not so the highland scots spoke gaelic the historic common language of the lowands however was northern english from the th century onwards brought by the anglo saxons who arrived in caledonia at almost exactly the same time as the scots it continued to be called english often spelled inglis and other variants until the very end of the th century when some scots correctly or incorrectly began calling their northern variant s of english 'scots' they had previously called gaelic 'scots' scots english in addition to scots was certainly commonplace by the act of union in and indeed was already commonplace by the time of the king james bible in historic spelling sometimes gives a quite false impression of difference but there was no real standard spelling anywhere in britain in england or scotland until the th century today some believe that scots was and is a different language from english others that scots is simply the collective name for the historic variants of english found in scotland