# Scots, Scottish English and Scottish Gaelic



## L'irlandais

*Moderator note: Split from here.*



luitzen said:


> How is ch actually pronounced in Scottish?


Hi luitzen,
Be careful there's no such language as Scottish.  I mention this as the majority of Europeans I speak to daily, are convinced that Irish is a dialect of English, rather than a distinct (unheard of over here) Gaelic language.  (I suspect that the use of the term "Scottish" may be equally confusing for most forum members.)  The people of Scotland speak, English, Scottish Gaelic or the dialect known as Scots.  Are you referring to "Scots"?
The English spoken in Scotland may (sometimes) be called Scottish English, however this is ambiguous, since these are 2 (slightly) different dialects.
Differences in pronunciation, roughly follow a Highland/Lowland cultural split.


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## fdb

The standard reference work for Scots is the "Dictionary of the older Scottish tongue" in 12 volumes. So I don't really think you can object to calling it "Scottish".


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## L'irlandais

Bonsoir fdb,
It's not an objection, it's an observation :
Scots, the language spoken in Lowlands of Scotland is also also known as "Lowland Scots" to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic.
The Scottish felt the need to distinguish it from the other *much older Scottish tongue, because to just say "Scottish" (in the context of language) is ambiguous in that neck of the woods.

 (c1100-1700) for Old Scots, the older Scottish tongue you mention.
*Scottish Gaelic present for the 4th century onwards, so much older.


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## berndf

L'irlandais said:


> (c1100-1700) for Old Scots, the older Scottish tongue you mention.
> *Scottish Gaelic present for the 4th century onwards, so much older.


This is correct for the Western Highlands only. Scots developed out of the Northumbrian dialect of Old English The Eastern Lowlands had been part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria since the 7th or 8th century, before Scottish Gaelic replaced older British languages in the Eastern Lowlands and Pictish in the Western Highlands.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Scottish was used, until the late Middle Ages, to refer to Scottish Gaelic. "Inglis" was how Scots speakers referred to their tongue. That said, Scots speakers did apparently refer to Scots Gaelic as "Iryshe" so it's not a clear cut division.

Referring to the Scots dialect/language as "Scottish", however, is not current.


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## berndf

Pedro y La Torre said:


> Referring to the Scots dialect/language as "Scottish", however, is not current.


I agree. Yet, the two standard dictionaries (DOST for Old and Middle Scots mentioned by fdb and SND for modern Scots; both available online here) call it _Scottish_. Work on both dictionaries started around 1930, i.e. not that long ago.


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## Kevin Beach

It's ironic, isn't it, that the Scots language is essentially derived from the speech of the original Sasenachs?


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## luitzen

I just found this thread now.

I realize that there are two Scottish languages, but I was not aware that the adjective _Scottish_ could not be used for Scots. I thought it was this:

-Scottish language/Scots
-Scottish English
-Scottish Gaelic


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## Wolverine9

luitzen said:


> I just found this thread now.
> 
> I realize that there are two Scottish languages, but I was not aware that the adjective _Scottish_ could not be used for Scots. I thought it was this:
> 
> -Scottish language/Scots
> -Scottish English
> -Scottish Gaelic



The point being made in this thread is that "Scottish" _can _refer to Scots, so the three forms you listed are correct.


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## Pedro y La Torre

Wolverine9 said:


> The point being made in this thread is that "Scottish" _can _refer to Scots, so the three forms you listed are correct.



"Scottish" *is not *used to refer to the Scots language, and would not be understood as such.


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## Wolverine9

Pedro y La Torre said:


> "Scottish" *is not *used to refer to the Scots language, and would not be understood as such.



Except for the fact that dictionaries use "Scottish" to refer to the Scots language...

The use of the term "Scottish" for a language can be ambiguous though if no further details are provided about the form of speech.


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## CapnPrep

Wolverine9 said:


> Except for the fact that dictionaries use "Scottish" to refer to the Scots language...


A good dictionary should provide this definition, along with a usage note telling people that "Scots" is the better choice. In the OED, for example (s.v. _Scotch_, adj. and n.):


> _Scottish_ is rarely used as a noun and only with reference either to the people or to varieties of the English language […]; _Scots_ is only used as a noun with reference to language, where it is now the usual word


If you are referring to the DOST, that title, as berndf said, goes back at least to the 30s and cannot be taken as an argument or a model for current usage.


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## Wolverine9

I meant from a historical and academic point of view, "Scottish" can be used for any of the three forms of speech.  I realize that it's not the common colloquial term for the Scots language nowadays.


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## L'irlandais

Hi Wolverine9,
The point I was hoping to make in #01 was that for the majority of non-English speakers (here in Western Europe in my limited experience) the use of the word "Scottish" can only lead to confusion :
since Scottish (& Irish) are believe to simply be English with an accent, not even dialects.  I guess we agree on the whole.


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## luitzen

While we're on the subject, why is Scots a language? Has it developed from English and is it just a lot further removed from standard English (does that even exist?) than Scottish English or does it have a separate history? How dissimilar are Scots and Scottish English? Are they mutually intelligible?


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## Ihsiin

The distinction between language and dialect is arbitrary, but I'd imagine it'd be very difficult for anyone to argue that Scots is not English. Whether one wishes to call it an English dialect or an English language is all much of a muchness.

We often hear that Scots is descended from Northumbrian dialects of Old English (and Old English means pretty much the arse-end of the 1st millennium AD), but it would be very wrong to assume that this is the point of divergence between Modern English and Scots. Rather, both standard Modern English and Scots are the product of a shared evolutionary history, and Scots is _much_ closer to Modern English than it is to Old Northumbrian (or, indeed, any Anglo-Saxon dialect).

Wikipedia gives the following sample text:


> This is the storie o the birth o Jesus Christ. His mither Mary wis trystit til Joseph, but afore they war mairriet she wis fund tae be wi bairn bi the Halie Spírit. Her husband Joseph, honest man, hed nae mind tae affront her afore the warld an wis for brakkin aff their tryst hidlinweys; an sae he wis een ettlin tae dae, whan an angel o the Lord kythed til him in a draim an said til him, “Joseph, son o Dauvit, be nane feared tae tak Mary your trystit wife intil your hame; the bairn she is cairrein is o the Halie Spírit. She will beir a son, an the name ye ar tae gíe him is Jesus, for he will sauf his fowk frae their sins.”
> Aa this happent at the wurd spokken bi the Lord throu the Prophet micht be fulfilled: Behaud, the virgin wil bouk an beir a son, an they will caa his name Immanuel – that is, “God wi us”.
> Whan he hed waukit frae his sleep, Joseph did as the angel hed bidden him, an tuik his trystit wife hame wi him. But he bedditna wi her or she buir a son; an he caa’d the bairn Jesus.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language#Sample_text_of_Modern_Scots

As you can see, it's pretty much intelligible to any Modern English speaker.


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## berndf

Ihsiin said:


> We often hear that Scots is descended from Northumbrian dialects of Old English (and Old English means pretty much the arse-end of the 1st millennium AD), but it would be very wrong to assume that this is the point of divergence between Modern English and Scots. Rather, both standard Modern English and Scots are the product of a shared evolutionary history, and Scots is _much_ closer to Modern English than it is to Old Northumbrian (or, indeed, any Anglo-Saxon dialect).


I don't think anybody has claimed anything to the contrary. If you could fix a point of divergence, than it would be late Middle English although there is of course continued English influence on Scots. Scots has a shared development history with Northumbrian throughout the middle English period with some characteristic sound shifts and non-shifts like: Some Middle English diphthongizations didn't occur in Northumbrian and Scots like _hus_ instead of _house_ and_ thoch_ instead of_ though_; none of the Northern dialects except Northumbrian and Scots (and Scottish English for that matter) feature the late ME ʊ/ʌ phoneme split.



Ihsiin said:


> As you can see, it's pretty much intelligible to any Modern English speaker.


Comparing _written _language tells only part of the story as English spelling represents late Middle and not modern English pronunciation and much of the divergences happened afterwards.


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## L'irlandais

Ihsiin said:


> ...As you can see, it's pretty much intelligible to any Modern English speaker.


Hello Ihsiin,
If Scots and English were mutually intelligible, then why how do you explain *the widespread decline *in the use of the Scots language?  Surely the Young generation would have little trouble picking up the dialect if that were true.
If you've not heard any native speakers perhaps this (firefox based) website Sound comparisons - *Ulster Scots* may be of passing interest.

Hi berndf,
Thanks for the informative posts, I believe you are right I'm probaly looking at things for a Gaelic perspective, while this dialect is Lowlands based.  There were previously dialects of Scottish Gaelic, with somewhat similar influences from Nordic languages.


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## NorwegianNYC

Ihsiin said:


> The distinction between language and dialect is arbitrary, but I'd imagine it'd be very difficult for anyone to argue that Scots is not English.


 I see your point, but you are in a way contradicting yourself. Whether Scots is English is (as you make point of yourself) a matter of definition. It is just as easy to argue that Scots and English are separate languages as being the same. For the sake of the argument - Scandinavian can said to be one or three languages, depending on definition; and Arabic may or may not be one language (or a dozen) using the same logic.


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## Pedro y La Torre

L'irlandais said:


> Hello Ihsiin,
> If Scots and English were mutually intelligible, then why how do you explain *the widespread decline *in the use of the Scots language?  Surely the Young generation would have little trouble picking up the dialect if that were true.



Because it is perceived as badly spoken English (not true, perhaps, but I've heard Scots uttering the perception).

If I were to claim that "_ah shure jayzus Tommy, 'twas a feckin' crackin' game so 'twas. Out Wesht, we do it like no other boy, did ye see how he bate the ball between the shticks_" was a language, I'd be ridiculed (though no non-Irish person would have  a clue what was going on). Whatever about Scots, Ulster Scots really is no better than this "dialectal" speech of a made-up Galway man.


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## Ihsiin

berndf said:


> Comparing _written _language tells only part of the story as English spelling represents late Middle and not modern English pronunciation and much of the divergences happened afterwards.



Quite right, but then looking at the written language at the very least allows us to discern that Scots and standard English are essentially of the same substance. Surely, listening to Scots is a lot more difficult than reading it, for the standard English speaker that is, but then I don't think spoken Scots is really very much more impenetrable than heavily spoken Yorkshire, or Northern Irish, or Cockney, for that matter.



L'irlandais said:


> Hello Ihsiin,
> If Scots and English were mutually intelligible, then why how do you explain *the widespread decline *in the use of the Scots language?  Surely the Young generation would have little trouble picking up the dialect if that were true.
> If you've not heard any native speakers perhaps this (firefox based) website Sound comparisons - *Ulster Scots* may be of passing interest.



Well of course, mutual intellegibility is a variable quantatity. As I have already suggested, Scots and standard English are _not_ 100% mutually comprehensible. Having said that, listening to a sample of spoken Scots, I don't find it _too_ difficult to follow, and I say this a native English speaker who was born, raised and lived all my life in London. Certainly, as a speaker of Iraqi Arabic, I find it much more difficult to follow Levantine or Egyptian Arabic, for example.

Concerning the decline of Scots, I'm afraid this is a fairly common phenomenon of the modern age. As a result, I think, of easier travel and communication, and a very pervasive media in the form of TV, radio, popular music, et cetera, marginal dialects tend to disappear within the growing dominance of the standard language. This is by no means limited to Scots; we might also think of the decline of Yiddish, or the normalisation of varieties of vernacular Arabic, to list a couple of examples.



NorwegianNYC said:


> I see your point, but you are in a way contradicting yourself. Whether Scots is English is (as you make point of yourself) a matter of definition. It is just as easy to argue that Scots and English are separate languages as being the same. For the sake of the argument - Scandinavian can said to be one or three languages, depending on definition; and Arabic may or may not be one language (or a dozen) using the same logic.



I think you've slightly missed the point. My point really was that there is no single, monolithic English, but that English is a term that covers all the related languages/dialects that descend from the pre-conquest Anglo-Saxon languages (or Englisc, as they called it). Whether you consider English to constitute a family of different languages, or a single language within which are contained a variety of dialects is neither here not there. Both scenarios are essentially identical.

I will admit that my instinct is to think of Scots as a dialect of English, the Scandinavian languages as dialects of Norse or Nordic (I'm not _too_ sure about this, my knowledge isn't great enough), and to think of vernacular Arabic as constituting a vast collection of related languages. But these are my own (more often than not aesthetic) judgements, and have no real, objective, linguistic significance. I only try to be consistent.

The matter of definition is whether or not English constitutes a language or a language family, but linguistically there is no doubt that Scots is part of that English language/family.


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## luitzen

Ihsiin said:


> Well of course, mutual intellegibility is a variable quantatity. As I have already suggested, Scots and standard English are _not_ 100% mutually comprehensible. Having said that, listening to a sample of spoken Scots, I don't find it _too_ difficult to follow, and I say this a native English speaker who was born, raised and lived all my life in London. Certainly, as a speaker of Iraqi Arabic, I find it much more difficult to follow Levantine or Egyptian Arabic, for example.


I think it's similar for African and Dutch; I have no trouble reading African, but understanding spoken African requires a little practice. Furthermore, there are a lot of cultural differences, since we live so far apart. In the Netherlands we live miles below sea level and in South Africa they live in a big sand box, so we'll use different words since we encounter different things in our daily life (in the Netherlands we have 100 words for water, in South Africa they have 100 words for sand).

Furthermore, there will be some different words for daily life things such as greeting each other. First you'll be like _What?, _but you'll quickly get a hang of it and start using these words as well. I think it's the same for British, Scottish and American English.


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