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The Scots—bilingual or just confused?
Author(s) -
McARTHUR TOM
Publication year - 1992
Publication title -
world englishes
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.6
H-Index - 49
eISSN - 1467-971X
pISSN - 0883-2919
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-971x.1992.tb00055.x
Subject(s) - scots , variety (cybernetics) , linguistics , scots pine , first language , history , varieties of english , language contact , sociology , philosophy , computer science , botany , artificial intelligence , biology , pinus <genus>
The Scots occupy a paradoxical position in the English‐speaking world: a nation that has used the modern standard language since it developed in the seventeenth century alongside a very different variety called, among other things, the King's Scots and the guid Scots tongue . This other speech is regarded by some as no more than a northern dialect of English, by others as a distinct language with dialects of its own, a literature that dates from the Middle Ages, and such institutions as national dictionaries. The people of contemporary Scotland use and mix Scots and English every day, as they have done for centuries. This paper considers whether and to what extent the majority of Scotland's people can be described as bilingual between two distinct ‘English languages’.