Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Language
Language is a thorny, complex and often highly political issue in Scotland. If
you're not from Scotland yourself, you're most likely to be addressed in a
variety of English, spoken in a Scottish accent. Even then, you're likely to
hear phrases and words that are part of what is known as Scots, now
o cially recognized as a distinct language in its own right. To a lesser
extent, Gaelic, too, remains a living language, particularly in the
Gàidhealtachd or Gaelic-speaking areas of the northwest Highlands,
Western Isles, parts of Skye and a few scattered Hebridean islands. In
Orkney and Shetland, the local dialect of Scots contains many words carried
over from Norn, the Old Norse language spoken in the Northern Isles from
the time of the Vikings until the eighteenth century.
Scots
Scots began life as a northern branch of Anglo-Saxon, emerging as a distinct language
in the Middle Ages. From the 1370s until the Union in 1707, it was the country's main
literary and documentary language. Since the eighteenth century, however, it has been
systematically repressed to give preference to English.
Rabbie Burns is the most obvious literary exponent of the Scots language, but there was
a revival in the last century led by poets such as Hugh MacDiarmid. Only recently has
Scots enjoyed something of a renaissance, getting itself on the Scottish school curriculum
in 1996, and achieving o cial recognition as a distinct language in 1998. Despite these
enormous political achievements, many people (rightly or wrongly) still regard Scots as a
dialect of English. For more on the Scots language, visit W sco.wikipedia.org.
Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( Gàidhlig , pronounced like “garlic”) is one of the only four Celtic
languages to survive into the modern age (Welsh, Breton and Irish Gaelic are the other
three). Manx, the old language of the Isle of Man, died out early last century, while
Cornish was finished as a community language in the eighteenth century. Scottish
Gaelic is most closely related to Irish Gaelic and Manx - hardly surprising since Gaelic
was introduced to Scotland from Ireland around the third century BC. Some folk still
argue that Scottish Gaelic is merely a dialect of its parent language, Irish Gaelic, and
indeed the two languages remain more or less mutually intelligible. From the fifth to
the twelfth centuries, Gaelic enjoyed an expansionist phase, thanks partly to the
backing of the Celtic Church in Iona.
Since then Gaelic has been in steady decline. Even before Union with England,
power, religious ideology and wealth gradually passed into non-Gaelic hands. he royal
court was transferred to Edinburgh and an Anglo-Norman legal system was put in
place. he Celtic Church was Romanized by the introduction of foreign clergy, and,
most important of all, English and Flemish merchants colonized the new trading towns
of the east coast. In addition, the pro-English attitudes held by the Covenanters led to
strong anti-Gaelic feeling within the Church of Scotland from its inception.
he two abortive Jacobite rebellions of 1715 and 1745 furthered the language's
decline, as did the Clearances that took place in the Gaelic-speaking Highlands from
 
 
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