Shetland dialect
Shetland dialect (also variously known as Shetlandic; broad or auld Shetland or Shaetlan; and referred to as Modern Shetlandic Scots (MSS) by some linguists) is a dialect of Insular Scots spoken in Shetland, an archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland. It is derived from the Scots dialects brought to Shetland from the end of the fifteenth century by Lowland Scots, mainly from Fife and Lothian, with a degree of Norse influence from the Norn language, which is an extinct North Germanic language spoken on the islands until the late 18th century.
| Shetland dialect | |
|---|---|
| Shetlandic, Shetland, Modern Shetlandic Scots | |
| Shætlan | |
Christine De Luca speaking Shetland dialect | |
| Pronunciation | IPA: [ˈʃe̞tlənd̥] |
| Region | Shetland |
Native speakers | 3,500 ("used at home") (2011) 11,000 ("can speak") |
Early forms | |
| Latin | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | sco |
| ISO 639-3 | sco |
| Glottolog | shet1241 Shetland Scots |
| Linguasphere | 52-ABA-aad |
| IETF | sco-u-sd-gbzet |
Shetland in Scotland | |
| Scots language |
|---|
| History |
| Dialects |
Consequently, Shetland dialect contains many words of Norn origin. Many of them, if they are not place-names, refer to e.g. seasons, weather, plants, animals, places, food, materials, tools, colours, parts of boats.
Like Doric in North East Scotland, Shetland dialect retains a high degree of autonomy due to geography and isolation from southern dialects. It has a large amount of unique vocabulary but as there are no standard criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, whether or not Shetland dialect is a separate language from Scots is much debated.