Some thoughts on Scottish English – and on Scots.
The first Scots sentence I can consciously recall was ‘Mars is braw in cramassy.’ It was before I had set foot in Scotland, before I had met and married a Scottish woman, that I encountered London Underground’s ‘Poems on the Underground’ poster series, which brought to me the poetry of Hugh McDiarmid. His poem, ‘The Bonnie Broukit Bairn’ transfixed me. It still does.
What was this? Dialect? Slang? I was perhaps fortunate in coming to Scots without preconceptions. Whatever it was – it was clearly poetry.
The argument hardly needs rehearsed. Both Scots and English are West Germanic languages with roots in Early Middle English. Scots is a divergent development of Northumbrian English, laced with borrowings from Norse and Gaelic. It has a linguistic relationship to English in the same way that Swedish and Norwegian are related yet distinct. If there were any doubt as to whether Scots is a language distinct from English, it was once a prestige language of the royal court and was learned by visiting diplomats. Following the Union of the Crowns in 1603, King James I/IV – a highly literate man – would write home dejectedly, complaining that the English courtiers were mocking his ‘guid Scots leid.’
Nearly all Scots can quote a fragment of Scots literature through schooldays exposure to Robert Burns – who wrote in both Scots and English. At very least, his ‘auld lang syne’ will be familiar. But the reclamation of Scots as a literary tradition is a relatively new phenomenon. McDiarmid, part of the revival in the last half of the 20thC, wrote in Lallans, a ‘synthetic Scots’ which he compiled from a mix of Scots dialects, for literary purposes.
In contemporary times, poet Len Pennie has repopularised Scots for a fresh audience with her TikTok channel’s Scots Word of the Day (@misspunnypennie). Here you will find words familiar in Scottish English – wean, foosty, clatty – and also neologisms such as wabsteid (website) and fankle-fixin (troubleshooting). As Pennie says ‘All words are made up.’ Whether or not the new words will catch on is moot – fankle-fixin certainly should! – but with such joyous invention it can’t be said that Scots is a dead or archaic language.
The centrality of English – the global language – within Scotland is self-evident. As England became dominant across the British Isles, the importance of Scots as a medium for enterprise, arts, science, and government was eroded. This was part of the economic and cultural hegemony that brought the nations of England and Scotland together. The historical record does not greatly support the claims, made by some, of English as an imposition on Scotland. Its dominance came about inevitably and naturally. Unlike with Gaelic, talk of a ‘stolen’ language would be foolish and wide of the mark.
So English is the dominant language in Scotland, and Scottish English a dialect of English which accommodates some – quite a lot! – of Scots characteristics. But while dialects are ten-a-penny in the UK, Scottish English is made distinct from other dialects of British English by the sheer richness of its interplay with Scots. Scots lingers in Scottish English as a palimpsest – a layer of an older language over-written by a newer.
This shows in the vocabulary. Dreich. blether. shoogle stooshie, clipe, coorie. cowp. The volume of distinct Scots vocabulary exceeds the proportion of dialect words that one finds in other varieties of British English. These are not spoken as knowing archaisms, but are part of the everyday language of Scottish life.
Grammar, too, differs – sometimes in subtle ways. In Scottish English, for example, there is a lesser tendency towards contractions ‘Have you not’ for ‘Haven’t you’; ‘Will you not’ for ‘Won’t you’ – a word ordering which sounds formal, even archaic to English ears.
Then there are the Scots also legal and quasi-legal terms that live on in high-register Scottish English’ – ‘pled’ and ‘proven’ for ‘pleaded’ and ‘proved’; ‘procurators fiscal’; ‘reset’ for receiving stolen goods – and many more. In this category comes the glorious word ‘outwith’ – a fully grown up word, used in formal settings, that few realise is Scots. ‘That is outwith the scope of the enquiry.’
Native Scots – I am not one – will have been taught in various degrees that Scots is simply bad English. Even when it is not actively demeaned – which it often is – it is regarded as an informal adjunct to Standard English, best confined for use between family and friends, but to be toned down for use in formal situations such as employment. Generations were told that they would not get on in life if they used Scottish slang.
But Scots flourishes especially as a working class language – and this is a barrier to wide acceptance. The continuum between Standard English and Scottish English shows a high degree of correlation between socio-economic class and the proportion of Scots words, pronunciation and grammar that form an individual’s ideolect. When Irving Welsh began his novel Trainspotting with ‘The sweat wis lashin oafay Sickboy’ – you knew exactly where you were.
Formulations such as ‘I haven’t saw it’ or ‘He should have went’ – perfectly grammatical in Scots – bely the speaker’s background and as such are denigrated. The ‘Scottish Cringe’ – the rejection of Scots and Scottish culture, demeaned from school onwards – lies heavy. It is a class cringe.
Why, then, do people insist on speaking a informal-register language so widely – even continuing to elevate it to a literary register? Why continue to value a way of speech that has been so openly derided? Running parallel to the cringe, there is a pride in Scots, both in its traces within Scottish English and as a distinct language of its own.
Scotland is a demotic country. Its culture has egalitarian aspirations that are expressed in the popular saying ‘We’re a’ Jock Tamson’s bairns.’ This may be an airy, sentimental view of contemporary life in Scotland – but it is certainly part of the Scots’ self-mythology. Scotland is by no shape or form a classless society – but it is one in which there is a degree of pride in class origins. A groundedness. To choose to pepper one’s English with Scots is to connect with shared class roots.
This expression of a democratic Scottish culture is tied up with a sense of nationhood. That is not to give Scots a place similar to the Irish language in their struggle. But the idea of government by the people, for the people permeates the politics and language.
However – Scottish English is not Scots.
Scots is listed as a vulnerable minority language by UNESCO. That said – in the 2011 Scottish Census, over 1.5 million people in Scotland reported being able to speak and understand some Scots – about a quarter of the population. Whether or not this is ‘true’ Scots or heavily Scots-inflected English is perhaps beside the point. Certainly the language used by many has a strong overlap with Scots – even if speakers are under the impression that they are talking slang.
Slang is a type of language consisting of words and phrases that are typically restricted to a particular context or group of people. Slangs are used by linguistic communities as a form of social bonding, a way of declaring group identity.
The use of Scots within Scottish English fits the bill. By drawing so heavily on Scots (the language), Scots (the people) are showing that they operate in a somewhat different cultural sphere to Standard English. And as Gramsci said – politics follows culture.
Purely as a linguistics geek, I hope that Scots survives as a living language. It is a valued source of culture and expression. I – as an incomer – have been greatly enriched by it as my Standard English has tilted towards Scottish English. I have picked up on the slang. It has become part of my identity as a New Scot.
Slangs are used as tokens of group identity. They are commonly judged inferior to standard speech. But such judgements are made from the outside. Scots only seems quaint to those unaware of the cultural weight it carries. For the C20th Scots revivalists, such as McDiarmid, Scots was a vehicle for class and national solidarity, in a separate cultural space to that occupied by English. They toppled any idea of Scots as inferior to English.
To linguists, the distinctions between slangs, dialects and languages are fuzzy and overlapping. It can be agreed that Scots and English are either ends of a language continuum – but what goes on in between is a myriad of interlocking socio-linguistic influences. If what comes out of that is slang, I’m happy to reclaim it.
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