Doric is the name given to the dialect of Lowland Scots spoken in the north-east of Scotland. The term "Doric" was used to refer to all dialects of Lowland Scots as a jocular reference to the Dorian dialect of Greek. The Greek Dorians lived in Sparta, a more rural area, and were supposed by the ancient Greeks to have spoken laconically, and in a language that was thought harsher in tone and more phonetically conservative than the Attic spoken in Athens. Doric Greek was used for the verses spoken by the chorus in Greek tragedy.Use of the term Doric in this context may also arise out of a contrast with the anglicised speech of the Scottish capital, because at one point, Edinburgh was nicknamed 'Athens of the North'. The upper/middle class speech of Edinburgh would thus be 'Attic', making the rural areas' speech 'Doric'. Scots is an Anglic variety spoken in Scotland, where it is sometimes called Lowland Scots to distinguish it from Scottish Gaelic spoken by some in the Highlands and Islands (especially the Hebrides). (Ruthwell)
Consequently Scots has, on one hand, traditionally been regarded as one of the ancient dialects of English but also has its own ancient and distinct dialects. Often being treated as part of English as spoken in Scotland but differing significantly from the Standard Scottish English taught in schools. On the other hand it has also been regarded as a Germanic language in its own right in the way that Swedish is distinct from Danish. Its subordinate relationship with the English of England has also been compared to that of Frisian being dominated by Dutch in the Netherlands. Thus Scots can be interpreted as a collective term for the dialects of English spoken, or originating, in Scotland or it can be interpreted as the name of the autochthonous language of Lowland Scotland.
Northumbrian Old English had been established in south-eastern Scotland as far as the River Forth by the 7th century. It remained largely confined to this area until the 13th century, continuing in common use while Gaelic was the court language. English then spread further into Scotland via the burghs, proto-urban institutions which were first established by King David I. The growth in prestige of English in the 14th century, and the complementary decline of French in Scotland, made English the prestige language of most of eastern Scotland.
Modern Scots thus grew out of the early northern form of Middle English spoken by the people of south-eastern Scotland and northern England. Scots, or more accurately, Middle English, made its first literary appearance in Scotland in the mid-14th century, when its form differed little from other northern Anglic dialects, and so Scots shared many Northumbrian borrowings from Old Norse and Anglo-Norman French. Later influences include Dutch and Middle Saxon through trade with (Middlesex), and immigration from, the low countries; as well as Romance via ecclesiastical and legal Latin and French owing to the Auld Alliance. Scots has loan words resulting from contact with Gaelic. Early medieval legal documents show a language peppered with Gaelic legal and administrative loans. Today Gaelic loans are mainly for geographical and cultural features, such as ceilidh, loch and clan. Many Scots words have also become part of English: flit, 'to move home', greed, eerie, cuddle, clan, stob, 'a post'.
No education takes place through the medium of Scots, though English lessons may cover it superficially. This is often not much more than reading some Scots literature and observing local dialect. Much of the material used is often little more than Standard English disguised as Scots, which has upset both proponents of Standard English and proponents of Scots alike. On the other hand, it can be seen as a teaching method to get around the fact that the pupils, the teachers, and the teachers' parents alike have been taught in school that Scots is 'bad spelling', and thus that pupils will self-censor any Scots that they do know. Scots can also be studied at university level. Nowhere in the education system is the objective to produce people able to read, write, and speak Scots as an autonomous alternative to English, thus contributing to its perceived status by non-Scots speakers as a series of local dialects of English. The use of Scots in the media is scant and is usually reserved for niches where local dialect is deemed acceptable, e.g. comedy, Burns Night, or representations of traditions and times gone by.
It is often held that, had Scotland remained independent, Scots would have remained and been regarded as a separate language from English. This has happened in Spain and Portugal, where two independent countries developed standardised languages, Portuguese originating from a common Galician-Portuguese language, which itself originated from a common Iberian Romance language shared with Castilian Spanish. On the other hand a situation similar to that of Swiss German and standard German might have occurred. Equally, the present situation might have occurred, where the social elites and the upwardly mobile adopted Standard English, causing institutional language shift. A model of language revival to which many enthusiasts aspire is that of the Catalan language in areas spanning parts of Spain, France, Andorra and Italy, particularly as regards the situation of Catalan in Catalonia.
After the Union of Scotland and England, the issue of language became topical, and foremost was the question of whether Scottish people should speak English or Scots. Gaelic was never considered an option; at the time, it was mostly relegated to the Highlands and Islands. Scots became considered to have a substratal relationship to English, as opposed to an adstratal relationship.
Examples of the first English literature include Christ's Prayer in Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon from c. 650, which begins "Faeder ure, Thu the eart on heofonum,". Some Scottish and Norhumbrian folk still say "oor faither" and "thoo art". The Genesis Poem attributed to Cædmon of Whitby in Northumbria opens with the words "Us is riht mikel" which is translated as "We are mighty great", but in Scots could appear as "Us is richt muckle". The words were written around 675 by a monk trained by the Celtic church of Iona taking dictation from the illiterate herdsman Caedmon singing in Northumbrian Anglo-Saxon in a monastery then known by the Gaelic name of Streaneshalch. Cædmon's name is Brythonic, and some scholars think that he may have been bilingual. After the seventeenth century, anglicisation increased, though Scots was still spoken by the vast majority of the population. At the time, many of the oral ballads from the borders and the North East were written down.
The term Lallans was also used during the Scottish Renaissance of the early 20th century to refer to what Hugh MacDiarmid called synthetic Scots, i.e., 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. MacDiarmid's detractors often referred to Lallans 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. 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.