Geographical Varieties of English

This paper deals with the topic ''Scotland'' and is written behind the background of geographi-cal varieties of English. Thus we focus on the main topics historical development and present day language situation in Scotland, linguistic issues and sociolinguistic characteristics. In order to point out what differences between Standard English and Scottish English exist we take a closer look on the multicultural history of Scotland, which reflects in the many different dialects that used to be spoken in Scotland. French, Roman and Celtic influences made the Scottish language so versatile. This reflects not only in its vocabulary, but also in its grammar and phonology. Another important point is the geographical division of Scotland that also exerts influence on the Scottish language, because people on the mainland and the islands use to speak different languages. Finally we want to show that today there are only slight differ-ences between Scottish English and English English that mainly consider the prestige of the languages and the function of identification, but that there used to be differences in the past that are important to the Scots as individual and independent nation.