History of the Scots language
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The history of the Scots language goes back nine-hundred years, to when Lowland Scots descended from the northern form of Old English language (Anglo-Saxon) —with influences from Norse via the Vikings, Dutch and Low Saxon 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. Scots also has 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).
Speakers of Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon settled in south eastern Scotland in the seventh century, at which time Scotland was mostly Brythonic-speaking. At the same time Goidelic speakers from Ireland began to spread into the Western Coast and Islands of Scotland. Over the next five hundred years the the Scots language slowly moved northwards. By the twelfth century with the accession of Normandized kings of Scotland, Scots had become the dominant language of Scotland, Goidelic Gaelic confined to the highland areas only and no one speaking the original Brythonic language.
The language chronology is straightforward:
- 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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Phonetic developments
Main article: Scots language phonetics
Written Scots ( Northern Anglo-Saxon)
Text from Dream of the Rood
Runes on the Ruthwell Cross c. 750 AD
Reads:
- ᛣᚱᛁᛋᛏ ᚹᚫᛋ ᚩᚾ ᚱᚩᛞᛁ ᚻᚹᛖᚦᚱᚨ
- ᚦᛖᚱ ᚠᚳᛋᚨ ᚠᛠᚱᚱᚪᚾ ᛣᚹᚩᛗᚳ
- ᚨᚦᚦᛁᛚᚨ ᛏᛁᚱ ᚪᚾᚳᛗ
Transliteration:
- Krist wæs on rodi. Hweþræ
- þer fusæ fearran kwomu
- æþþilæ til anum.
The Lord's Prayer
FADER USÆR ðu arðin heofnu
Sie gehalgad NOMA ÐIN.
Tocymeð RÍC ÐIN.
Sie WILLO ÐIN
suæ is in heofne and in eorðo.
HLAF USERNE of'wistlic sel ús todæg,
and f'gef us SCYLDA USRA,
suæ uoe f'gefon SCYLDGUM USUM.
And ne inlæd usih in costunge,
ah is in heofne and in eorðo.
Written Scots (Older Scots)
Spelling
Early and Middle Scots scribes never managed to establish a single standardised spelling but operated a system of free variation based on a number of spelling variants. Some scribes used their own variants but this was relatively seldom. Early and Middle Scots used a number of now obsolete letters and letter combinations:
þ (thorn) was equivalent to the modern th as in thae. &
Thorn was often indistinguishable from the letter y and often written so.
ȝ (yogh) in nȝ was /J/ as in the French Bretagne. It later changed to /N/ or y /J/ leading to the modern spellings with z and y as in Menzies ['mINVs] and Cunyie ['kVnji:].
quh was equivalent to the modern wh.
sch was equivalent to the modern sh.
ß represents the modern s. The initial ff was a stylised single f.
-ys, -is. The inflection -ys once [Is, Iz] now -s. Hence the place name Glamis [glA:mz].
d after an n was often (and still is) silent i.e. barrand is ['bar@n] = barren.
i and j were often interchanged. h was often silent.
l after a and o had become vocalised and remained in use as an orthographic device to indicate vowel length. Hence the place names Balmalcolm [bA:'m@ko:m], Falkirk [fA:'kIrk], Kirkcaldy [k@r'kA:di], Culross ['ku:r@s] and Culter ['kut@r].
i after a vowel was also used to denote vowel length e.g.ai /a:/, ei /e:/ oi /o:/ and ui /2/.
u, v and w were often interchanged.
-ch and -th (-cht, -tht) Some scribes affixed a t after -ch and -th (-cht, -tht) this was an unpronounced orthographic feature.
Ane represented the numeral ane as well as the indefinite article an and a, and was pronounced similar to modern usage i.e. Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaitis was pronounced a satyre o the thrie estaits.
yng, -ing The verbal noun (gerund) yng, (-ing) differentiated itself from the present participle -and in Middle Scots. The final d in -and and the final g in -yng, (-ing) being silent, as in cryand and techynge.
Written Scots (Modern Scots)
After the Union of the Crowns in 1603 and more so after the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 English influence on the orthography of written Scots increased, as did the increasing use of Standard English grammar and idiom - the language in which literacy was acquired. 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.
External links
- The Scots Language Dictionary (http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/)
- Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (http://websrv5.sdu.dk/ua-ahlmann/corp/page39.html)
- The Ruthwell Cross (http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/library/oe/texts/ruthwell.html) - description and complete Runic text from Dream of the Rood with transliteration.