The Scots Language (or Dialect?!)

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the Langfocus channel, and my name is Paul today's topic is the Scots Language

Scots is a language spoken in Scotland; one of the constituent countries of the United Kingdom. Right off the bat

It's important to point out that there are essentially three different languages in Scotland: Scottish English,

Scots, and Gaelic. Gaelic is a Celtic language that is only distantly related to English and Scots as an Indo-European language.

Scots and Scottish English on the other hand are closely related to each other, though they're not the same thing

Scottish English is for the most part standard English

But spoken with a Scottish accent. Scots, on the other hand is

distinct, having diverged from a dialect of Middle English and having features that differ from English. Some people consider Scots to be a separate language

While others consider it to be a historical dialect of English just like the historical dialects found in England

But we'll get into that a little bit later. According to the 2011 Scottish census, just over

1.5 million people speak Scots; around 30% of the Scottish population.

History

The roots of scots lie in Northumbrian Old English; one of several Old English dialects

Northumbrian Old English was being spoken by the seventh century in the Anglo-Saxon, Kingdom of Northumbria

which was located in Northeastern England and part of the Scottish lowlands. The Kingdom of Scotland was founded in the year 843 with the

unification of the Pictish people and Gaelic speaking Scots, but English-speaking northumbrian lands were not yet part of the kingdom

when the northern part of Northumbria finally became part of Scotland in the 11th century,

Gaelic became the prestige language of the area, but [English] remained the most widely spoken language

the variety of English spoken there may have been

Significantly influenced by norse because the southern part of Northumbria along with much of Northern and Eastern England had been under Danish control,

and its English dialects had been influenced by Norse,

and Scandinavian settlers were also present beyond the border of that area, as well. In the 12th and 13th centuries during the Middle English period,

the borough system of administrative division

led to the spread of English further to Scotland.

Borås were autonomous urban communities where traders merchants and craftsmen could live and do [business] in exchange for paying taxes on their earnings

The boroughs were ruled by Nobles who answered to the king they attracted economic migrants from other parts of scotland including

Gallic speaking areas from England especially from areas that had been under danish

Control where norse influence dialects were spoken and from farther away places like Flanders [freesias] and scandinavia

English became the common language of the borough's but the multilingual environment

created by the

economic migrants had an influence on the language so as English became more widespread in scotland because of the borough's it also, began to

diverge from Northumbrian middle English other influences were latin because of its role as the

ecclesiastical language and the language of laws and record-keeping and [norman-French]

because of the influence of King David the first who had close ties with Norman England the

Divergent variety of Middle English that grew out of these influences is now referred to as early [scot]

But at the time it continued to be referred to as English until the end of the 15th [century] in the 14th and [15th] centuries

English replaced garlic in much [of] the Lowlands as well as replacing French as the administrative language as well as

replacing latin as the language of records and law