Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. Pages: 69. Chapters: Adam Jack Aitken, Alexander Gray (poet), Anglicisation, Apologetic apostrophe, A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle, Barmkin, Bawbee, Bonspiel, Bothy ballad, Breeks, Burgh of barony, Burgh of regality, Burns stanza, Burn (landform), Buttock mail, Campbeltown, Clootie, Cornkister, Cutty-sark (witch), Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, Dictionary of the Scots Language, Dominie, Early Scots, Feck, Gaberlunzie, Greysteil, Haar (fog), History of the Scots language, Irvine Welsh, It isnae me, Jock Tamson's Bairns, John Jamieson, Lallans, Liam Logan, Links (golf), List of English words of Scots origin, Lord Provost, Mains (Scotland), Maitland Manuscripts, Makar, Malinky, Middle Scots, Modern Scots, Murdoch Nisbet, Not proven, Older Scots, Oor Wullie, Phonological history of Scots, Phonological history of wh, Provost (civil), Records of the Parliaments of Scotland, Report and Recommendations of the Scots Spelling Committee, Royal burgh, Royal Caledonian Curling Club, School Establishment Act 1616, Scots Wikipedia, Scottish Cant, Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech, Scottish Language Dictionaries, Scottish National Dictionary, Scottish vowel length rule, Skerry, Spurtle, The Bonny Earl O'Moray, The Buik of Alexander, The Testament of Cresseid, Tobar an Dualchais - Kist o Riches, Ulster-Scots Agency, Weaver Poets, Wee Willie Winkie, Wirry-cow. Excerpt: Scots is the Germanic language variety spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster (where the local dialect is known as Ulster Scots). It is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language spoken in most of the western Highlands and in the Hebrides. Since there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots. Although a number of paradigms for distinguishing between languages and dialects do exist, these often render contradictory results. Focused broad Scots is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum, with Scottish Standard English at the other. Consequently, Scots is generally regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, yet it has its own distinct dialects. Alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way Norwegian is closely linked to, yet distinct from, Danish. A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards the Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals being a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language," but it also found that "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)." In the 2011 Scottish census, a question on Scots language ability was featured. Native speakers sometimes refer to their vernacular as braid Scots (or "broad Scots" in English) or use a dialect name such as the "Doric," or the "Buchan Claik." The old-fashioned Scotch, an English loan, occurs occasionally, especially in Northern Ireland. The term Lallans, a variant of the Modern Scots word lawlands, is also used, though this is more often taken to mean the Lallans literary form. Scots in Ireland is known in official circles as Ulster-Scots (Ulster-Scotch in rev