History of the Scots language
From Free net encyclopedia
Speakers of Northumbrian Old English settled in south eastern Scotland in the 7th century, at which time Scotland was mostly Celtic-speaking. At the same time Goidelic speakers began to spread from the Western Coast of Scotland into the east. Over the next five hundred years the Gaelic language slowly moved eastwards and southwards across the lowlands.
Scholars of the language generally use the following chronology:
- (Northumbrian) Anglo-Saxon to 1100
- Pre-literary Scots to 1375
- Early Scots to 1450
- Middle Scots to 1700
- Modern Scots 1700 onwards
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Older Scots
Template:Main After the 12th century early northern Middle English began to spread north and eastwards. It was from this dialect that Older Scots, known to its speakers as Inglis, began to develop. Older Scots diverged from Northumbrian Middle English through influences from Norse brought by 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. Eventualy 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
Template:Main By the early 16th century what was then was called Inglis had become the language of government and its speakers started to refer to it as Scottis and to Gaelic, which had previously been titled Scottis, as Erse (Irish). 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
Template:Main In the 18th century 'polite society' now considered Scots as 'provincial and unrefined' and much of the gentry endeavored to rid themselves of the former national tongue. This was not universally accepted by all educated Scots of the period and a new literary Scots came into being, unalike Middle Scots, it was usually based on contemporary colloquial speech. Its orthography was generally an adaption of the imported standard, though some features from Middle Scots continued to be used. This modern literary Scots was exemplified by Allan Ramsay and his followers, and their sucessors such as Robert Burns. Many writers and publishers found it advantageous to use English forms 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.
See also
References
- Aitken, A.J. (1977) How to Pronounce Older Scots in Bards and Makars. Glasgow, Glasgow University Press.
- Aitken, A. J. (1987) The Nuttis Schell: Essays on the Scots Language. Aberdeen, Aberdeen University Press. ISBN 0080345301
- Caldwell, S.J.G. (1974) The Pronoun in Early Scots. Helsinki, Société Néophilique.
- Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane (Editors)(2003) The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0748615962
- Jones, Charles (1997) The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh, University of Edinburgh Press. ISBN 0748607544
- Jones, Charles (1995) A Language Suppressed: The pronunciation of the Scots language in the 18th century. Edinburgh, John Donald. ISBN 0-85976-427-3
External links
- [1] NOSTRA VULGARI LINGUA:
SCOTS AS A EUROPEAN LANGUAGE 1500 - 1700