Ulster Scots dialect: Difference between revisions

|ancestor2=[[Middle English#Early Middle English|Early Middle English]]

[[Scottish people|Scots]], mainly [[GoidelicMiddle languagesIrish|Gaelic]]-speaking, had been settling in [[Ulster]] since the 15th century, but large numbers of [[ModernScots language|Scots]]-speaking [[Scottish Lowlands|Lowlanders]], some 200,000, arrived during the 17th century following the 1610 [[Plantation of Ulster|Plantation]], with the peak reached during the 1690s.<ref name="Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 572">Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 572</ref> In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.<ref>Adams 1977: 57</ref>

Literature from shortly before the end of the unselfconscious tradition at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is almost identical with contemporary writing from Scotland.<ref name="Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 585">Montgomery & Gregg 1997: 585</ref> W. G. Lyttle, writing in ''Paddy McQuillan's Trip Tae Glesco'', uses the typically Scots forms ''kent'' and ''begood'', now replaced in Ulster by the more mainstream [[AnglicOld languagesEnglish|Anglic]] forms ''knew'', ''knowed'' or ''knawed'' and ''begun''. Many of the modest contemporary differences between Scots as spoken in Scotland and Ulster may be due to dialect levelling and influence from Mid Ulster English brought about through relatively recent demographic change rather than direct [[Language contact|contact]] with Irish, retention of older features or separate development.{{citation needed|date=May 2011}}