Lallans Totally Explained

Everything about Lallans totally explained

Lallans, a variant of the Scots word lawlands meaning the lowlands of Scotland, was also traditionally used to refer to the Scots language as a whole. More recent interpretations assume it refers to the dialects of south and central Scotland and Doric, a term once used to refer to Scots dialects in general, is now generally seen to refer to the Scots dialects of north east Scotland. Both Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson used it to refer to the Scots language. They took nae pains their speech to balance,
Or rules to gie;
But spak their thoughts in plain, braid lallans,
Like you or me.
ť —Robert Burns in Epistle To William Simson

"What tongue does your auld bookie speak?"
He'll spier; an' I, his mou to steik :
"No bein' fit to write in Greek,
I wrote in Lallan,
Dear to my heart as the peat reek,
Auld as Tantallon.
ť —Robert Louis Stevenson in "The Maker to Posterity"

Before the Treaty of Union in 1707, Scots was the state language of Scotland used for all government business. Even after the Union, Scots continued in use by the Scottish courts for much of the 18th century.

Synthetic Scots

The term Lallans was also used during the Scottish Renaissance of the early 20th century to refer to what Hugh MacDiarmid called synthetic Scots, for example, a synthesis integrating, blending, and combining various forms of the Scots language, both vernacular and archaic. This was intended as a classical, standard Scots for a world-class literature, although it was more often than not Scots words grafted on to a standard English grammatical structure somewhat removed from traditional spoken Scots, its main practitioners not being habitual Lowland Scots speakers themselves. ť "In addition, the present century has seen the conscious creation of a ‘mainstream’ variety of Scots—a standard literary variety, [...] referred to as ‘synthetic Scots’, now generally goes under the name Lallans (=‘Lowlands’). [...] In its grammar and spelling, it shows the marked influence of Standard English, more so that other Scots dialects."

MacDiarmid's detractors often referred to it as plastic Scots — a word play on synthetic as in synthetic plastics — to emphasize its artificiality. William Shakespeare also indulged in similar activities using the English language but has never been accused of writing synthetic or plastic English. With this in mind Sydney Goodsir Smith answered critics in his Epistle to John Guthrie:
ť We've come intil a gey queer time

Whan scrievin Scots is near a crime, ť 'There's no one speaks like that', they fleer,

-But wha the deil spoke like King Lear? In Ulster the neologism Ullans merging Ulster and Lallans is often used to refer to the revived literary variety of Ulster Scots. The magazine of the Ulster-Scots Language Society is also named Ullans.

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