AI overview
Scots is a West Germanic language spoken primarily in Scotland that developed its own distinct characteristics over centuries, separate from English. It matters because it represents an important part of Scottish cultural identity and heritage, though it exists alongside English and Scottish Gaelic in the linguistic landscape of Scotland.
AI-generated from the Wikipedia summary — may contain errors.
Article
Scots is a language variety of West Germanic origin. It is an Anglic language and descended from Early Middle English; therefore, Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English. Scots is classified as an official language of Scotland, a regional or minority language of Europe, and a vulnerable language by UNESCO. In a Scottish census from 2022, over 1.5 million people in Scotland (of its total population of 5.4 million people) reported being able to speak Scots.
Most commonly spoken in the Scottish Lowlands, the Northern Isles of Scotland, and northern Ulster in Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots), it is sometimes called Lowland Scots, to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Scottish Highlands, the Hebrides, and Galloway after the sixteenth century; or Broad Scots, to distinguish it from Scottish Standard English. Many Scottish people's speech exists on a dialect continuum ranging between Broad Scots and Standard English.
Gallery (7)
Connections
Categories
Anglic languagesCommons link from WikidataISO language articles citing sources other than EthnologueLanguage articles with Linguasphere codeLanguages of IrelandLanguages of Northern IrelandLanguages of ScotlandLanguages of the United KingdomLanguages with ISO 639-2 codeScots languageSubject–verb–object languagesVulnerable languages