SCOTCH—AS IT NOW EXISTS.
Modern Scotch, or the language as spoken even a hundred years ago, differs very materially from that in use by the Scots when Cæsar invaded Britain.
Like the Erse, the latter was an important branch of the Celtic, or Keltic, family of Indo-European languages, of which the Irish, now almost extinct, affords a good illustration.
Eighteen centuries, with their destructive and modifying influences, have been at work upon its structure till its genius has departed, never to return. The Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman have supplanted many of its word-forms, and done away with its peculiarities of speech. What is now left of its former glory is but the shadow.
It is true we meet with Celtic words in current use, but time and neglect have so disfigured their physiognomies that even the practised mind of the philologist often fails to indicate their kinship.
Scotch words, or we might say with greater propriety and exactness Scottish words, for Scotch is seemingly nothing more than a corruption of Scottish, the English form of the Anglo-Saxon Scyttisc, vary their inflections as English words do. The changes, when there are changes, follow the usages of the Anglo-Saxon.
As should be expected, when is considered the influence of the Teutonic and Norman-French invasions, the sounds of certain letters, whether taken singly or in combination, must necessarily have varied. This, as we shall now see, has been the case.
Ch and gh, in Scotch, have always the guttural sound.
The sound of the English diphthong oo is commonly spelled ou.
French u, a sound which often occurs in the language, is marked oo, ui.
In genuine Scottish words the a, except when constituting a diphthong, or when followed by an e mute after a single consonant, sounds generally like the broad English a in wall.
The Scottish diphthong æ always, and ea very often, sound like the French e masculine, while the Scottish diphthong ey sounds like the Latin in ei.