Today almost all of Scotland's population speaks English (or its local dialects - e.g. Scots is actually a dialect of English). But when Scotland was founded around 843 AD, it was a fully Celtic-speaking kingdom (even though not all of the population spoke Gaelic Celtic - some groups in the south and east spoke Brythonic Celtic). It became a strong enough and centralised enough state to resist significant invasions, except for those in lightly populated fringes in the extreme north - the Northern Isles, etc. A core of the kingdom was solid from that time. No invaders subsequently permanently annexed any part of Scotland and no hostile wave of Germanic (and certainly not English) settlers happened.
The opposite was the case - Celtic Scotland annexed a large English-speaking territory after the battle of Carham in 1016 AD, and those lands became the south-eastern part of Scotland. That expansion brought for the first time a large group of English-speakers politically into the Scottish kingdom. Then - especially after 1100-1200 AD - Scottish kings invited small numbers of nobles/knights of the Anglo-Norman type tradition in order to form heavy cavalry shock troops loyal to the Scottish Crown. They also invited some urban-type settlers (including traders) and fishers of a mix of Norman, Breton, Fleming, Anglo-Saxon, French and other North-Western continental European backgrounds, presumably in order to increase the population and to help stimulate economic growth.
Initially those migrants formed just scattered foreign islands in a sea of local Celtic-speakers. It was really only after 1400 (or between 1300 and 1600) that - for some reasons - Celtic language started to gradually disappear from much of Scotland, getting replaced by English language - and that eventually led to the highland-lowland division, and to a funny invertion of identity. Up until around the 1500s the main languages of Scotland were called Scottis (meaning Gaelic) and Inglis (meaning lowland Scots dialect of English). However, from around 1500 with Gaelic language retreating to the highland line and its loss of prestige relative to English, a weird invertion of identity and historical reality happened - Inglis started to be called Scottis, while Gaelic was falsely alienized by calling it Erse (Irish). So, identities morphed and turned reality on its head. However, in the case of Scotland the first waves of reduction of Gaelic to a retreating language was an internal process.
Between 843 AD and 1603 AD Scotland only suffered a handful or two years with invaders controlling parts of Scotland and none of them led to permanent settlement. The replacement of Gaelic was peaceful. Scotland kind of colonised itself culturally. Whether the change of language in Scotland was mostly cultural (i.e. local Celtic-speakers gradually adopting English language), or caused by higher natural growth rates of that "intrusive" population which entered Scotland in the High Middle Ages (but the language of which started to replace native Celtic dialects in the countryside only few centuries later) than of locals, remains debatable.
What has actually happened, what do you think about this ???
The opposite was the case - Celtic Scotland annexed a large English-speaking territory after the battle of Carham in 1016 AD, and those lands became the south-eastern part of Scotland. That expansion brought for the first time a large group of English-speakers politically into the Scottish kingdom. Then - especially after 1100-1200 AD - Scottish kings invited small numbers of nobles/knights of the Anglo-Norman type tradition in order to form heavy cavalry shock troops loyal to the Scottish Crown. They also invited some urban-type settlers (including traders) and fishers of a mix of Norman, Breton, Fleming, Anglo-Saxon, French and other North-Western continental European backgrounds, presumably in order to increase the population and to help stimulate economic growth.
Initially those migrants formed just scattered foreign islands in a sea of local Celtic-speakers. It was really only after 1400 (or between 1300 and 1600) that - for some reasons - Celtic language started to gradually disappear from much of Scotland, getting replaced by English language - and that eventually led to the highland-lowland division, and to a funny invertion of identity. Up until around the 1500s the main languages of Scotland were called Scottis (meaning Gaelic) and Inglis (meaning lowland Scots dialect of English). However, from around 1500 with Gaelic language retreating to the highland line and its loss of prestige relative to English, a weird invertion of identity and historical reality happened - Inglis started to be called Scottis, while Gaelic was falsely alienized by calling it Erse (Irish). So, identities morphed and turned reality on its head. However, in the case of Scotland the first waves of reduction of Gaelic to a retreating language was an internal process.
Between 843 AD and 1603 AD Scotland only suffered a handful or two years with invaders controlling parts of Scotland and none of them led to permanent settlement. The replacement of Gaelic was peaceful. Scotland kind of colonised itself culturally. Whether the change of language in Scotland was mostly cultural (i.e. local Celtic-speakers gradually adopting English language), or caused by higher natural growth rates of that "intrusive" population which entered Scotland in the High Middle Ages (but the language of which started to replace native Celtic dialects in the countryside only few centuries later) than of locals, remains debatable.
What has actually happened, what do you think about this ???
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