Scots

Scots
Scots: Scots leid
Native to	United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland
Region	Scotland: Scottish Lowlands, Northern Isles, Caithness, Arran and Campbeltown Ulster: Counties Down, Antrim, Derry and Donegal
Native speakers	(100,000 cited 1999)[1] 1.5 million L2 speakers[1] Total: 17%[2] to 85%[3] of the Scottish population speak it to some degree
Language family	Indo-European Germanic West Germanic Anglo-Frisian Anglic Scots
Early forms	Early Scots Middle Scots
Official status
Official language in	None — Classified as a "traditional language" by the Scottish Government. — Classified as a "regional or minority language" under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, ratified by the United Kingdom in 2001. — Classified as a "traditional language" by The North/South Language Body
Recognised minority language in	Scotland
Language codes
ISO 639-3	sco
ELP	Scots

Scots is a West Germanic language. It is sometimes called Lowland Scots or Lallans. It is not Scottish English but the two are similar. Scottish English is a dialect of English and Scots is a separate language.^[4] Ulster Scots is a form of Scots found in the north of Ireland. Scots is very different from the Scottish Gaelic language, which is a Celtic language.

There have been disagreements about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a scale, with Scottish Standard English at the other.^[5][6] Scots is generally regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, and has its own distinct variants^[5] such as Doric.

1. ↑ ^{1.0 1.1} Scots at Ethnologue (16th ed., 2009) (The figure of 200,000 is an error, from the total being listed in two countries.)
2. ↑ [Iain Máté] (1996) Scots Language. A report on the Scots language research carried out by the General Register Office for Scotland in 1996, Edinburgh: General Register Office (Scotland).
3. ↑ The Scottish Government. "Public attitudes towards the Scots language". Retrieved 3 January 2010.
4. ↑ "What Is Scottish English?". ThoughtCo. Retrieved 2022-04-24.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1} A.J. Aitken 1992. In The Oxford Companion to the English Language. Oxford University Press, p894
6. ↑ Stuart-Smith J. 2008. Scottish English: phonology in Varieties of English: the British Isles. Kortman & Upton (eds), Mouton de Gruyter, New York. p47