The archive
Scots
The sister nobody counts
English's sister language, descended from the same Middle English parent, and still argued about as though it were an accent.
ScriptLatin
Speakers2M
Weeks to a working levelNot rated. Probably the closest language to English there is, and the hardest to find materials for.
- It is not English with an accent. Scots and English are both descendants of Middle English, which makes them sisters rather than parent and child.
- It had its own literary tradition and its own court language before the crowns were united in 1603.
- Its greatest practical difficulty is not grammar but resources: there is very little to learn from.
- Speakers slide along a continuum between broad Scots and standard English depending on who they are talking to.
- Its status is politically loaded in a way its grammar is not, and you will be told by strangers that it does not exist.
Where to practise it
Reading about a language is not speaking it. These are the places I would go to find someone to speak Scots with.
The Scots Passepartout is not out yet
Five printed pages that carry you through the arrival. Leave your address and you hear about it first, and nothing else.
Leaving takes one click.
Stories in Scots
Short stories written inside a measured vocabulary, with the word lists and nothing invented for a textbook.