Scots: Language or dialect?

You may think the answer is obvious: Scots is clearly an English dialect spoken in Scotland—but is it so cut and dried?

When you think of Scots, you probably think of Scottish English. Scots, however, is a separate Germanic language with the same Anglo-Saxon roots as English (Scots: an outline history, n.d.). It has its own grammar, spelling, vocabulary, and idioms. It even retains more Germanic words or forms than English does: for example, to know is ken in Scots and kennen in German.

Nevertheless, people continue to question its validity as a separate language—64% of Scottish people don’t even consider Scots to be its own language (Eriksson, 2024).

Is Scots its own language?

Historically, Scots has often been considered bad English by some. The line separating the two languages is blurred, as many Scots speakers use a mix of Scots and English. However, Scottish publications throughout history demonstrate that the rules governing Scots have remained consistent.

The grammar of spoken and literary Scots was first systematically documented in the early 1900s. James Wilson’s 1915 Lowland Scotch was based on interviews with Perthshire inhabitants, with responses written phonetically to reflect the dialect. In 1921, William Grant and James Main Dixon analyzed literary Scots over two centuries in Manual of Modern Scots (Young, 2013). In the late 1990s, many authors penned works on prescriptive grammar for Scots in an attempt to make a codified system; 2002 saw the publication of Luath Scots Language Learner, the first Scots second-language course (Young, 2013). These publications provide us with a consistent description of how the Scots language functions.

Legislatively, the U.K. government has designated Scots as its own language, and Scots is recognized as a minority language under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages (Language, n.d.). But what makes Scots a distinct language?

What makes a language?

How do we determine whether a language is a language in its own right? According to Søren Wichmann from MIT, we have two options: measuring mutual intelligibility or measuring differences between languages (Wichmann, 2019).

The first method is problematic. For one, there are different levels of mutual intelligibility. Language B speakers may understand Language A speakers better than Language A speakers understand Language B speakers. This is common in cases where Language A is more widely used; Language B speakers would have more exposure to it. (Wichmann, 2019) Languages can also share a linguistic origin but diverge over hundreds of years. We identify Swedish, Danish, and Norwegian as being three separate languages—yet they are all mutually intelligible (Finnish dances to the beat of its own drum) (Toft, n.d.).

The second approach involves measuring the differences between the dialects and languages. What separates Scots from English? How are they the same, and how are they different?

Dr. Sadie Ryan points out that they do share a lot of vocabulary, but Scots also has many words of its own. In English, you might say “I worry,” but in Scots, you would say A fash. In Scotland, you might also hear fae instead of from or leid instead of language. Different vowel sounds are also common. For example, I have a dog could sound like Ah hae a dug. (Ryan, n.d.)

Scots even has some false cognates: You might think the Scots verb greet means “to greet,” but it actually means “to cry,” whereas the Scots verb cry means “to call” (Young, n.d.).

And what about grammar?

I think the real determining factor is that Scots also has different grammar from that of English.

According to “Scots Language and Culture – Part 2,” a course offered on OpenLearn Create, Scots has some different plural forms. For example, the Scots plural for that becomes thae, and the plural for this is thir. Where this refers to something close and that refers to something far, Scots also has thon or yon to refer to something or someone even further away. Both languages mostly make nouns plural by adding s or es, but Scots sometimes uses the older en suffix (for example, ee, which means “eyes” becomes een). Some regional Scots dialects use er in some plural nouns (the Scots word child becomes childer). Scots also has a second-person plural: youse. (17.3 Some widespread features of Scots grammar – continued, n.d.)

According to the same course, where English would use n’t (as in don’t) to negate, Scots uses nae or na: I can’t becomes Ah cannae. Nivver can be used to negate a specific occurrence: I did not buy it becomes A nivver bocht it. Scots sometimes uses double or triple negatives to add emphasis. In English this would have the opposite effect and cancel out the negative. (17.2 Some widespread features of Scots grammar, n.d.)

For the past tense, Scots usually adds it ending instead of ed (married becomes marrit). Scots also has a narrative present tense, where all verbs end in an s: We gets aff the train. This device was used in Chaucer’s texts, but now it’s considered grammatically incorrect in English.

In comparison, where English uses than, Scots usually uses nor: This one’s bigger than that one becomes This ane’s bigger nor thon (17.2 Some widespread features of Scots grammar, n.d.). Sometimes the grammatical structure of a sentence can be completely different as well: He michtna cuid no hae duin it (He must not have been able to do it) (Young, 2013).

I’ve only just scratched the surface here. If you’re interested in learning more, I recommend The Scots Learners’ Grammar (opens in new tab).

Are you inspired to learn more about the Scots language? Or do you have another language in mind? Let me know in the comments!

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