The Celtic languages of Scotland can be divided into two groups: Goidelic (or Gaelic) and Brittonic (or Brythonic). Pictish is usually seen as a Brittonic language but this is not universally accepted. They are known collectively as the Insular Celtic languages.
The Goidelic language currently spoken in Scotland is Scottish Gaelic. It is widely spoken in the Outer Hebrides, and also in parts of the Inner Hebrides and Scottish Highlands, and by some people in other areas of Scotland. It was formerly spoken over a far wider area than today, even in the recent past, as evidenced by placenames. Galwegian Gaelic is the extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic formerly spoken in southwest Scotland. It was spoken by the independent kings of Galloway in their time, and by the people of Galloway and Carrick until the early modern period. It was also once spoken, but much less so in Annandale and Strathnith.
Scottish Gaelic, along with modern Manx and Irish, is descended from Middle Irish, a derivative of Old Irish, which is descended in turn from Primitive Irish, the oldest known form of the Goidelic languages. Primitive Irish is known only from fragments, mostly personal names, inscribed on stone in the Ogham alphabet in Ireland and western Britain up to about the 6th century AD.
Goidelic languages were once the most prominent by far among the Scottish population, but are now mainly restricted to the West. The Beurla-reagaird is a Gaelic-based cant of the Scottish travelling community related to the Shelta of Ireland.[4]
The majority of the vocabulary of modern Scottish Gaelic is native Celtic. There are a large number of borrowings from Latin, (muinntir, Didòmhnaich), ancient Greek, especially in the religious domain (eaglais, Bìoball from ἐκκλησία ekklesia and βίβλος biblos), Norse (eilean, sgeir), Hebrew (Sàbaid, Aba), French (seòmar) and Scots (aidh, bramar).
Dual language boundary sign at South Ayrshire displaying both English and Scottish Gaelic
In common with other Indo-European languages, the neologisms which are coined for modern concepts are typically based on Greek or Latin, although written in Gaelic orthography; "television", for instance, becomes telebhisean and "computer" becomes coimpiùtar. Although native speakers frequently use an English word for which there is a perfectly good Gaelic equivalent, they will, without thinking, simply adopt the English word and use it, applying the rules of Gaelic grammar, as the situation requires. With verbs, for instance, they will simply add the verbal suffix (-eadh, or, in Lewis, -igeadh, as in, "Tha mi a' watcheadh (Lewis, "watchigeadh") an telly" (I am watching the television), rather than "Tha mi a' coimhead air an telebhisean". This tendency was remarked upon by the minister who compiled the account covering the parish of Stornoway in the New Statistical Account of Scotland, published over 170 years ago. It has even gone so far as the verb Backdatigeadh. However, as Gaelic medium education grows in popularity, a newer generation of literate Gaels is becoming more familiar with modern Gaelic vocabulary.
The influence of Scottish Gaelic can be seen particularly in surnames (notably Mac- names, where the mac means "Son of...") and toponymy. The surname influence is not restricted to Mac- names: several colours give rise to common Scottish surnames: bàn (Bain – white), ruadh (Roy – red), dubh (Dow – black), donn (Dunn – brown), buidhe (Bowie – yellow), and Gille- (meaning lad or servant) gives rise to names such as Gilmour and Gillies. Common place name elements from Gaelic in Scotland include baile (Bal-, a town) e.g. Balerno, cille (Kil-, an old church) e.g. Kilmarnock, inbhir (Inver-, Inner-, meaning a confluence) e.g. Inverness, Innerleithen, ceann (Kin-, meaning a head or top of something) e.g. Kintyre, Kinross, and dun (meaning a fort) e.g. Dundee and Dunfermline.
Possible language zones in southern Scotland, 7th–8th centuries (after Nicolaisen, Scottish Place-Names and Taylor, "Place Names").
None of the Brittonic languages of Scotland survive to the modern day, though they have been reconstructed to a degree.
The ancestral Common Brittonic language was probably spoken in southern Scotland in Roman times and earlier.[5] It was certainly spoken there by the early medieval era, and Brittonic-speaking kingdoms such as Strathclyde, Rheged, and Gododdin, part of the Hen Ogledd ("Old North"), emerged in what is now Scotland. Eventually Brittonic evolved into a variety known as Cumbric, which survived in southwestern Scotland until around the 11th century.
The main legacy of these languages has been Scotland's toponymy, e.g. names such as Aberdeen, Tranent and Ochiltree.
There are also many Brittonic influences on Scottish Gaelic. Scottish Gaelic contains a number of apparently P-Celtic loanwords, but as Q-Celtic has a far greater overlap with P-Celtic than with English in terms of vocabulary, it is not always possible to disentangle P- and Q-Celtic words. However some common words, such as monadh ≡ Welsh mynydd, Cumbric *monidh, are particularly evident. Often the Brittonic influence on Scots Gaelic is indicated by comparing with the Irish Gaelic usage which is not likely to have been influenced so much by Brittonic. In particular, the word srath (anglicised as "Strath") is a native Goidelic word, but its usage appears to have been modified by its Brittonic cognateystrad, whose meaning is slightly different.
The Pictish language is an Insular Celtic language. At its height, it may have been spoken from Shetland down to Fife, but it was pushed back as Scots and Anglo-Saxons invaded Northern Britain, each with their own language. Pritennic may have been a precursor of Pictish.[6]
Plaque on a building near Gladstone Court Museum which was opened by MacDiarmid in 1968. The inscription reads: Let the lesson be – to be yersels and to mak that worth bein
Scots has its origins in the variety of early northern Middle English spoken in southeastern Scotland, also known as Early Scots. That began to diverge from the Northumbrian variety due to 12th and 13th century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English-speakers from the North and Midlands of England.[7]:xliii Later influences on the development of Scots were from Romance languages via ecclesiastical and legal Latin, Norman[7]:lxiii–lxv and later Parisian French due to the Auld Alliance; as well as Dutch and Middle Low German influences due to trade and immigration from the Low Countries.[7]:xliii Scots also includes loan words resulting from contact with Scottish Gaelic. Early medieval legal documents include a body of Middle Gaelic legal and administrative loanwords.[7]:lxi Contemporary Scottish Gaelic loanwords are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ceilidh, loch and clan, and also occur in colloquialisms such as gob and jilt.
From the 13th century Early Scots spread further into Scotland via the burghs, early urban institutions which were first established by King David I. The growth in prestige of Early Scots in the 14th century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland, made Scots the prestige language of most of eastern Scotland. By the 16th century Middle Scots had established orthographic and literary norms largely independent of those developing in England.[8] "Modern Scots" is used to describe the language after 1700, when southern Modern English was generally adopted as the literary language.
There is no institutionalised standard variety, but during the 18th century a new literary language descended from the old court Scots emerged. This variety abandoned some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings,[9] adopted many standard English spellings (although from the rhymes it is clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended)[10]:xv and introduced what came to be known as the apologetic apostrophe,[10]:xiv generally occurring where a consonant exists in the Standard English cognate. This Written Scots drew not only on the vernacular but also on the King James Bible, and was also heavily influenced by the norms and conventions of Augustan English poetry.[11] Consequently, this written Scots looked very similar to contemporary Standard English, suggesting a somewhat modified version of that, rather than a distinct speech form with a phonological system which had been developing independently for many centuries.[12] This modern literary dialect, "Scots of the book" or Standard Scots[13] once again gave Scots an orthography of its own, lacking neither "authority nor author".[14] During the 20th century a number of proposals for spelling reform were presented. Commenting on this, John Corbett (2003: 260) writes that "devising a normative orthography for Scots has been one of the greatest linguistic hobbies of the past century". Most proposals entailed regularising the use of established 18th and 19th century conventions, in particular the avoidance of the apologetic apostrophe.
A Book of Psalms printed in the reign of James VI and I
Scottish (Standard) English is the result of language contact between Scots and the Standard English of England after the 17th century. The resulting shift towards Standard English by Scots-speakers resulted in many phonological compromises and lexical transfers, often mistaken for mergers by linguists unfamiliar with the history of Scottish English.[15]:60–61 Furthermore, the process was also influenced by interdialectal forms, hypercorrections and spelling pronunciations.[15]:61Highland English has been influenced by Gaelic. The most Gaelic influenced variety being Hebridean English, spoken in the Western Isles.
Norn is an extinct North Germanic, West Scandinavian, language that was spoken in Shetland and Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland, and in Caithness. Norn evolved from the Old Norse that was widely spoken in the Hebrides, Orkney, Shetland and the west coast of the mainland during the Viking occupation from the 8th to the 13th centuries. After the Northern Isles were ceded to Scotland by Norway in the 15th century, its use was discouraged by the Scottish government and the Church of Scotland (the national church), and it was gradually replaced by Lowland Scots over time. Norn persisted well into the 19th century, as the Faroese linguist Jakob Jakobsen wrote:
As late as 1894, there were people in Foula who could repeat sentences in Norn, as I myself had the opportunity of hearing. The last man in Unst who is said to have been able to speak Norn, Walter Sutherland from Skaw, died about 1850. In Foula, on the other hand, men who were living very much later than the middle of the present [19th] century are said to have been able to speak Norn[16]
Most of the use of Norn/Norse in modern-day Shetland and Orkney is purely ceremonial, and mostly in Old Norse, for example the Shetland motto, which is Með lögum skal land byggja ("with law shall land be built"), which is the same motto used by the Icelandic police force and inspired by the Danish Codex Holmiensis.
There are some enthusiasts who are engaged in developing and disseminating a modern form called Nynorn ("New Norn"), based upon linguistic analysis of the known records and Norse linguistics in general.[17][18]
Latin is also used to a limited degree in certain official mottos, for example Nemo Me Impune Lacessit, legal terminology (Ultimus haeres and condictio causa data causa non-secuta), and various ceremonial contexts. Latin abbreviations can also be seen on British coins and in mottos etc. The use of Latin has declined greatly in recent years. At one time, Latin and Ancient Greek were commonly taught in Scottish schools (and were required for entrance to the ancient universities until 1919, for Greek, and the 1960s, for Latin[19]), and Scottish Highers are still available in both subjects. Latin's presence is almost two thousand years old in Scotland, but it has rarely been a community language.
Norman French was historically used in Scotland, and appears in some mottos as well. Some works of medieval literature from Scotland were composed in this language. After the twelfth-century reign of King David I and the so-called "Davidian Revolution", the Scottish monarchs are perhaps better described as Scoto-Norman than Gaelic, often preferring French culture to native Scottish culture. A consequence was the spread of French institutions and social values including Canon law. The first towns, called burghs, appeared in the same era, and as they spread, so did the Middle English language. These developments were offset by the acquisition of the Norse-Gaelic west, and the Gaelicisation of many of the noble families of French and Anglo-French origin and national cohesion was fostered with the creation of various unique religious and cultural practices. By the end of the period, Scotland experienced a "Gaelic revival" which created an integrated Scottish national identity.
The use of Ancient Greek is almost entirely gone in Scotland, but one example would be the motto of St Andrews University, ΑΙΕΝ ΑΡΙΣΤΕΥΕΙΝ (AIEN ARISTEUEIN) ("Ever to Excel" or "Ever To Be The Best")[20]
Sign languages
The former home of Donaldson's College for the Deaf in West Coates, Edinburgh
Scotland's deaf community tends to use British Sign Language. There are a few signs used in Scotland which are unique to the country, as well as variations in some signs from Dundee to Glasgow (similar to accents). Most deaf people in Scotland are educated in mainstream schools.
Other sign languages in use in Scotland include Makaton, and Signed English, a sign language based on the English language.
Controversies
Language vs dialect
There are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, although a number of paradigms exist, which render sometimes contradictory results. The exact distinction is therefore a subjective one, dependent on the user's frame of reference. (See Dialect)
Scottish Gaelic and Irish are generally viewed as being languages in their own right rather than dialects of a single tongue but are sometimes mutually intelligible to a limited degree – especially between southern dialects of Scottish Gaelic and northern dialects of Irish (programmes in each form of Gaelic are broadcast on BBC Radio nan Gaidheal and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta), but the relationship of Scots and English is less clear, since there is usually partial mutual intelligibility.
Since there is a very high level of mutual intelligibility between contemporary speakers of Scots in Scotland and in Ulster (Ulster Scots dialect), and a common written form was current well into the 20th century, the two varieties have usually been considered as dialects of a single tongue rather than languages in their own right; the written forms have diverged in the 21st century. The government of the United Kingdom "recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language".[21] Whether this implies recognition of one regional or minority language or two is a question of interpretation. Ulster Scots is defined in legislation (The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999) as: the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland.[22]
Hostility
Some resent Scottish Gaelic being promoted in the Lowlands, although it was once spoken everywhere in mainland Scotland including, to an extent, the extreme south-east[23][24] (that part of Scotland which was originally Northumbria) and the extreme north-east (Caithness).
Two areas with mostly Norse-derived placenames (and some Pictish), the Northern Isles (Shetland and Orkney) were ceded to Scotland in lieu of an unpaid dowry in 1472, and never spoke Gaelic; its traditional vernacular Norn, a derivative of Old Norse mutually intelligible with Icelandic and Faroese, died out in the 18th century after large-scale immigration by Lowland Scots speakers. To this day, many Shetlanders and Orcadians maintain a separate identity, albeit through the Shetland and Orcadian dialects of Lowland Scots, rather than their former national tongue. Norn was also spoken at one point in Caithness, apparently dying out much earlier than Shetland and Orkney. However, the Norse speaking population were entirely assimilated by the Gaelic speaking population in the Western Isles; to what degree this happened in Caithness is a matter of controversy, although Scottish Gaelic was spoken in parts of the county until the 20th century.
Overview
Diagrammatic representation of the development of the historic Indo-European languages of Scotland:
According to the 2001 census Scottish Gaelic has 58,652 speakers (roughly 1% of the population of Scotland). In total 92,400 people aged three and over in Scotland had some Gaelic language ability in 2001.[25] 15,723 of these reside in the Outer Hebrides, where the language is spoken by the majority of the population.[26] There are also large populations of speakers in other parts of the Highlands.
In a 2010 Scottish Government study, 85% of respondents noted they speak Scots.[27] According to the 2011 census, 1,541,693 people can speak Scots in Scotland, approximately 30% of the population.[2]
The 2011 census asked people to specify the language that they used at home.[28] This found that the language used by majority of people aged 3 and over (92.6%) was English.[3]
The Romani language (Indo-Aryan) has also been spoken in Scotland, but became more or less extinct in the country during the 20th century. It has lent Scotland's other languages a number of loanwords, and has also had an effect on the Gaelic of the travelling community. Since the beginning of the 21st century increasing numbers of Romani migrants from Eastern Europe has seen the Romani language return to Scotland. The Govanhill area in Glasgow has become home to many Romani people and the Romani language can be heard being spoken in the area.
Beurla Reagaird, a Scottish analogy to Shelta, being a form of Gaelic or semi-Gaelicised English spoken by some travellers.
During the 20th and 21st centuries immigrants from a wide variety of countries have created a complex mosaic of spoken languages amongst the resident population.
The Brittonic languages form one of the two branches of the Insular Celtic languages; the other is Goidelic. It comprises the extant languages Breton, Cornish, and Welsh. The name Brythonic was derived by Welsh Celticist John Rhys from the Welsh word Brython, meaning Ancient Britons as opposed to an Anglo-Saxon or Gael.
The Celtic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family, descended from Proto-Celtic. The term "Celtic" was first used to describe this language group by Edward Lhuyd in 1707, following Paul-Yves Pezron, who made the explicit link between the Celts described by classical writers and the Welsh and Breton languages.
The Goidelic or Gaelic languages form one of the two groups of Insular Celtic languages, the other being the Brittonic languages.
Norn is an extinct North Germanic language that was spoken in the Northern Isles off the north coast of mainland Scotland and in Caithness in the far north of the Scottish mainland. After Orkney and Shetland were pledged to Scotland by Norway in 1468–69, it was gradually replaced by Scots. Norn is thought to have become extinct around 1850, after the death of Walter Sutherland, the language's last known speaker, though there are claims the language persisted as late as the 20th century.
Scottish Gaelic, also known as Scots Gaelic or simply Gaelic, is a Goidelic language native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as both Irish and Manx, developed out of Old Irish. It became a distinct spoken language sometime in the 13th century in the Middle Irish period, although a common literary language was shared by the Gaels of both Ireland and Scotland until well into the 17th century. Most of modern Scotland was once Gaelic-speaking, as evidenced especially by Gaelic-language place names.
Pictish is an extinct Brittonic Celtic language spoken by the Picts, the people of eastern and northern Scotland from late antiquity to the Early Middle Ages. Virtually no direct attestations of Pictish remain, short of a limited number of geographical and personal names found on monuments and early medieval records in the area controlled by the kingdoms of the Picts. Such evidence, however, shows the language to be an Insular Celtic language related to the Brittonic language then spoken in most of the rest of Britain.
Cumbric is an extinct Celtic language of the Brittonic subgroup spoken during the Early Middle Ages in the Hen Ogledd or "Old North", in Northern England and the southern Scottish Lowlands. It was closely related to Old Welsh and the other Brittonic languages. Place-name evidence suggests Cumbric may also have been spoken as far south as Pendle and the Yorkshire Dales. The prevailing view is that it became extinct in the 12th century, after the incorporation of the semi-independent Kingdom of Strathclyde into the Kingdom of Scotland.
English is the most widely spoken and de facto official language of the United Kingdom. A number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken. Regional English variant languages are Scots and Ulster Scots; indigenous Celtic languages are Irish, Scottish Gaelic and Welsh. There are many non-native languages spoken by immigrants, including Polish, Hindi, and Urdu. British Sign Language is sometimes used as well as liturgical and hobby languages such as Latin and a revived form of Cornish.
Caithness is a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area of Scotland.
The history of the Scots language refers to how Anglic varieties spoken in parts of Scotland developed into modern Scots.
The Northern Isles are a chain of islands of Scotland, located off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. The climate is cool and temperate and highly influenced by the surrounding seas. There are two main island groups: Shetland and Orkney. There are a total of 36 inhabited islands, with the fertile agricultural islands of Orkney contrasting with the more rugged Shetland islands to the north, where the economy is more dependent on fishing and the oil wealth of the surrounding seas. Both archipelagos have a developing renewable energy industry. They share a common Pictish and Norse history, and were part of the Kingdom of Norway before being absorbed into the Kingdom of Scotland in the 15th century. The islands played a significant naval role during the world wars of the 20th century.
Old Norwegian, also called Norwegian Norse, is an early form of the Norwegian language that was spoken between the 11th and 14th century; it is a transitional stage between Old West Norse and Middle Norwegian.
The Britons, also known as Celtic Britons or Ancient Britons, were the indigenous Celtic people who inhabited Great Britain from at least the British Iron Age until the High Middle Ages, at which point they diverged into the Welsh, Cornish, and Bretons. They spoke Common Brittonic, the ancestor of the modern Brittonic languages.
Galwegian Gaelic is an extinct dialect of Scottish Gaelic formerly spoken in southwest Scotland. It was spoken by the people of Galloway and Carrick until the early modern period. Little has survived of the dialect, so that its exact relationship with other Goidelic languages is uncertain.
The Insular Celts were speakers of the Insular Celtic languages in the British Isles and Brittany. The term is mostly used for the Celtic peoples of the isles up until the early Middle Ages, covering the British–Irish Iron Age, Roman Britain and Sub-Roman Britain. They included the Celtic Britons, the Picts, and the Gaels.
Common Brittonic, also known as British, Common Brythonic, or Proto-Brittonic, is a Celtic language historically spoken in Britain and Brittany from which evolved the later and modern Brittonic languages.
Scottish toponymy derives from the languages of Scotland. The toponymy varies in each region, reflecting the linguistic history of each part of the country.
The modern names of Scottish islands stem from two main influences. There are many names that derive from the Scottish Gaelic language in the Hebrides and Firth of Clyde. In the Northern Isles most place names have a Norse origin. There are also some island place names that originate from three other influences, including a limited number that are essentially English language names, a few that are of Brittonic origin and some of an unknown origin that may represent a pre-Celtic language. These islands have all been occupied by the speakers of at least three and in many cases four or more languages since the Iron Age, and many of the names of these islands have more than one possible meaning as a result.
Scandinavian Scotland was the period from the 8th to the 15th centuries during which Vikings and Norse settlers, mainly Norwegians and to a lesser extent other Scandinavians, and their descendants colonised parts of what is now the periphery of modern Scotland. Viking influence in the area commenced in the late 8th century, and hostility between the Scandinavian earls of Orkney and the emerging thalassocracy of the Kingdom of the Isles, the rulers of Ireland, Dál Riata and Alba, and intervention by the crown of Norway were recurring themes.
References
↑ "Languages". www.gov.scot. Retrieved 11 October 2024.
↑ Corbett, John; McClure, Derrick; Stuart-Smith, Jane, eds. (2003). "A Brief History of Scots". The Edinburgh Companion to Scots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. pp.9ff. ISBN0-7486-1596-2.
↑ Tulloch, Graham (1980). The Language of Walter Scott: A Study of his Scottish and Period Language. London: Deutsch. p.249.
1 2 Grant and, William; Murison, David D., eds. (1929–1976). Scottish National Dictionary. Vol.I. Edinburgh: The Scottish National Dictionary Association.
↑ McClure, J. D. (1992). The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press. p.168.
↑ J. Derrick, McClure (1985). "The debate on Scots orthography". In Görlach, Manfred (ed.). Focus on: Scotland. Amsterdam: Benjamins. p.204.
↑ Mackie, Albert D. (1952). "Fergusson's Language: Braid Scots Then and Now". In Smith, Syndney Goodsir (ed.). Robert Fergusson 1750–1774. Edinburgh: Nelson. pp.123–124, 129.
↑ Stevenson, R. L. (1905). "Underwoods". The Works of R. L. Stevenson. Vol.8. London: Heinemann. p.152.
1 2 Macafee, C. (2004). Hikey, R. (ed.). Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
↑ Barnes, Michael (2010). Millar, Robert McColl (ed.). "The Study of Norn"(PDF). Northern Lights, Northern Words. Selected Papers from the FRLSU Conference, Kirkwall 2009. Aberdeen: Forum for Research on the Languages of Scotland and Ireland: 40. ISBN978-0-9566549-1-5.
↑ Robinson, Mairi, ed. (1985). The Concise Scots Dictionary (1987ed.). Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press. p.ix. ISBN0080284914. by the tenth and eleventh centuries the Gaelic language was in use throughout the whole of Scotland, including the English-speaking south-east, though no doubt the longer-established Northern English continued to be the dominant language there
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