The “native” inhabitants of Scotland spoke Brythonic and Pictish (both Celtish languages); since then, the Gaels (who were also Celts), Romans, Norse, Anglo-Sax

The “native” inhabitants of Scotland spoke Brythonic and Pictish (both Celtish languages); since then, the Gaels (who were also Celts), Romans, Norse, Anglo-Saxons, and Normans arrived from various directions and displaced them utterly. Scots arose from Old English and diverged from Middle English a scant few hundred years ago, when travel and the printing press made it easy for new terms to disseminate and usage to remain reasonable homogenous. There are some touches of these previous languages present in some dialects, like Shetland and Orkney using peedie/peerie (derived from Norn) where standard Scots uses wee.