The Scots Language Centre (Scots : Centre for the Scots Leid [1] ) is an organisation that promotes the use of the Scots language. [2] The current director of the Scots Language Centre is Dr Michael Dempster. It receives funding from the Scottish Government. [3]
The organisation was founded in 1993 as the Scots Language Resource Centre. [4] In 1996, the centre held a "Spellin Collogue" in an attempt to reform Scots orthography, but was ultimately unsuccessful. [5]
In preparation for a new question on the census asking whether residents could understand Scots, the organisation launched a website with example of the language to allow respondents to determine if they could. [6]
A digital map of Scotland with Scots place names was published by the Centre in 2019. [7] During 2020, the Centre researched Scots exonyms for European settlements and countries and compiled a map based on this information the following year. [8] In November 2021, the Centre produced a Scots dialectal map of Scotland. [9] In September 2021, the Centre published a guide for writing in Scots. [10]
A Burns supper is a celebration of the life and poetry of the poet Robert Burns, the author of many Scots poems. The suppers are normally held on or near the poet's birthday, 25 January, known as Burns Night (Scots: Burns Nicht; Scottish Gaelic: Oidhche na Taigeise; also called Robert Burns Day or Rabbie Burns Day. However, in principle, celebrations may be held at any other time of the year. Burns suppers are held all around the world.
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 in 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 and 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.
Doric, the popular name for Mid Northern Scots or Northeast Scots, refers to the Scots language as spoken in the northeast of Scotland. There is an extensive body of literature, mostly poetry, ballads, and songs, written in Doric. In some literary works, Doric is used as the language of conversation while the rest of the work is in Lallans Scots or British English. A number of 20th and 21st century poets have written poetry in the Doric dialect.
Scots is an Anglic language variety in the West Germanic language family, spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, Northern Isles and northern Ulster, it is sometimes called Lowland Scots or Broad Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Goidelic Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides and Galloway after the sixteenth century. Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English, as the two diverged independently from the same source: Early Middle English (1150–1300).
Ulster Scots or Ulster-Scots, also known as Ulster Scotch and Ullans, is the dialect of Scots spoken in parts of Ulster in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. It is generally considered a dialect or group of dialects of Scots, although groups such as the Ulster-Scots Language Society and Ulster-Scots Academy consider it a language in its own right, and the Ulster-Scots Agency and former Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure have used the term Ulster-Scots language.
The Glasgow dialect, popularly known as the Glasgow patter or Glaswegian, varies from Scottish English at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum to the local dialect of West Central Scots at the other. Therefore, the speech of many Glaswegians can draw on a "continuum between fully localised and fully standardised". Additionally, the Glasgow dialect has Highland English and Hiberno-English influences owing to the speech of Highlanders and Irish people who migrated in large numbers to the Glasgow area in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While being named for Glasgow, the accent is typical for natives across the full Greater Glasgow area and associated counties such as Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Dunbartonshire and parts of Ayrshire, which formerly came under the single authority of Strathclyde. It is most common in working class people, which can lead to stigma from members of other classes or those outside Glasgow.
English, in various dialects, is the most widely spoken language of the United Kingdom, but a number of regional and migrant languages are also spoken. Regional indigenous languages are Scots and Ulster Scots and the Celtic languages, Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Welsh and, as a revived language with few speakers, Cornish. British Sign Language is also used. There are also many languages spoken by immigrants who arrived recently to the United Kingdom, mainly within inner city areas; these languages are mainly from continental Europe and South Asia.
Nicola Ferguson Sturgeon is a Scottish politician serving as First Minister of Scotland and Leader of the Scottish National Party (SNP) since 2014. On 15 February 2023, Sturgeon announced that she would resign as first minister and SNP leader once a new leader is elected. She is the longest-serving first minister of Scotland. She has served as a member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) since 1999, first as an additional member for the Glasgow electoral region, and as the member for Glasgow Southside from 2007.
Shetland dialect is a dialect of Insular Scots spoken in Shetland, an archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland. It is derived from the Scots dialects brought to Shetland from the end of the fifteenth century by Lowland Scots, mainly from Fife and Lothian, with a degree of Norse influence from the Norn language, which is an extinct North Germanic language spoken on the islands until the late 18th century.
Holyrood is an area in Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, lying east of the city centre, at the foot of the Royal Mile.
The languages of Scotland are the languages spoken or once spoken in Scotland. Each of the numerous languages spoken in Scotland during its recorded linguistic history falls into either the Germanic or Celtic language families. The classification of the Pictish language was once controversial, but it is now generally considered a Celtic language. Today, the main language spoken in Scotland is English, while Scots and Scottish Gaelic are minority languages. The dialect of English spoken in Scotland is referred to as Scottish English.
Insular Scots comprises varieties of Lowland Scots generally subdivided into:
Dumbarton's Drums is a traditional Scottish song. The text was first printed in 1724 albeit with a different tune. The current tune was popularised by The Beers Family of Fox Hollow, New York in the 1960s.
Creative Scotland is the development body for the arts and creative industries in Scotland. Based in Edinburgh, it is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government.
The Scots Wikipedia is the Scots-language edition of the free online encyclopedia, Wikipedia. It was established on 23 June 2005, and it first reached 1,000 articles in February 2006, and 5,000 articles in November 2010. As of March 2023, it has about 36,000 articles. The Scots Wikipedia is one of eight Wikipedias written in an Anglic language or English-based pidgin/creole, the others being the English Wikipedia, the Simple English Wikipedia, the Old English Wikipedia, the Pitkern-Norfuk Wikipedia, the Tok Pisin Wikipedia, the Jamaican Patois Wikipedia, and the Sranan Tongo Wikipedia.
Modern Scots comprises the varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, from 1700.
Kate Elizabeth Forbes is a Scottish politician and accountant who is serving as the Cabinet Secretary for Finance and the Economy since 2020. A member of the Scottish National Party (SNP), she has been the Member of the Scottish Parliament (MSP) for the Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch constituency since 2016. On 20 February 2023, Forbes declared her candidacy for Leader of the SNP and First Minister of Scotland.
The COVID-19 pandemic in Scotland is part of the COVID-19 pandemic of coronavirus disease-2019, caused by the virus SARS-CoV-2. The first case of COVID-19 was confirmed in Scotland on 1 March 2020. Community transmission was first reported on 11 March 2020, and the first confirmed death was on 13 March 2020.