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How old is Ulster-Scots?

All languages are in fact the same age. Scots, like the vast majority of languages in Europe, derives from Proto-Indo-European spoken around 4000 years ago. Germanic languages form one branch of Indo-European, along with Celtic (including Gaelic), Romance/Italic (those deriving from Latin, including French, Spanish and Italian) and several others.

The earliest texts in any Germanic language are in Gothic, a now obsolete 'East Germanic' language. Compare some words in Wulfila's Bible translation of the 4th century, predating any surviving texts in Western Europe, with those found in modern Ulster-Scots:

Scots
auchtan
eild
gangan
greetan
learan
luif
tholean
waur

English
'to own', 'to be owned'
'(old) age'
'to go'
'to weep'
'to teach'
'palm (of hand)'
'tolerate'
'worse'

Gothic
aihan ('h' pronounced as 'ch')
alds
gaggan ('gg' pronounced as 'ng')
gretan
lausjan
lofa
thulan
wairsiza

Scots is, in fact, a 'West Germanic' language, alongside English, Frisian, Dutch, Low Saxon, German and Swiss-German. The 'North Germanic' languages are those spoken in Scandinavia (including Iceland and the Faroes but excluding Finnish), which also have a strong influence on Scots (words such as big 'build', gar 'make, compel', redd 'tidy').

Has Scots had any effect on Standard English?
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