Established Facts

While many are discovering Ulster-Scots, scholars have studied it for several decades. Here are some things that scholars have established about Ulster-Scots:

1.  It is a regional type of Scots, which has a common source with English in the Anglo-Saxon language of a millennium ago. During the Plantation of Ulster (1610-25) English became the language of commerce, government, and writing in Ulster, relegating both Ulster Scots and Irish to the countryside and the home. Ulster-Scots has remained a vibrant spoken language in rural Ulster and a medium of daily life in parts of four counties -Down, Antrim, Londonderry, and Donegal - to the present day. It is distinct from English in many aspects of pronunciation, vocabulary, and grammar.

2.  Its history can be traced for four hundred years because evidence of it can be found in church records, emigrant letters, and other historical documents. More important, it has from time to time been reintroduced as a written language and found a voice in literature based on spoken Ulster-Scots, especially by the Weaver poets in Antrim and Down in the late-18th century.

3.  It has influenced the English spoken throughout Ulster in innumerable ways, from the well-known and ubiquitous wee "small" to the use of whenever "when".

4.  Within its four-county area, it varies regionally and socially. Forty years ago Larne native Robert Gregg outlined its boundaries. Within that area Catholics as well as Protestants speak Ulster-Scots. It is most often spoken in the home and in smaller communities. Outsiders may never hear it even though they live only a few miles away or in towns, because Ulster-Scots speakers also know English and use it with them.

5.  Because its origin is shared with English and the two have influenced each other in Ulster so much, one cannot draw a sharp boundary in structure or vocabulary between Ulster-Scots and Ulster-English in many places. Its most conservative, "pure" variety has such Scottish forms as toon "town" and disnae "does not" and is fully comprehensible only to native speakers. Its relation to English is utterly different from that of Irish, which shares little in structure with English. But the relation between the two is similar to that often found in continental Europe, where national and regional languages share a history (for example, Catalan and Spanish or Frisian and Dutch).

6.  It has become a stigmatized language because of the dominance of English. Until quite recently it had no status or no recognition outside its own communities except, to a limited extent, in academia. Mistakenly labeled "poor English", it has long been the object of social prejudice, belittled by the educational system and scorned in polite society.

© 2002 Michael Montgomery.  Unauthorised copying, reproduction, reprinting, lending, public performance and broadcasting of this material is not permitted unless the written consent of the author is obtained.