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Name | Scots |
Nativename | (Braid) Scots, Lallans |
Familycolor | Indo-European |
States | Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland |
Region | Scotland Scotland: Scottish Lowlands, Northern Isles, Caithness, Arran, Campbeltown. Ulster Ulster: Counties Down, Antrim, Londonderry, Donegal.
England England: Berwick-upon-Tweed |
Speakers | est. 200,000 (ethnologue) to over 1.5 million (General Register Office for Scotland, 1996)
A Scottish Government study (2010) found that 85% of respondents (being a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) claim to speak Scots to varying degrees |
Fam2 | Germanic |
Fam3 | West Germanic |
Fam4 | Anglo-Frisian |
Fam5 | Anglic |
Nation | None. -Classified as a "traditional language" by the Scottish Government. -Classified as a "regional or minority language" under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, ratified by the United Kingdom in 2001. -Classified as a "traditional language" by The North/South Language Body. |
Agency | -Scotland: None, although the Dictionary of the Scots Language carries great authority (the Scottish Government's Partnership for a Better Scotland coalition agreement (2003) promises "support"). -Ireland: None, although the cross-border Ulster-Scots Agency, established by the Implementation Agreement following the Good Friday Agreement promotes usage. |
Iso2 | sco|iso3=sco|lingua=52-ABA-aa (varieties: 52-ABA-aaa to -aav) |
Mapcaption | Areas where the Scots language was spoken in the 20th century |
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Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster (where the local dialect is known as Ulster-Scots). It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language variety spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides.
Since there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots. Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other. Consequently, Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, but with its own distinct dialects. Alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish. Those positions are also reflected in the 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards the Scots language" in which 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals being a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language" but where "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)". In the 2011 Scottish census, a question on Scots language ability was featured.
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