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An Introduction to Modern Scots An Introduction to Modern Scots Andy Eagle 2020 v.02.1 Thanks for ideas, inspiration and advice to Gavin Falconer, Sandy Fleming, John M. Kirk, Ian Parsley and John M. Tait. COPYRICHT Aw richts is pitten by. Nae pairt o this quair shoud be doobelt, hained in ony kin o seestem, or be setten furth in ony shape or by onygate whitsomiver, ’ithoot haein leave frae the writer aforehaund. Thare's nae pleens whan the abuin is duin for tae fordle the Scots leed in eddication, sae lang's naebody is makkin siller oot o't. COPYRIGHT All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author. There are no objections if the above is done in order to further the Scots language in education, as long as no one is making money from it. © Andy Eagle 2020 An introduction to Modern Scots Contents Contents ................................................................................................................. v Foreword ................................................................................................................ 1 What is Scots? ........................................................................................................ 2 The Emergence of Scots ......................................................................................... 2 The Relationship of Scots to Other Germanic Languages ............................ 3 The Development of (Standard) English and Scots......................................... 4 Language or Dialect? ............................................................................................... 7 Language ............................................................................................................... 7 Accents ................................................................................................................... 8 Dialects................................................................................................................... 8 Geographic Dialect Continua ........................................................................... 8 Autonomy and Heteronomy ............................................................................. 9 Is Scots a Dialect or a Language? ................................................................. 10 Phonology ............................................................................................................ 13 Scots Dialects ........................................................................................................... 14 Selected Places and Areas mentioned .............................................................. 15 Consonants ............................................................................................................... 19 Vowels ........................................................................................................................ 20 Diphthongs ............................................................................................................... 22 Written Scots ....................................................................................................... 23 The Alphabet ............................................................................................................ 25 Orthographic Conventions ................................................................................... 27 Consonants ......................................................................................................... 28 Silent Letters ....................................................................................................... 37 Vowels .................................................................................................................. 37 Prefixes and Suffixes ....................................................................................... 49 Strong and Weak Forms .................................................................................. 53 Doublets .............................................................................................................. 53 Unpredictable Forms ........................................................................................ 53 Connected Speech ............................................................................................ 54 Run-together Words ........................................................................................ 54 Syntax and Morphology .................................................................................. 54 Punctuation and Use of Capital letters ....................................................... 55 Apostrophes ....................................................................................................... 55 Standard English and Scots Cognates .............................................................. 56 Gaelic and Scots .................................................................................................. 65 Scottish Standard English .................................................................................. 69 v Grammar .............................................................................................................. 73 The Articles .............................................................................................................. 74 The Indefinite Article ....................................................................................... 74 The Definite Article........................................................................................... 75 Nouns ......................................................................................................................... 79 Pronouns ................................................................................................................... 91 Indefinite Pronouns .......................................................................................... 91 Demonstrative Pronouns ................................................................................ 93 Personal Pronouns ............................................................................................ 95 Possessive Pronouns ........................................................................................ 98 Reflexive Pronouns ........................................................................................ 101 Interrogative Pronouns ................................................................................. 103 Relative Pronouns .......................................................................................... 104 Negative Pronouns ......................................................................................... 108 Other Pronouns .............................................................................................. 109 Adjectives ............................................................................................................... 111 Numbers ................................................................................................................. 122 Auxiliary and Modal Verbs ................................................................................ 129 Verbs ....................................................................................................................... 145 Adverbs ................................................................................................................... 166 Prepositions ........................................................................................................... 202 Conjunctions ......................................................................................................... 225 Greetings ................................................................................................................ 234 Days, Months and Holidays .............................................................................. 236 Aspects of Colloquial Speech ........................................................................... 239 Idioms ................................................................................................................. 243 Proverbs ............................................................................................................. 249 Bibliography....................................................................................................... 255 vi An Introduction to Modern Scots Foreword Everyday speech in Lowland Scotland varies from speaker to speaker, something often referred to as a speech continuum. That continuum ranges from Traditional Scots—often called Braid Scots, Scotch or the Doric—to Scottish Standard English (p. 69). Thus many people in Scotland have access to the features of two linguistic systems and are able to range from one to the other according to the demands of the situation in which they find themselves. Such decisions are usually based on stylistic and contextual factors, the use of Scots being far more likely among the working class and older rural people, especially those whose exposure to the anglicising influence of the Scottish education system has been minimal. This book concentrates wholly on the Traditional Scots end of that speech continuum. That includes archaic and some obsolete vocabulary for traditional trades and ways of life which are often described in literature. Among many contemporary speakers, Scots forms of words have now
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