Lingualia LingualiaEurope’s regional and minority languages

Languages · Germanic languages

Scots

Spoken in : United Kingdom

01. Data about the language

At a glance

Speakers
2,444,659 people aged 3 and over have some Scots skills, 46.2% (2022 census)1,2
Identifiers
ISO 639-3 sco · Glottolog scot1243

Language group

Indo-European / Germanic

Area

From the Border regions adjoining England throughout Dumfries and Galloway, Ayrshire, Lanarkshire, the Lothians, Fife, Stirlingshire, Perthshire, Angus, Aberdeenshire, Buchan, Moray and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland Scots is spoken in a variety of dialects.
In Ulster, Ulster Scots speakers are found in all parts of the north of Ireland but the main concentrations are in Counties Down, Antrim, north and west Londonderry, north and west Tyrone and spilling across the border into east Donegal in the Republic of Ireland.

Updated, sourced data, checked on 14 October 2026 · scope : Royaume-Uni (Écosse) · Get updates for this language

Numerical strength

2022 Scottish Census: 2,444,659 people, or 46.2% of the population aged 3 and over, have some Scots skills, up from 37.7% in 20111,2. Just under half of them speak, read and write it; over 720,000 understand it only1.

The North East has the most speakers (420,000); the Banffshire and Buchan Coast constituency has the highest share (72%) and Edinburgh Central the lowest (28%)1.

Status

The Scottish Languages Act 2025 recognises the status of Scots (s. 33) and provides for a Scots language strategy3. Official status for Scots came into force on 30 November 2025, at the same time as for Gaelic2.

Education

The 2025 Act contains a chapter on Scots in school education (provision, guidance, standards, resources, reporting) and gives ministers powers to set teaching standards for Scots2,3.

Miscellaneous

The Scottish Government allocated £35.7 million in 2025 to Gaelic and Scots initiatives, and may commission research into their use2.

Sources

  1. Gaelic and Scots in Scotland – what does the census tell us?, SPICe – Scottish Parliament Information Centre (A. Aiton, N. Sharratt), 2024.
  2. Growing Scotland's languages (communiqué : statut officiel du gaélique et du scots), Scottish Government, 2025.
  3. Scottish Languages Act 2025 (asp 10) – table des matières, legislation.gov.uk, 2025.

02. Poem

Original Translation
A Red, Red Rose
A Red, Red Rose
O, my luve's like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June: O, my luve's like the melodie That's sweetly play'd in tune.
O, my love is like a red, red rose, That's newly sprung in June: O, my love is like the melody That's sweetly played in tune.
As fair art thou, my bonie lass, So deep in luve am I: And I will luve thee still, my dear, Till a' the seas gang dry.
As fair are you, my pretty girl, So deep in love am I: And I will love you still, my dear, Till all the seas run dry.
Till a' the seas gang dry, my dear, And the rocks melt wi' the sun: I will luve thee still, my dear, While the sands o' life shall run.
Till all the seas run dry, my dear, And the rocks melt with the sun: I will love you still, my dear, While the sands of life shall run.
And fare thee weel, my only luve, And fare thee weel awhile! And I will come again, my luve, Tho' it were ten thousand mile.
And fare you well, my only love, And fare you well awhile! And I will come again, my love, Though it were ten thousand miles.
Robert Burns (1759-1796)
Original text: The Poetical Works of Robert Burns, on English Wikisource (public domain)
Translation: Lingualia (2026)

03. Linguistic description

Scots is a Germanic language, a sister of English2. It descends from Old Northumbrian, a dialect of Old English, whereas Standard English comes from another dialect, Mercian1. Among the Romance languages, French, first Anglo-Norman in the 12th-14th centuries, left the strongest mark on its vocabulary1.

Sources

The 2003 CD had no description of this language: this text was written for the site from the sources below.

  1. C. Macafee, A. J. Aitken, « A history of Scots to 1700 », Dictionaries of the Scots Language (d’après A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, vol. XII), 2002.
  2. Glottolog 5.3 – Scots, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, 2025.

04. Cartoon

No cartoon in this language could be found on public video platforms.