Scots Leid: A Dialect or a Language?

I love Wikipedia. I surf it all the time and it's a great free encyclopedia for your every day curiosities and interests. Today however, I came across something unusual. I decided to the languages that content could be published in at the Wiki site. I came across Scots, a language I had never previously heard of. I knew of Scottish Gaelic which was what I thought I was going to see when I first clicked on the link. I clicked on it and to my surprise it looked not so much like a language but more like incorrect and misspelled English.

What in the world is Scots? It is a Germanic language, just like English. It's the closest language to English. It's spoken in the highlands of Scotland. I always thought it was just another weird English accent when I heard it on the television. Contrary to my previous beliefs, it's a recognized language though that just happens to be 'mutually intelligible' with English. If Scots is to be considered it's own language though, what about all those Creoles or eccentric dialects?

Well, after a little bit of research, I found that most of those dialects (like American southern and American mid-western English) are nothing more than dialects of standard English. The Boston dialect and the more common New England dialect are also nothing more than just dialects even though they at times are profoundly different than the English spoken in England. Is the Scots language then the English language's only sibling? The answer would be yes and no.

Scots developed not from modern English like the dialects used in the United States today but developed from an older version of English that was recognized as early as the 14^th century. The dialect(s) we use in the United States did develop for the most part from modern English. Most of our spellings of words and pronunciations are similar if not the same as the English used in England. Scots on the other hand is at times barely intelligible with modern standard English in it's written form and sometimes, but rarely, when spoken.

While Scots did develop from another version of English no longer used (except in play writes), there are a few language's today that have developed from the more modern version(s) of English. A good example would be Jamaican Patois (or more simply known as Jamaican). While Jamaican is indeed a creole language, it sometimes when written is not intelligible with standard English. The idioms and similes so commonly used in Jamaican are nothing like those used in standard modern English, whether it be in the United States or United Kingdom. However, while Jamaican is a language of it's own, it should not be confused with Jamaican English which seems to be a more comprehendible version of Jamaican mixed with both American and English dialects of English.

There are several other Creoles of English but most do not have a large number of speakers (usually lower than 100,000 speakers). Creoles are not unique to the English language and are present in several other language. A great example of a creole would be Haitian Creole, a French Creole used in Haiti. French is used at the official levels of the government more commonly however. There are more speakers and more Creoles of French than there are of English.

Some other mutually intelligible languages are Hindi and Urdu, Maltese and Arabic, and Azeri and Turkish. Most of the languages used in Yugoslavia are mutually intelligible. Belorussian and Russian are said to be mutually intelligible. There are several other languages which share enough in common to be mutually intelligible but different enough to be considered languages in their own right. I find it interesting that I can now say with confidence that I can understand more than three languages (English, Scots, Jamaican). While I can not speak them all, it's kind nice being able to say I understand them. Understanding and being able to speak with inidividuals who speak another language opens up new doors to understanding a new people. A language is more than a way of communicating ideas and thoughts. The language of a people is a part of their culture and often holds secrets not otherwise known by the outside world. The more you understand the more you will know.