Scots Alphabet & Words

Scots is written with the plain Latin alphabet, A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z, in capital and small forms, with no accent marks at all. It has no single official spelling: spellings vary by dialect and convention, so the word for “good” appears in forms such as guid, gude and gweed. What makes a page look Scots is not new letters but the way the familiar ones are combined.

ch is the sound at the back of the throat in loch, nicht (night), bricht (bright), dochter (daughter) and dreich (grey, dreary weather); it is the old sound English lost while keeping the spelling gh. ui writes the vowel of guid (good), muin (moon) and schuil (school). ae appears in ae (one), tae (to) and dae (do); ee in een (eyes) and dee (die); aw in aw or a’ (all) and snaw (snow); oo and ou in hoose, oot, doon and toun for house, out, down and town.

Grammar shows on the page too. Negatives end in -nae or -na: cannae, dinnae, isnae, wouldna. Past tenses often end in -it: walkit, stertit, jumpit. And many everyday Scots words have no English twin at all: ken (know), bairn (child), kirk (church), braw (fine), bonnie (pretty), wee (small), haar (sea fog).

The Scots apostrophe: an’, wi’, o’ and the curly quotes

The one mark Scots uses more than English is the apostrophe. Eighteenth-century Scots verse, including Burns, uses apostrophes in forms such as an’ (and), wi’ (with), o’ (of), a’ (all), gi’e (give) and fa’ (fall). The term apologetic apostrophe reflects the criticism that these spellings make Scots look like clipped English, though scholars describe their functions as varied. Many modern writers leave it out and write an, wi, o and aw; both styles are alive today.

In print the apostrophe is the curly ’ (the same character as the closing single quote), while the straight ' is the typewriter version that keyboards produce. Quotations follow British habits: single curly quotes ‘ ’ in many books and newspapers, double “ ” in others. Copy them from the grid, or type them: on Windows Alt + 0146 for ’, Alt + 0145 for ‘, Alt + 0147 and Alt + 0148 for “ and ”; on a Mac Option + Shift + ] for ’, Option + ] for ‘, Option + [ and Option + Shift + [ for “ and ”. Phones offer the curly forms when you long-press the apostrophe or quote key.

Yogh ȝ: the old Scots letter behind Menzies and Dalziel

Older Scots, the language of the medieval makars (poets) and of Scottish law and government before the 1707 union with England, used a letter that has since disappeared: Ȝ ȝ, yogh. It represented several sounds, including /j/ as in ȝe (ye, you) and ȝere (year). Older Scots also wrote quh where English writes wh (quhen, quhat, quha for when, what, who), and used y as a stand-in for the old letter þ, so ye could mean the.

When printing arrived, typefaces had no yogh, and printers used a z, which looked similar in handwriting. The z then stayed in names that were never meant to be read with a z sound: Menzies is traditionally "Mingis", Dalziel "Dee-ell", Culzean Castle "Cullane", Cadzow "Cadyow", and capercailzie is the older spelling of the bird now usually written capercaillie. Many people now say the z anyway.

To write yogh today, copy Ȝ or ȝ from this page, or use the HTML entities Ȝ and ȝ (U+021C and U+021D). Take care not to paste the look-alike ezh ʒ or a digit 3 instead: they are different characters and a search for the real letter will not find them.

Where Scots is spoken: Lowlands, Doric, Shetland and Ulster

Scots grew out of the northern English of the Middle Ages and became the language of the Scottish court and burghs; Scots and English are close relatives, which is why Scots is sometimes wrongly treated as an accent or slang. CLDR estimates about 1.7 million speakers, nearly all in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧: across the Scottish Lowlands, in the North-East, in Orkney and Shetland, and in Northern Ireland, where Ulster Scots is spoken in parts of Antrim, Down and Londonderry. It is a different language from Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language of the Highlands and Islands, which is related to Irish.

The dialects spell differently because they sound different. Doric, the Scots of Aberdeen and the North-East, says f where others say wh: fit like? means "how are you?", and fa, fit and far are who, what and where. Shetlandic keeps words from Norn, the Norse once spoken in the islands, such as peerie (small). Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee each have their own sound, and their own spellings in comic strips, novels and social media.

The money is the same as in the rest of the UK, the pound sterling £, written before the number (£5). Scotland has its own banknotes: three Scottish banks, the Bank of Scotland, the Royal Bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank, issue their own sterling notes. Type £ with Shift + 3 on a UK keyboard, Alt + 0163 on Windows, or Option + 3 on a US Mac. The Scotland flag 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿, the white saltire on blue, has been an emoji of its own since 2017, built from a black flag 🏴 and hidden tag characters, which is why a few older systems show it as a plain black flag.

Scots words and phrases from Burns, Hogmanay and every day

The best-known Scots in the world is Robert Burns (1759–1796). Auld Lang Syne, sung at New Year 🎆 far beyond Scotland, means "old long since", the days gone by. To a Mouse 🐁 opens Wee, sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie, apostrophes and all; A Red, Red Rose 🌹 begins O my Luve is like a red, red rose. On Burns Night, 25 January, his Address to a Haggis is read aloud at suppers: Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face, Great chieftain o’ the puddin-race!

Hogmanay, the Scottish New Year, brings its own greetings: A guid New Year tae ane an’ a’ (a good New Year to one and all) and Lang may yer lum reek (long may your chimney smoke, that is, may you always have a warm home). Everyday Scots gives haud yer wheesht (be quiet), whit’s fur ye’ll no go by ye (what is meant for you will not pass you by), it’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht (it’s a fine bright moonlit night) and, for the weather, dreich.

Scots shares its letters with English, so the English Alphabet & Symbols collection has the same A–Z plus the other old letters þ and ƿ. Its Celtic neighbours write very differently: see the Irish fada letters á é í ó ú and the Welsh ŵ ŷ, and the United Kingdom collection for the flags and emoji of all four nations.