Scots language
Spoken in
- Indo-European languages Germanic Languages West Germanic languages Scots
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Sco
Sco
The term ( Lowland ) Scots, also Lallans is called a West Germanic language or a number of English dialects in Scotland in the lowlands - spoken and in the mountainous southern Scotland (Southern - but not in the (former) Gaelic -speaking area of the Highlands and Hebrides Uplands ), are located in the Central Belt (Glasgow -Edinburgh ) and a strip of land along the east coast to Aberdeen. An investigation by the General Register Office was 1996, a number of speakers of about 1.5 million people, or about 30 % of the population of Scotland. Moreover Scots is spoken in parts of Northern Ireland and Donegal, which were settled in the 17th century by Scots; here it is spoken by both Protestants and Catholics, but encouraged from ethno-political reasons as a language of the Protestant population.
Lowland Scots is of Scottish English - clearly distinguishable - today's official and the language of education in Scotland. Some consider the Scots today as a single language.
Dialects
Scots is divided into at least five groups of dialects:
- Inselschottisch: the dialects of the Orkneys and Shetlands
- Nordostschottisch or Doric: the dialects of North-East Scotland, so essentially the Grampian region
- Zentralschottisch or Mittelschottisch: the dialects in Central and South West Scotland
- Südschottisch: the dialects in the border area, that is, the Borders
- Shall spoken in Northern Ireland and Donegal dialects ( Ullans ), considered as a linguistic dialect of Mittelschottischen: Ulster Scots
The best traditional, that is, a coherent in itself autonomous Phonetics and system and an autonomous vocabulary having dialects in the northeast and on the islands have received, while the dialects of central and southern Scotland strong - are anglicised - albeit in different degrees. So the city dialects of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow are indeed quite Scots - based, but strongly imbued with the Scottish English as well as of general British city dialect features. The traditional Scots is often referred to as Braid / Broad Scots, the more anglicized as Urban Scots.
A standardized form überdialektale there has never been more since the demise of the Scottish literary language of the Middle Ages. For the spelling of dialects, there are a few conventions that are adhered to but different; otherwise they may be largely phonetically -writing, depending on. In other words: Who writes Scots, writes according to his own speech habits.
Text sample
The Christmas Story (Mt 1:18 ff EU) from the Lorimer Bible ( 20th century, Ostmittelschottisch ):
In this excerpt no lexeme occurs, that is the English language completely foreign, but several forms are obsolete or rare English words or easily be used differently than in written language: tryst ( agreement ), Ettle ( try intend ), kithe ( show
), bouk ( abdomen), bairn ( child).
Hidlinweys is occurring only in the dialect of English Education and hidden way (eg: hidden legally), meaning " secret ".
O and wi are derived from of and with, but frae is not directly related from, but equivalent to English fro Negation bedditna (English: bedded not) seems archaic.
Otherwise you observed in this text, especially the effects of Tudor Vowel shift, a vowel shift in the early modern period, which is a different course in Scotland and northern England than in the south.
Where English has a mute
More text samples in the articles on Robert Burns.
Other examples
Joking let the Scots like British visitors try the following sentence, in which the - sound / occurs more than once for those difficult / ch: It's a braw does not break Muin - light the not ( "Tonight the moon is nice and bright! ", Literally " It is a beautiful bright moonlight night tonight. "). Another typical Scottish, "ui " sound is written / ø / ( from Old English long / o ː / originated ), but today almost only exists in Inselschottischen and otherwise mostly to / ɪ / and / e / is unrounded; an example is the product stated in the above quote Muin (Moon), depending on the dialect spoken / møn / or unrounded zentralschottisch / men /, nordostschottisch / mɪn /.
The Northumbrian dialect of Old English, which come from today's Scottish and northern English dialects, had an increased number of Danish loan words due to cultural contacts. Therefore, Scots example, has the original Norse form for kirk 'church' (English church ). Further, Scots has a few loanwords from the Gaelic; an example is braw ( nice).
Other popular dialect words are wee ( small), which undergoes an interesting doubling as plays down Toilettenlexem in the Scottish children's language: wee -wee ( urine ); bonnie ( pretty ), a loanword from French ( bonne ), which may be obvious from the time of the " Auld Alliance " between Scotland and France against England; and the Gaelic loanword loch (lake), mostly a fresh water lake, but also in connection sealoch as a term for the West Scotland " fjords ".
Typical nordostschottisch (Aberdeen and the surrounding area ) are the names loon ( boy ) and quine (girls), the latter related to Old Norse kvinna (woman ) and English queen ( queen), but already in Old English a separate lexeme. Also nordostschottisch is the change of the aspirated / wh / a / f /: fit = English what ( salutation in Aberdeen: like fit, such as " how are you? "? ).
However, typical examples are mostly tendency preferences. You like pulling the equation: English Scots ken = know. This is true, but hides the fact that banks in standard English exist, while also knaw in the Concise Scots Dictionary is, of course, the Scottish only is archaic. What is true is that the Scots banks use often, the English frequently. In North East Scotland is the phrase Ken this? likes to use as a brief introduction, such as English what know? . Other words that are generally considered as Scots, but also belong to the poetic language of the standard English, are aye (yes ), lad ( the ) ( boy ), let (ie) ( girls).
Literature
Scotland has made a relatively strong contribution to English literature, but mainly in the English language standard. Scots is comparatively rarely used in the literature. In the Middle Ages, each area had only written their own form of language, the Renaissance poet Robert Henryson and William Dunbar wrote an early form of Scots ( but which they called inglis ). As the wedding of the Scots can apply the period between the 15th and 17th centuries, as a relatively standardized version prestige language of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie, and language was the official administration of the kingdom. Since the introduction of the printing press but began the transition to standard English forms and Scots was only written if one wants to conjure up romantic reasons from a rural idyll, or wants to bring the nostalgia or the local ties expressed. Consequently, Scots is primarily a language for poetry; Dialect poetry won for the first time wider popularity, as Robert Burns published in the late 18th century folk songs in the peasant vernacular and these imitated in his own poems. Burns is considered the largest dialect Schreiber Scotland. In other forms of Scots is very rarely used. In Scottish novels are typically found Scots in the dialogues, but not in the story - the classic example here is Sir Walter Scott. As the Bible translation by Lorimer (see above ) was published in 1983, she found a very well received, but was read mainly in nostalgic, popular assemblies, rare in the churches.
In the early 20th century, the Lallans Society, elements of the various dialects tried to gather to produce a magazine capable for formal purpose language. Conscious attempts were made to make obsolete Wortgut alive again, to make the differences between Scots and English more striking. Hugh MacDiarmid is the best known example of a writer who draws his Scots not only from their own environment, but embellishes from dictionaries. However, it is significant that MacDiarmid is famous only because of his poetry. Overall, the Lallans Society found little favor, since the majority of speakers opposed the form of language as a written language.
Since the opening of the Scottish Parliament (1999) there seems to be renewed attempts to use Scots for formal purposes. So the Parliament's website carries tentative translations of some legal texts into Scots. It remains to be seen how these texts are received by the population. From the press they are smiled broadly.
Scots as a separate language
Scots is traditionally a dialect (group) classified the English, but since the early 20th century there is a growing number of speakers who prefer to think of an independent language. A consensus on this issue has not yet been reached.
The United Kingdom has been recognized as a regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages Scots.
In Northern Ireland, Ulster Scots wins since the 1990s in the wake of the peace process a new status. Since the Catholic Republican population expanded recognition of the Irish was granted, there was a Protestant- unionist side on an equal footing to their particular language, thus suddenly assumed a controversial political agenda.