Linguistic AHC: More prominent and distinct Scots Language

On the recent thread regarding Catalan sigmatic articles there was a comment that mentioned Knox's preference of English over Scots in translating the Bible to be a reason for Scots' decline.

This got me thinking of a TL where Knox preferred (or was somehow persuaded to translate the bible into) the Scots language. Would this be enough to save the uniqueness of Middle Scots from being Anglicised? How could we get a more prominent and/or more distinct Scots language in 2013?
 

Gian

Banned
On the matter of Scots's decline, it could have been delayed if Knox preferred Scots to modern English. It couldn't survive the Union of the Crowns and the eventual union with England if things are the same IOTL.

By the way, where's that thread you mentioned about Catalan?
 
On the matter of Scots's decline, it could have been delayed if Knox preferred Scots to modern English. It couldn't survive the Union of the Crowns and the eventual union with England if things are the same IOTL.

By the way, where's that thread you mentioned about Catalan?

That's what I was thinking, with regards to the Union of the Crowns. Probably to have a fully distinct Scots we'd need a fully distinct Scotland.

Here it is.
 
A Scottish colony being established somewhere OTHER than Darien might also help with that, depending either on how isolated said colony is post-Union (although I think it'd be harder to achieve than the way Afrikaans developed), or if Scotland never unifies with England at all. I don't think Nova Scotia would work for many reasons, but perhaps a more balkanized North American colony set could allow for lands in Georgia/Carolina or New Jersey.

Personally, I like the notion of a Scottish Uruguay given its defensibility and lack of exploitable resources in Spain's estimation compared to Peru, New Spain, etc.
 
A Scottish colony being established somewhere OTHER than Darien might also help with that, depending either on how isolated said colony is post-Union (although I think it'd be harder to achieve than the way Afrikaans developed), or if Scotland never unifies with England at all. I don't think Nova Scotia would work for many reasons, but perhaps a more balkanized North American colony set could allow for lands in Georgia/Carolina or New Jersey.

Personally, I like the notion of a Scottish Uruguay given its defensibility and lack of exploitable resources in Spain's estimation compared to Peru, New Spain, etc.
Do you think this sort of thing could happen in East New Jersey? An independent Scottish state along the Jersey Shore, with the English to their east?
 
I suppose it could work, but given how England settled both Virginia and Massachusetts (provided that's not butterflied away), I think it'd be too much at risk of being swamped and/or surrounded and later absorbed. I'd bet more on either 1) non-North American holdings (the Southern Cone being climatically far more friendly than Panama) or 2) OTL South Carolina/Georgia, given how far it is from the main axis of English settlement and fairly defensible against the Spanish (hell, that's why Georgia was settled to begin with IOTL other than indentured servitude).
 
Personally, I like the notion of a Scottish Uruguay given its defensibility and lack of exploitable resources in Spain's estimation compared to Peru, New Spain, etc.

I'd love to see that! Not only a Scottish colony in the Americas, but a sizeable Protestant colony in South America! If we could delay the Union of Crowns somehow, giving a colony like this a good head-start (so as not to be absorbed by Portugal or Spain), it could secede from the UK and go on it's happy Scots-speaking way, probably with some Spanish and Portuguese (and later English, as the world's lingua franca) influences obviously, but this could happen.

With this and Patagonian Welsh, now all we need is a Cornish migration to Buenos Aires :p
 
Indeed, a Celtic invasion of lower South America is the only logical option from here! :cool: Granted, the Scots language is a Germanic one like English, and not related to Welsh or Cornish even if we were going with Scotland's Celtic tongue, but it all boils down the the people in the end so :p.

There is always Georgia if a closer colony is more plausible (although the *Uruguay option doesn't strike me as implausible really...certainly more plausible than a successful Darien). If nothing else, it insures that aspects of the Deep South from OTL could potentially be retained. Plus, I personally get tired of the "Scotland is cold, so therefore must be their colonies" trope, but again the *Uruguay option takes care of that as well.
 
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