Languages Of Scotland

Robert McColl Millar examines how language has been used in Scotland since the earliest times. While primarily focusing on the histories of the speakers of Scots and Gaelic, and their competition with the encroaching use of (Scottish) Standard English, he also traces the decline and eventual 'death' of Pictish, British and Norn. Four case studies illustrate the historical development of North East Scots, Scottish Standard English, Shetland Scots and Glasgow Scots. Immigrant languages are also discussed throughout the book.

Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Linguistics, grade: 1,0, University of Potsdam (Institut für Anglistik/ Amerikanistik), course: Scots and the other languages of Scotland, language: English, abstract: When people think of Scotland the images they have in mind are usually very restricted. Most of us combine the country with the myth of Nessie, the Clans and their tartan culture, the good whisky, the Highlands and the famous Highland Games. All these existing images of Scotland make up a large part of the country’s culture but Scotland is more than that. Only the minority of us might think of Scotland as a country with a long and problematic history and just some are regarding the fact that it has still not gained its entire independence. It is a country full of contrasts and difficulties which you cannot only become aware of when you consider the geographical situation but also the social, political and cultural circumstances. A today’s problem resulting from Scotland’s long history is the question of Scottish identity, and accompanied by that the language problem. Language is an element of culture and people express through their language and speaking behaviour identities and attitudes. In Scotland the situation is quite difficult. As part of the United Kingdom the official language spoken in Scotland is Standard English but depending on the area you are visiting, you can also find speakers of other varieties such as Scots or Gaelic or even dialects. However, these varieties are said to be non- standardised languages and therefore are not officially used in Scotland. That leads to the problem that speakers of these varieties have the feeling not to be part of the speaker community and consequently they cannot identify themselves with these. The issue that now has to be surveyed, is the question what types of languages are existing in Scotland and how do these language varieties influence the identities and attitudes of Scots. For that reason I have planned to concentrate on one of Scotland’s languages and would like to write my paper about the Scots and their tongue. In the first part I will deal with the Scots, their nation and their development. The main focus in my work will be the re-flection on Modern Scots, the problematic of the Scots’ status and its varieties. I am going to discuss if it is a distinct language, an accent or a dialect and will also look at the different varieties of Scots inside and outside of Scotland to give an overview of existing forms.

Examines the politics of female ship in relation to contemporary documentary practices

The chapters in this volume take as their focus aspects of three of the languages of Scotland: Scots, Scottish English, and Scottish Gaelic. They present linguistic research which has been made possible by new and developing corpora of these languages: this encompasses work on lexis and lexicogrammar, semantics, pragmatics, orthography, and punctuation. Throughout the volume, the findings of analysis are accompanied by discussion of the methodologies adopted, including issues of corpus design and representativeness, search possibilities, and the complementarity and interoperability of linguistic resources. Together, the chapters present the forefront of the research which is currently being directed towards the linguistics of the languages of Scotland, and point to an exciting future for research driven by ever more refined corpora and related language resources.

The English language as it is used in Scotland has a genuine claim to be considered one of the important varieties of English in the world today. Scots has also had a major influence outwith its home territory, notably in Ulster and, to a smaller, but no less important extent, in Canada and Australia where both vocabulary and grammatical features of Scots can be found to this day.

This collection comprises 15 essays ranging from the social history of and attitudes towards Scots to the representation of Scottishness in literary language and to modern sociolinguistic work. The uniqueness of the historical and present-day linguistic situation in Scotland makes the volume of particular concern not only to Scotophiles, but also to linguists interested in bidialectalism, language planning, literary dialect, urban surveys, and language and education. The authors include linguistist Scotland, England, the United States, Scandinavia and Germany.