Scots language - a brief history
© National Gallery of Scotland / SCRAN
English and Scots both come from a northern form of Old English spoken south of the Forth in the seventh century AD. By the eleventh century, Scots was spoken on much of mainland Scotland, although Gaelic remained the main language. From the eleventh century, Anglo-Norman noble families and monasteries exerted an influence on the language, as did the arrival of Norse invaders and settlers, whose vocabulary and pronunciation also had a big influence on Scots.
Scots vocabulary is a rich melting-pot containing borrowings from many languages, notably Norse, Gaelic, French, Latin and Dutch.
By the reign of Malcolm III (1058-93) Scots, or 'Inglis' as it was then called, became established as the language of the court and in the following century became a fine and expressive language. Scotland has every right to be proud of the poets John Barbour, Gavin Douglas, Robert Henrysoun, William Dunbar and Sir David Lindsay who all wrote in Scots between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries.
The Union of the Crowns in 1603, and later the union of the parliaments in 1707 led to anglicization of Scots and its customs and manners. English became the language to which the Scottish upper and middle classes aspired. The lack of a Scots version of the Bible affected its status as a language for serious prose, and for several centuries afterwards Scots as a literary form was associated with poetry or comedy rather than anything else.
There are many dialects of Scots. In Shetland, Orkney and Caithness as mentioned before, you can still hear the influence of Norse. Linguists have classified mainland Scots into Northern, Central and Southern. Central is further divided into East Central (north and south of the Forth), West Central (Glasgow and surrounding area) and South-West (Dumfries and Galloway). Southern covers most of the Borders area. A form of Scots is also associated with Ulster.
In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries many thought it was the job of education to eradicate Scots on the ground of its 'social inferiority'. The language has survived partly due to the enthusiasm and influence of a series of writers such as Fergusson, Ramsay and Burns, much loved by the whole populace. Of course, the working agricultural and industrial population never abandoned the Scots until perhaps the late twentieth century when international culture became universal through the media, in particular the cinema and television.
Nowadays we are familiar with the use of Scots by writers such as Robert Garioch, Sydney Goodsir Smith, William McIlvanney, Liz Lochhead, Irvine Welsh, Janet Paisley and Matthew Fitt among many others.
Increasingly over the last two or three decades, educationalists have argued that Scots language and literature should be integral to the school curriculum and as much has been asserted in various guidelines, but – Scotland does not have a national curriculum. Thus the 5-14 English Language Guidelines refer to 'linguistic diversity' and to texts in Scots. There are clear references also in the Arrangements for Standard Grade English and the current Higher English but the definition of 'a Scottish text' is so general as to admit of almost anything and there is no compulsion anyway.
The place of Scots will take some winning over the coming decades. Schools and educators can make a difference – they can help to legitimise the Scots tongue and help children to relish and enjoy its incisive and expressive variety.