ULSTER-SCOTS
RESEARCH
CENTRE

Is Ulster-Scots really a language?

Few academics would dispute that Scots, as distinct from English, was the language of the Scottish State for three centuries from around 1300. It was towards the end of this period that it arrived in Ulster, and despite having had no official status either in Scotland or Ireland since 1707 it has enjoyed several literary revivals (through the likes of Burns and Ramsay in Scotland and Orr and Porter in Ireland) and remains the mother tongue to hundreds of thousands of people in rural areas today.

It would be difficult to argue, therefore, that Scots speech (whether in Scotland or Ireland) ever merged with English; its socio-political and literary history is quite distinct, and thus so is its status as something more than merely 'another dialect'. Furthermore Scots (including its Ulster variants) has its own dialects and registers, something which no English dialect can boast.

The case for calling Ulster-Scots distinct from 'Scottish' Scots is rather less compelling. It has a shared literary history and the speech of rural Antrim is no more different from Ayrshire than the speech of rural Aberdeenshire - in fact it is rather less so. Ulster-Scots has been recognized separately from 'Scots' by the European Bureau of Lesser Used Languages, but this is more to do with the fact they are spoken in different EU regions than any linguistic reason.

Is Ulster-Scots easy to learn?
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