Scotland is a land of three languages, all of which aren’t indigenous to the area. Pictish is the oldest known language of the area, though little of it is left. If you look at the map, you can see that there are ridges of mountains that run northeast to southwest. The British isles have lots of hills and moors and mountain passes. Historically people lived in pockets rather than even distributions. So languages have been very local things: Scots, English, Welsh, Scots-Gaelic. Add to this the varied accents from cockney to Cornish, mixed in the fact that the Church spoke Latin and the Aristocracy wanted to speak French, and you have a language mud beyond American comprehension.

English and Scots both come from the common language form the Angles. This common ancestor crept up the western shore to the lowlands and eventually made all the way up to the Island Shetland. This is part of the reason Scots has so many names.

The two share many words, especially critical words like “the”, leading linguists to question whether Scots is a separate language. Polls have shown that people who don’t speak Scots generally consider it another language, while people who do speak Scots often consider it a dialect. Personally I think there’s a coded insult in that. For centuries people were told that Scots is an inferior form of English. By telling us that it’s a dialect, it seems to me that Scotsmen are saying, “What, are you really so dumb that you can’t understand our inferior speech?”. The European Union classifies Scots as a minority language, and the Scottish government recognized it officially, so the argument has ended in the public realm. Switching between English and Scots is like switching between Spanish and Portugal; just adjusting the accent helps a lot, but you will eventually get lost.

Speakers of an old form of Gaelic settled from the northwest corner on the islands and northern edge. This mixed with the local vocabulary to create Scots-Gaelic. This language is older, and Gaelic names of places remain some Scots-speaking areas. Scots-Gaelic is not interchangeable with Irish Gaelic. The have the same common ancestor. The comparison there is like Italian and French. Knowing Latin helps, but it’s an uphill climb.

How do you tell the difference? If you can catch a word hear and there, it’s Scots. Gaelic has all of the right syllables (plus a few extra), but none of the words are the same.

For more information check out this webpage Wir ain Leed.