Is Ulster Scots a Language

daithicarr

I thought the only Language i understood with any fluency was English, however it appears i can also understand Ulster scots, without having ever been exposed to it before.

does it really classify as a distinct language (like Irish for example) , i have read a variety if ulster scots documents and heard a bit pronounced on the internet, i had little or no trouble understanding 99% of it. there also seems to be a campaign to make it an official language, does it warrant being treated as an official language, when it just seems to be a dialect of English.

biko

Among academic linguists, Ulster Scots is treated as a variety of the Scots language or, along with all Scots varieties, as a dialect of English although United Kingdom declares, in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Charter that it recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language for the purposes of Part II of the Charter. Wiki

JaneHudson

Is it something like that language in Robbie Burns' poetry?

Caoimhín

No more a language than Cockney Rhyming of Traveller talk.

daithicarr

The Traveller language, the Cant is a proper language; it has all the characteristics which define a language. However the wiki entry on it is fairly off the mark in relation to the academic works I studied on it on collage.

However Ulster Scots is mutually intelligible to most English speakers, much more so than say Jamaican Patois.