Scotland, the Gaelic-speaking Highlanders and Scots-speaking Lowlanders basically operated as parallel societies within the one country, and they tried not to interact with each other if they could help it. Highlanders viewed Lowlanders as foreign interlopers, while Lowlanders viewed Highlanders as uncouth barbarians. By contrast, in Ireland, poorer Scots speakers and Irish speakers often found themselves in close proximity, working seasonally on farms and building sites. As a result, Ulster Scots has a higher component of Irish loanwords than Scots has Gaelic ones: words like gra (grá - love), kash (cosán - path), pudderins (paidrín - rosary) and crine (críon - to shrink). Conversely, Irish also has a number words that come from Ulster Scots, such as fuist (wheesht - quiet), seoch (sheugh - ditch), and perhaps most famously, craic (crack - originally 'news', but in Irish means 'fun').

As with most Scots dialects, Ulster Scots shares most of the same core vocabulary, but the words are pronounced differently. Vowels in Ulster Scots are generally rounder, there's a tendancy for "s" sounds to become "sh" sounds, and "t" and "d" sounds to be followed "th" sounds. So, Scots rivlin (coarse, rough person), owerplus (surplus), huster (mess), spalder (sprawl) become Ulster Scots rullion, owerplush, hashtther, and spaldther. Ulster Scots has also independently developed a number of words that aren't found in other dialects of Scots; words like aply (probably), wexer (a daunting task), mankeeper (newt), scud (jinx) and bindherer (big thing).

Unfortunately, thanks to the legacy of The Troubles, Ulster Scots has become politicised in a way that Scots in Scotland has managed to avoid. Ulster Scots speakers are often assumed to exclusively be Protestant Unionists, and Ulster Scots as a whole is often derided as being an artificial or manufactured response to the Irish language. Essentially, it's alleged that during the 1990s peace process, leading unionist politicians conspired together with linguists and historians with the motive "the Catholics have a language, we should make up one of our own", and created Ulster Scots out of nothing. Of course, this is completely insane, and totally ignores the many dozens of historical documents written in and about Ulster Scots, as well as the existence of the Scots language in Scotland, but it isn't helped by the fact that some elements of the Unionist political establishment have taken up Ulster Scots as a way to attack and halt policies dedicated to helping the Irish language, often framing them as discriminatory or sectarian if they don't also cover Ulster Scots; this causes the cost of implementing these policies to balloon, sometimes to the point where they're not implemented at all, ensuring that neither language gets any help. Invariably, these politicians don't speak Ulster Scots themselves, and may even have attacked it in the past, but are so bigoted that they're happy to use it as a way to stifle the development of Irish.

Amusingly, this situation often brings Northern Irish political factions into conflict with their Scottish equivalents: Ulster Unionists are usually the ones championing Ulster Scots, while more hardline Scottish Unionists deride and mock it or allege that it was made up by Scottish Nationalists; conversely, hardline Irish Nationalists are often left looking foolish when they attack Ulster Scots assuming Scottish Nationalists and Scottish Gaelic speakers will agree with them, only to find that the latter two groups are generally very supportive of the Scots language.