Scotland: An English Ancestry

            Scotland has been one of the most important places for the evolution of the English language. Although it helped to unite Great Britain and was able to create a medium of communication between the two regions, it destroyed many small, native dialects. Such an overwhelming globalization of English could be seen when people all throughout Great Britain began speaking the same language when they had once differed so much in the idioms. The narrator exemplifies this point by stating, “It is in remote places like Barra that you can see the wounds inflicted by world English on a traditional local culture” (The Story of English). I relate this to an article I recently read about how multinational companies are destroying the medium and small-sized businesses in Colombia. Now with the free trade agreement between United States and Colombia, these huge corporations will get lots of benefits, which will allow them to monopolize the markets even more. English has damaged many small dialects that were part of native people in several regions.

            As English began to spread over seas to international territories, it left a mark everywhere it went. The narrator in the video clip says that “about ten percent of today’s Americans can claim Scottish ancestry” (The Story of English). I found it very interesting to observe that Americans not only have British ancestry, but a reasonable part of them have Scottish ancestry. This reaffirms the statement that Scotland played an important transition role in the origins of English. When talking about the wars and battles in Great Britain, I remembered reading about the Crusades made by the Roman Catholics across Europe. In this particular scenario, the Irish Catholics were defeated by the Scottish, who still celebrate their victories. The English language not only had to go through territorial boundaries, but also through religious boundaries. It truly is surprising that the language was able to prosper and continue spreading out all throughout Great Britain with so many obstacles and varieties of cultures that could have easily prevented it from gaining so much territory.