"History has done a good and subtle job of ensuring Scots is thought of as a dialect of the poor - a lesser form of English." Related processes happened all ov

"History has done a good and subtle job of ensuring Scots is thought of as a dialect of the poor - a lesser form of English." Related processes happened all over western europe. Before radio & conscription, regional english dialects ranged from thick to "can't be understood one county over." There was a conscious effort to unify the language under the official dialect, king's english. Something similar was happening in Flanders, Netherlands right up until recently... Dialects were discouraged in schools and speaking in dialect became associated with a lack of schooling.