The Scots Language

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

The history of Scots, the census results and the new law are well documented. The hard questions are about classification and counting. Linguists disagree about whether Scots is a language or a dialect, and census answers depend on how people judge their own speech: many speakers think of their Scots as slang or "bad English", while others count Scots-flavoured English as Scots.

Origins

established Scots grew from Old Northumbrian, a northern form of Anglian Old English. By the 7th century it was spoken in south-east Scotland as far as the Firth of Forth, which was then part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. Over the following centuries the language absorbed words from Norse, French, Dutch, Latin and Gaelic. It is a sister of English, not a daughter of it, and it has no family relationship with Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language.

established The name changed. Until the late 15th century writers called the Lowland tongue Inglis, and Scottis meant Gaelic. From the 1490s Scottis was increasingly used for the Lowland vernacular, while Gaelic came to be called Erse.

The golden age

established In the 15th and 16th centuries Scots was the language of the royal court, the law and Parliament, and of a literature that ranks with any in Europe at the time. Its poets, the makars, included Robert Henryson, William Dunbar, Gavin Douglas and Sir David Lyndsay. Douglas's Eneados, completed in 1513, was a complete translation of Virgil's Aeneid into Scots.

Losing prestige

established Several changes moved Scots out of public life. After the Reformation of 1560 the Church of Scotland used English Bibles, and no complete Scots Bible was printed; W. L. Lorimer's Scots New Testament appeared only in 1983. In 1603 James VI took his court to London, and in 1707 the Acts of Union ended the Scottish Parliament. After the Union, many people in authority and education discouraged Scots. It nevertheless remained the everyday speech of most Lowlanders until the end of the 18th century, and Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson and Robert Burns made it a language of poetry again. Burns's "Auld Lang Syne" is written in Scots.

Language or dialect?

shared There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, and the status of Scots is genuinely disputed. Some scholars treat it as a variety of English; others treat it as a distinct Germanic language. Those who see it as a language point to its separate history, its own grammar and vocabulary, and its use as a national language of state before 1707. Those who see it as a dialect point out that it is largely understandable to English speakers, has no single standard spelling, and blends into Scottish English in everyday speech. Neither side's case settles the question.

Varieties

established Scots is a group of dialects, including Insular Scots in Orkney and Shetland, Northern Scots including the Doric of the north-east, Central Scots, Southern Scots, and Ulster Scots. Ulster Scots was carried to Ireland by Lowland settlers during the Plantation of Ulster in the 17th century, and it is a recognised minority language in Northern Ireland.

Scots in America

shared Scots speech also crossed the Atlantic with eighteenth-century emigrants from Ulster and Lowland Scotland. The historian David Hackett Fischer, in Albion's Seed (1989), argues that the "southern highland" speech of Appalachia and the Ozarks grew mainly from the northern English spoken in Lowland Scotland, Ulster and the English border counties. Contemporaries already gave it an ethnic label: a Virginia Gazette advertisement of 22 October 1772 described a runaway African slave named Jack who could "speak the Scotch-Irish dialect", which suggests that the speech was spreading beyond the emigrants themselves.

shared Fischer lists backcountry words such as fornenst (next to), lowp (jump), scawmy (misty), nigh, let on (pretend) and man for husband. Some have clear Scots forms, such as forenent and loup. But his word evidence comes mostly from nineteenth-century glossaries of Cumberland and Westmorland, which are in England, and many of these features were shared across northern English and Scots. Linguists who have tested such claims, notably Michael Montgomery, have found the specifically Scottish or Ulster contribution to American English to be real but narrower than popular accounts suggest. Fischer's case is best treated as one argument, not an established finding.

Counting speakers

established In the 2022 census 1,508,540 people said they could speak Scots, down slightly from 1,541,693 in 2011. But 2,444,659 people, roughly 45 per cent of the population, said they could speak, read, write or understand Scots, a large increase.

shared These figures measure how people describe their own abilities, not fluency or everyday use. Because Scots and English blend into each other, people classify the same speech in different ways, so the census figures should be treated with care.

Scots in schools

established For most of the twentieth century Scottish schools treated Scots as something to be corrected. Anne Donovan and Liz Niven, in their chapter on the Scots language in education in Scottish Education (5th edn, 2018), quote a 1946 Scottish Education Department report on primary education, which said that Scots "is not the language of educated people anywhere". Attitudes changed in the 1990s, when the 5–14 guidelines for English language encouraged schools to make pupils confident and creative in Scots and good classroom resources followed. Curriculum for Excellence includes Scots in its languages area.

established In the senior school, a Scottish text has been compulsory at Higher and National 5 since 2012, and some of the set texts are in Scots, but no pupil has ever had to study a text written in Scots. The Advanced Higher Scottish Language paper, taken by very few candidates, was discontinued. In 2014 the SQA introduced a Scots Language Award and a Scottish Studies Award, though neither carries UCAS points. The General Teaching Council for Scotland offers professional recognition for Scots, and by 2018 fifteen teachers had gained it.

shared Donovan and Niven argue that policy has run ahead of practice. Experience varies widely between schools, from classes compiling local Scots dictionaries to a single Burns poem a year, and they note that pupils are still sometimes corrected for speaking Scots. Little or no Scots is taught in initial teacher education, so many teachers lack confidence in it. Of the six national Scots language coordinators recommended by the 2010 Ministerial Working Group, four were appointed and only one remained in post by 2018. Publishing in Scots for young readers, notably the Itchy Coo imprint founded by Matthew Fitt and James Robertson, has depended on public subsidy. These are the authors' assessments as advocates for Scots in education, and they predate the Scottish Languages Act 2025.

Official status

established Scots is recognised as a regional language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, whose ratification by the UK took effect in 2001. In June 2025 the Scottish Parliament passed the Scottish Languages Act, and its provision on the status of Scots came into force on 30 November 2025, St Andrew's Day, giving Scots and Gaelic official status in Scotland. The Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes, called the day "a fitting time to celebrate Scotland's identity by recognising Gaelic and Scots as official languages."

• Medieval Lowland Scots called their own language Inglis.
• Before the late 15th century, Scottis meant Gaelic.
• Gavin Douglas translated Virgil's Aeneid into Scots by 1513.
• No complete Scots Bible was printed during Scots' golden age.
• A Scots New Testament was not published until 1983.
• More than 1.5 million people told the 2022 census they could speak Scots.
• Scots gained official status on St Andrew's Day 2025.
• Ulster Scots was carried to Ireland during the 17th-century Plantation.
• In 1772 a Virginia newspaper described a runaway slave who could "speak the Scotch-Irish dialect".
• Appalachian lowp (jump) matches Scots loup.
• In 1946 an official Scottish education report said Scots was not the language of educated people anywhere.
• The SQA has offered a Scots Language Award since 2014.

• Do not confuse Scots with Scottish Gaelic.
• Do not say the language-or-dialect question has been settled either way.
• Do not describe Scots as slang or bad English.
• Do not treat the census figure of 1.5 million as a count of fluent speakers.
• Do not say pupils must study literature in Scots; a Scottish text is compulsory at Higher and National 5, but it need not be in Scots.
• Do not say Scots had no official recognition before 2025; it was already recognised under the European Charter.
• Do not present Appalachian English as a descendant of Scots; Fischer's argument for northern British roots rests largely on English Cumbrian evidence and is contested.