{"id":3498,"date":"2020-07-07T07:49:24","date_gmt":"2020-07-07T07:49:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/isabelle-meschi.com\/did-you-say-scots\/"},"modified":"2020-07-08T11:08:36","modified_gmt":"2020-07-08T11:08:36","slug":"did-you-say-scots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/isabelle-meschi.com\/en\/did-you-say-scots\/","title":{"rendered":"Did you say Scots?"},"content":{"rendered":"

What is Scots?<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

First of all, let’s start with what Scots is not!<\/p>\n

Scots is not:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

1) A dialect<\/p>\n

2) English spoken with a Scottish accent<\/p>\n

3) Scottish Gaelic.<\/p>\n

When I discovered Scots on a trip to Edinburgh, I was immediately attracted. I first came across a little book of Scots at the Castle and decided to buy it. I must admit I first thought it was a kind of dialect. But when I visited the Writers Museum, I found out that it actually wasn’t, thanks to Robert Burns, one of the most famous Scottish writers. And I fell in love with those words which were quite similar to English, but also very different.<\/p>\n

Back in England, I talked about my \u00ab\u00a0discovery\u00a0\u00bb and soon realized that none of my English friends knew about the existence of the Scots language. They all thought I was talking about Scots Gaelic or some regional form of English spoken in Scotland. It was fun explaining to them what Scots really was.<\/p>\n

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\"\"<\/p>\n

Defining Scots as a \u00ab\u00a0Scottish dialect\u00a0\u00bb wasn’t maybe very helpful.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

So, what is Scots? <\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

It is a Germanic language that shares the same roots as English: Old English. Scots has been influenced by Old Norse as well as by non-Germanic languages like French, Latin or Gaelic. It has been considered a completely different language from English since the 14th century. Until around 1625, Scots was the language of state, alongside Latin, and was used in parliaments, courts, universities, schools and other official places. At that time, it was known as Scottis. It is only when the Treaty of Union (which gave birth to the UK) came into effect that English became an essential language, the language of the establishment and the educated classes, whereas Scots was only considered a poor form of English. Later on, the Victorian era sought to impose linguistic unity and Scots was judged inappropriate at school and in most fields of life. Thus, people merely saw it as some \u00ab\u00a0slang\u00a0\u00bb and whenever students spoke it, corporal punishment was used. According to a census, Scots was spoken by 1.5 million people in the world in 2011. Its pronunciation varies depending on the region where it is spoken.<\/p>\n

I had the great opportunity to take intensive Scots lessons in June, which were given by Dr Michael Dempster, the Scots Scriever appointed by the National Library of Scotland, and it was really amazing. We learnt an incredible amount of things during these three weeks and it just gave me another proof that I really liked that language and wanted to keep on studying it.<\/p>\n

The Scots pronunciation is beautiful. To me, it sounds like an \u00ab\u00a0old\u00a0\u00bb language which mixes many sounds that can be found in other European languages, like the \u00ab\u00a0r\u00a0\u00bb which is the same as the Italian one (this characteristic is called \u00ab\u00a0rhoticity\u00a0\u00bb), the closed [u] and closed [o] like the French ones, the \u00ab\u00a0ch\u00a0\u00bb which is the same as in German and of course, many sounds shared with English. I believe, however, that once you learn the basics of Scots, its pronunciation might be easier than that of English, which can be a complete nightmare!<\/p>\n

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