Everything about The History Of The Scots Language totally explained
The
history of the Scots language refers to how
Anglic varieties spoken in parts of
Scotland developed into modern
Scots.
Origins
Speakers of
Northumbrian Old English settled in south eastern
Scotland in the
7th century, at which time
Celtic Brythonic was spoken in the south of Scotland to a little way north of the
Firth of Forth and the
Firth of Clyde, and
Pictish was spoken further north: almost nothing is known nowadays about
Pictish. At the same time
Gaelic speakers began to spread from the Western Coast of Scotland north of the Clyde into the east. Over the next five hundred years with the founding of
Scotland and spread of
Christianity across the north of
Britain by the
Columban Church the Gaelic language slowly moved eastwards and southwards across the lowlands. When Northumbrian lands were incorporated into Scotland in the 11th century Gaelic became the prestige language there and had some influence, but the south east remained largely English speaking. In the far north, Viking incursions brought
Old Norse speakers into
Caithness,
Orkney and
Shetland.
Scholars of the
language generally use the following chronology:
Pre-literary Scots
The nature of early forms of the language are obscure due to
viking plundering and destruction,
Edward I's removal of the national records and their later loss, the destruction of the monasteries in border warfare and the vandalism of the
Reformation. It is difficult to assess whether Scots descends largely from the
Anglo-Saxon of
Lothian or the
Anglo-Danish of
Yorkshire introduced some four hundred years later, which would explain the
Norse elements in Early Scots which are lacking in
Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon. Current insights into pre-literary Scots stem largely from place-names, archaeology and a few words in Latin documents.
Early Scots
Northumbrian Old English had been established in south-eastern Scotland as far as the
River Forth by the 7th century. It remained largely confined to this area until the 13th century, continuing in common use while Gaelic was the court language. English then spread further into Scotland via the
burgh.
After the
12th century early northern
Middle English began to spread north and eastwards. It was from this dialect that
Early Scots, known to its speakers as "English" (
Inglis), began to develop, which is why in the late 12th century Adam of Dryburgh described his locality as "in the land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots" and why the early 13th century author of
de Situ Albanie thought that the
Firth of Forth "divides the kingdoms of the Scots and of the English" .
Most of the evidence suggests that English spread further into Scotland via the
burgh, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King
David I. Incoming burghers were mainly English (especially from Northumbria, and the
Earldom of Huntingdon), Flemish and French. Although the military aristocracy employed French and Gaelic, these small urban communities appear to have been using English as something more than a
lingua franca by the end of the 13th century. As a consequence of the outcome of the
Wars of Independence though, the English-speaking people of Lothian who lived under the King of Scots had to accept Scottish identity. The growth in prestige of English in the 14th century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland, made English the
prestige language of most of eastern Scotland.
Divergence from Northumbrian
Middle English was influenced by the
Norse of Scandinavian-influenced
Middle English-speaking immigrants from the North and Midlands of England during the 12th and 13th centuries,
Dutch and
Middle Low German through trade and immigration from the low countries, and
Romance via ecclesiastical and legal
Latin,
Norman and later Parisian
French due to the
Auld Alliance. Some loan words resulting from contact with
Scottish Gaelic —often for geographical features such as
loch or
strath, but there are others such as
bog from
bog (moist or damp);
twig (catch on) from
tuig (understand),
galore (lots of) from
gu leòr (plenty),
boose or
buss from
bus (mouth) also entered the language.
Eventually the royal court and barons all spoke
Inglis. Further spreading of the language eventually led to
Gaelic being confined mostly to the
highlands and islands by the end of the Middle Ages, although some lowland areas, notably in Galloway and Carrick, retained the language until the 17th, perhaps even until the 18th, century. From the late 14th century even Latin was replaced by
Inglis as the language of officialdom and literature.
Middle Scots
By the early 16th century what was then called
Inglis had become the language of government, and its speakers started to refer to it as
Scottis and to Scottish Gaelic, which had previously been titled
Scottis, as
Erse (
Irish). The first known instance of this was by an unknown man in
1494. In 1559 William Nudrye was granted a monopoly by the court to produce school textbooks, two of which were
Ane Schort Introduction: Elementary Digestit into Sevin Breve Tables for the Commodius Expeditioun of Thame That are Desirous to Read and Write the Scottis Toung and
Ane Intructioun for Bairnis to be Learnit in Scottis and Latin.
By this time Scots had diverged significantly from its sister south of the border. By the standards of the time it had a 'standardised' orthography and had become the vehicle for an extensive and diverse
national literature. From 1610 to the 1690s during the
Plantation of Ulster some 200,000 Scots settled in the north of Ireland taking what were to become
Ulster Scots dialects with them. From the middle of the 16th century Scots began to become increasingly
Anglicized. With the
reformation came Bibles in
English. By the late 16th century most all writing was composed in a mixture of Scots and English spellings, the English forms slowly becoming more common so that by the end of the 17th century Scots spellings had almost disappeared completely. This process took slightly longer in unpublished vernacular literature and official records. After the
Union of the Crowns in 1603 the Scots speaking gentry had increasing contact with English speakers and began to remodel their speech on that of their English peers. It was this remodeling that eventually led to the formation of
Scottish English.
Modern Scots
In the 18th century 'polite society' now considered Scots as 'provincial and unrefined' and much of the gentry endeavoured to rid itself of the former national tongue. This wasn't universally accepted by all educated Scots of the period and a new literary Scots came into being. Unlike Middle Scots, it was usually based on contemporary colloquial speech. Its orthography was generally an adaptation of the imported standard, though some
orthographic features from Middle Scots continued to be used. This modern literary Scots was exemplified by
Allan Ramsay and his followers, and their successors such as
Robert Burns. Many writers and publishers found it advantageous to use English forms and copious
apostrophes in order to secure a larger English readership unfamiliar with Scots. The pronunciation undoubtedly remained Scots as the rhymes reveal. Early in the 19th century the publication of Jamieson’s Etymological Dictionary of the Scots Language was accompanied by a renewed interest in Scots among the middle and upper classes. In this period the absence of an official standard or socially acceptable norm led to further dialect divergence.
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