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Scots is the Germanic speech of the Scottish Lowlands, in contrast to Gaelic, the traditional Celtic speech of the Highlands. It is regarded by some as a dialect of English, by others as a distinct language. Many scholars regard Scots of the period before the Union of the Crowns (1603) as a language in its own right and after that date as a more limited vernacular. It is, however, listed alongside languages such as Basque, Catalan, and Gaelic by the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages (an institution of the European Union). Scots has its own dialects, from the Borders (linked with the dialects of northern England) to Orkney and Shetland (mixed with elements of Old Norse). Its literature includes two medieval epic poems, copious 16th-century verse, the works of Robert Burns, and more recent poetry and fiction.
Though there has been a massive mixing with English for over 200 years, its major characteristics remain clear-cut, including (1) the pronunciation of r as a trill in words such as art, door, and worker; (2) the use of the /kh, / sound (as in German machen) in words such as nicht "night," sicht "sight," ach "ah," and och "oh"; (3) verbs like tell and sell have distinctive past forms (tellt and sellt for told and sold); (4) some "double modal" verbs, as in Ah micht could dae it ("I might could do it"), are used to mean "I could probably do it"; (5) the vocabulary is large and distinctive: e.g., tae blether "to talk nonsense," a blether "someone who talks nonsense," tae dicht "to wipe clean," tae ken "to know," tae loup "to leap," a loup "a leap," an ashet "a serving dish" (from French assiette), a dwam "a hazy mental condition," a howf(f) "a favorite spot, a pub," glaikit "stupid-looking," fantoosh "flashy," and tapselteerie "topsy-turvy."
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