Where does Ulster-Scots come from?
The Scots language came to Ulster with the Scottish settlers of the Plantation in the early seventeenth century. Its presence was sustained and reinforced by later migrations and by the strong social and economic ties across the narrow North Channel. Ulster-Scots (or ‘Ullans’ or even the ‘Braid Scotch’) is a variant of Scots, the language used by Robert Burns in many of his poems. Scots is still spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland today and is often called Lallans, the Scots word for ‘lowlands’. Scots is part of the West Germanic family of languages. Other West Germanic languages include English, Dutch, Flemish, German, Afrikaans, Frisian and Yiddish. The Scandinavian languages (Danish, Norwegian and Swedish) are North Germanic languages. The East Germanic languages, including Gothic, one of the earliest Germanic languages, are all now extinct. Scots (and Ulster-Scots) is descended from the Northumbrian dialect of Anglo-Saxon which was brought to the British Isles approximately 1,500 ye
