History of The Scots Language - Early Scots

Early Scots

Northumbrian Old English had been established in south-eastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the 7th century. It remained largely confined to this area until the 13th century, continuing in common use while Gaelic was the court language. English then spread further into Scotland via the burgh.

After the 12th century early northern Middle English began to spread north and eastwards. It was from this dialect that Early Scots, known to its speakers as "English" (Inglis), began to develop, which is why in the late 12th century Adam of Dryburgh described his locality as "in the land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots" and why the early 13th century author of de Situ Albanie thought that the Firth of Forth "divides the kingdoms of the Scots and of the English".

Most of the evidence suggests that English spread further into Scotland via the burgh, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I. Incoming burghers were mainly English (especially from Northumbria, and the Earldom of Huntingdon), Flemish and French. Although the military aristocracy employed French and Gaelic, these small urban communities appear to have been using English as something more than a lingua franca by the end of the 13th century. As a consequence of the outcome of the Wars of Independence though, the English-speaking people of Lothian who lived under the King of Scots had to accept Scottish identity. The growth in prestige of English in the 14th century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland, made English the prestige language of most of eastern Scotland.

Divergence from Northumbrian Middle English was influenced by the Norse of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English-speaking immigrants from the North and Midlands of England during the 12th and 13th centuries, Dutch and Middle Low German through trade and immigration from the low countries, and Romance via ecclesiastical and legal Latin, Norman and later Parisian French due to the Auld Alliance. Some loan words resulting from contact with Scottish Gaelic —often for geographical features such as loch or strath, but there are others such as bog from bog (moist or damp); twig (catch on) from tuig (understand), galore (lots of) from gu leòr (plenty), boose or buss from bus (mouth) also entered the language. Eventually the royal court and barons all spoke Inglis. Further spreading of the language eventually led to Scottish Gaelic being confined mostly to the highlands and islands by the end of the Middle Ages, although some lowland areas, notably in Galloway and Carrick, retained the language until the 17th, perhaps even until the 18th, century. From the late 14th century even Latin was replaced by Inglis as the language of officialdom and literature.