: xliii Later influences on the development of Scots came from the Romance languages via ecclesiastical and legal Latin, Norman French, : lxiii–lxv and later Parisian French, due to the Auld Alliance. It began to further diverge from the Middle English of Northumbria due to twelfth and thirteenth century immigration of Scandinavian-influenced Middle English-speakers from the North and Midlands of England. The succeeding variety of early northern Middle English spoken in southeastern Scotland is also known as Early Scots. Middle Irish was the language of the Scottish court, and the common use of Old English remained largely confined to this area until the thirteenth century. Northumbrian Old English had been established in what is now southeastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the seventh century, as the region was part of the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Northumbria. The Gaelic of Scotland is now usually called Scottish Gaelic. For example, towards the end of the fifteenth century, William Dunbar was using Erse to refer to Gaelic and, in the early sixteenth century, Gavin Douglas was using Scottis as a name for the Lowland vernacular. From 1495, the term Scottis was increasingly used to refer to the Lowland vernacular : 894 and Erse, meaning "Irish", was used as a name for Gaelic. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the English language used in Scotland had arguably become a distinct language, albeit one lacking a name which clearly distinguished it from all the other English variants and dialects spoken in Britain. Before the end of the fifteenth century, English speech in Scotland was known as "English" (written Ynglis or Inglis at the time), whereas "Scottish" ( Scottis) referred to Gaelic. Scots is a contraction of Scottis, the Older Scots and northern version of late Old English: Scottisc (modern English "Scottish"), which replaced the earlier i-mutated version Scyttisc. Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as Ulster-Scots ( Ulstèr-Scotch in revivalist Ulster-Scots) or "Ullans", a recent neologism merging Ulster and Lallans. The term Lallans, a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands, is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form. The old-fashioned Scotch, an English loan, : 892 occurs occasionally, especially in Ulster. Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English) or use a dialect name such as the " Doric" or the " Buchan Claik". 12.1 Dictionaries and linguistic information.Scots is sometimes regarded as a variety of English, though it has its own distinct dialects : 894 other scholars treat Scots as a distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian is closely linked to but distinct from Danish. Broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other. Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects exist, they often render contradictory results. Īs there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing a language from a dialect, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots, particularly its relationship to English. In the 2011 Scottish Census, over 1.5 million people in Scotland reported being able to speak Scots. Scots is recognised as an indigenous language of Scotland, a regional or minority language of Europe, and a vulnerable language by UNESCO. Modern Scots is a sister language of Modern English, as the two diverged independently from the same source: Early Middle English (1150–1300 ). It is sometimes called Lowland Scots or Broad Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Goidelic Celtic language that was historically restricted to most of the Highlands, the Hebrides and Galloway after the 16th century. Scots ( endonym: Scots Scottish Gaelic: Albais/Beurla Ghallda) is a West Germanic language variety spoken in Scotland and parts of Ulster in the north of Ireland (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots).