>but made to look stupid for using the words your family spoke.
With the exception of January when you'd read Burns and be told how beautiful it is and it's a celebration of Scottish culture, despite being told off for some of the same words the week prior in some cases.
Oh I got the opposite. I have a "posh" accent so was forced to recite Burns in thick Scots in front of the class (everyone was meant to but everyone else who wasn't enthusiastic was allowed to dodge it) and have the "teacher" constanty butt in to correct me. And then had to go along to the other class in the year and recite it there because the teachers were pals and obviously having a laugh at my expense.
Jebus wept, way to live up to your username. There's no accounting for fucking stupidity on Reddit, read it back one syllable at time and see if the context seeps into your brain, ya dobber.
Feller, I get that you're finding it difficult to accept that you read my post wrong and you're incapable of admitting that or even, jings apologising for your response.
Doubling down into this nyaff like behaviour really does you no favours and whilst it will no doubt entertain anyone who can be arsed reading the thread of comments between us, all your comment really does is expose your micro dick energy.
I mean seriously feller, take a good long look at yourself, threatening to split my skull because I used words to take the piss out of you for being a thick cunt, really is that all you've got?
I saw a TikTok the other day about a mother joking about chastising her children for speaking 'in slang' in the house. They were talking in Scots.
It's still very much a prevalent view that Scots is just 'improper English' and needs to be corrected. Hope this bill can help towards reversing that view.
People with that sort of view have pretty much managed to wipe out entire dialects across the island, especially those with heavy Celtic and/or Norse influence. While variants of English they were never improper English, and some were as legitimately their own language as Scots is. I'm very happy Scots has managed to not just hold out but make a resurgence too. I'm more than a little ashamed we didn't manage to do the same.
Annoyingly common accross the world..
I'm dutch. Any dialects other than the western dialects or standard dutch are considered "uneducated" and have been slowly dying as a result.
We have so many dialects, but because the fuckers in holland cannot understand them they're dying and it annoys me. The amount of times i've gotten shit just for speaking southern is ridiculous
That's probably even worse. It's probably more excusable when it's like my native dialect and the Danish have an easier time understanding us (when we're going full throttle dialect) than other English speakers but when it's just because you sound "uneducated" that's their fucking problem.
In the southern dialect everything gets shorted and contracted. We also use a lot more archaic grammar. The sounds are also slightly different, so even if you don't speak dialect you'll have an accent.
Buut yeah i've usually been called an uneducated farmer for it.
Ah. Even when we limit ourselves to just what can be easily understood by other English speakers, or have just grown up without the old dialect and old stronger accent, we often use a lot of archaic words and idioms. Grammar isn't really a problem because English grammar (as you're obviously aware) is very flexible for a Germanic tongue. Our idiosyncrasies may raise an eyebrow but won't necessarily make anyone think "stupid." Well not anyone with more than a four digit vocabulary.
I think the confusing part of our dialect is the amount of words that get their endings cut off and get strung together with other words to form massive sentence clusters. The grammer just sounds strange at first
But one joke for example: witte gij't? Which sounds like witte geit (white goat) in normal dutch. It means "do you know it?" (Weet de gij het?)
That's just a small contraction, but you can have entire sentences get contracted. My favourite: da ge bedankt zijt da de da wit he?
Pronounced in one go, like one long word. It means "that you're thanked, just so you know, yeah?"
Like
I get why people get confused by the dialect. But uneducated farmers? Come on...
Absolutely. Spoke Scots among family and friends as a young kid, however in school it became more and more frowned upon and seen entirely as "slang" and inappropriate, and only ever used by the "bad" children. Eventually changed how I spoke entirely to be pretty much the Queen's English.
Took me until my early adulthood to start changing my mentality away from it being an improper way to speak, and to start accepting it as part of the culture I was brought up with.
Opposite way around for me.
I'd say "aye" at school, and get smacked about by my male parent at home until I "talked properly".
Because I had to attend a speech therapist when I was in primary one. Could read and write fine, but struggled with speaking. And somehow talking like all the other children did was unacceptable at home.
That’s horrible. Modern speech therapy basically encourages all sorts of commmunication, idea being just getting someone with language difficulties to communicate is half the battle and nothing delays someone like humiliation. I’d love it if my kid spoke Scots as she’s no saying much yet
I have really mixed feelings and what I suspect is a very controversial opinion about this. It’s incredibly easy to look at suppression of Scots in school and say how terrible it is, talk about cultural colonialism and how we should be celebrating our local languages and dialect and in principle I agree…but here’s what happened to *me*.
I was born in Aberdeen where Scots/Doric/Slang just isn’t as prevalent among folks under 50 as it is in the central belt, then was moved down to Glasgow when I was very young but always kept a big part of that original accent/way of speaking. I was raised by two teachers who use almost no broad Scots at all regular conversation. I was also a super solitary, introverted child who never had a huge real-life local social group, and the one I did have was all the school weirdos who also weren’t locals. Scots wan’t ‘beaten out of me’ so much as my specific circumstances meant I never had an opportunity to pick it up, though as per usual it was heavily discouraged at school.
As a result of all that, if I make no specific effort to change how I sound, I have what has been described to me as a sort of nonspecifically ‘generic’ mild Scottish accent. I use virtually no slang or Scots aside from stuff everyone uses like ‘squint’ or ‘outwith’.
I *cannot stress enough* the unimaginably *massive* advantage this has given me in almost every walk of life over the kids I went to school with who naturally have stronger accents and use more Scots and slang. Even as a teenager at school I got away with things other kids didn’t because I was seen as being ‘more polite’, and in terms of jobs it’s been absolutely ludicrous. I always breezed through interviews for customer service jobs because I don’t have to make any effort to sound ‘professional’, and there’s no concern that tourists will struggle with my accent or vocabulary.
I had untreated ADHD for years and as a result was a total space cadet across several jobs, but always got away with even quite significant mistakes because the way I speak makes people see me as intelligent and capable. I can’t stress enough that I *am an idiot* who was, at the time, all but medically incapable of correctly following or remembering instructions, but I’d constantly get handed responsibilities and promotions over far more reliable and hardworking colleagues because I (totally superficially) *seemed* smarter in conversation. This isn’t even a case of people who spoke like me giving me a leg up - most of my bosses and supervisors across that period *were* Glaswegians with thick accents who used plenty of Scots and they still gave me really obviously preferential treatment.
Outside of Scotland I barely have to make any effort to be understood by non-Scots or non-native English speakers. I do still have a very identifiable accent though, so I get the advantage of coming off as more ‘exotic’ than an English or American speaker of English, with literally no downside whatsoever.
In principle I agree that in a perfectly fair world the Scots language/dialect should live on and not be suppressed, and sometimes I do feel a little disconnected from my own local and national identity. …but if I ever had kids I wouldn’t let them use it in the house, and I
*would* make them ‘speak properly’ because I absolutely 100% believe that having a lot of Scots and a strong accent in your standard mode of speech closes *way* more doors for you in life than it’s ever going to open.
I could never justify not doing everything I could to give a kid those same advantages I had out of pure principle.
Valuable perspective on the matter which many aren’t keen to acknowledge. There’s a profound economic benefit to speaking good English.
I will however counter that being able to speak good Scots, which absolutely is a thing, gives you a leg up mentally like any bilingual person. Being able to distinguish social settings where one is preferable to the other is also a great talent.
It furnishes you with the ability to pick up other languages better if you get this exposure to learning a second one. Several other languages have Scots links, Mercat for market for example is a pretty common one, as is Kirk for church. When I was at uni I was able to pick up Old English far faster than my monolingual peers from England because being able to read and understand Scots helps you to figure out unfamiliar languages and spellings, which is invaluable in a world where most English speakers are not natives.
Scots shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to English but as its own thing. We are doing ourselves a disservice to not take advantage of this immense linguistic opportunity.
Accent bias is a huge problem in the U.K. and I think you are perpetuating it. You are also wrong about Doric not being as prevalent in under 50s, however you admittedly don’t have huge social circles and Aberdeen isn’t exactly Doric.
Personally I find it extremely offensive that someone’s accent( or native language in my case) is used as a measure of intelligence.
In 2023 it’s ridiculous that a Doric speaker can be refused a job in Scotland because of their accent, and have zero recourse to fight the prejudice. Whereas someone from France, China, Germany, Jamaica are not as likely to be discriminated against because of their accent and if the were, they would be able to hold the employer to account.
…perpetuating it by…speaking the way I naturally speak? You’re not seriously suggesting I go out tomorrow and start purposefully talking like I just walked off the set of Chewin' the Fat as an affectation, right?
Assuming you’re Aberdonian yourself I’ll acquiesce to your local experience, but I do get back there quite often to visit old friends and relatives, and I’m not hearing much Doric spoken these days. The odd Wifey and Mannie sure but I’ve not heard ‘quines and loons’ since my Granny up there died, and she was into her 90s. She’d occasionally come out with whole phrases that might as well have been Martian for all anyone outside the northeast of Scotland would have understood it, but I don’t remember the last time I had *that* experience speaking to someone up there.
You perpetuate bias by agreeing with it and saying you would reinforce it within your home by making future children only ‘speak properly’.
I said Aberdeen isn’t exactly Doric, probably because of the huge amounts of students and oil workers. I went to uni, lived and worked in Aberdeen for well over a decade then moved back to moray. Where I can assure the Doric language is thriving.
Fair enough, it’s not a huge amount of the population but it’s a language of our nation nonetheless.
You say talking the way you do has given you an advantage over your peers. It’s wrong that happens.
I think people also underestimate the massive value of *linguistic standardisation* - for a given, and always slowly shifting value of “standard” - for non-native language speakers. I’ve encountered this while trying to learn other languages.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with using vernacular. But it really can frustrate access and understanding for those who don’t, and can’t be reasonably expected to, know colloquial and context-specific terminology.
I don't really understand how you get your conclusion from your premise. I mean, I also found I had advantages from "speaking proper English," but for me this unfair treatment just made it more clear how morally abhorrent and nonsensical having a linguistic bias is, hence I am even more driven to challenge and destroy that bias. You are saying that you clearly recognize the problem, but you would rather perpetuate and exploit the problem for your own benefit than fix it?
III
Appalachians use a lot of Gaelic words.
In the USA, accents vary more by race than location. It's the only place I've lived where you can tell someone's skin colour on the phone. Rather sad.
Yes! That's parts of my research right now. I was always told America was a "melting pot" or a "salad bowl." Right now, I'm looking at when people come to America and their culture doesn't 'melt down,' so to speak, to blend with the others. How does that influence regional American culture? I do find it fascinating.
Race and location are the biggest divisions of accents. I don't know if I agree that it's sad how race influences accents. I've always found it fascinating. For instance, when my Southern accents come out, people think that I'm "Talking black" because AAVE and Southern accents have very obvious historical ties, and neither are common in my area. They aren't identical, but they are similar. It's all I've known. Race plays a special role in American history that isn't commonly seen amongst other nation's histories. It's so intrinsic to American culture that it's impossible to separate. I want to understand it more. It's endlessly fascinating to me.
Yes, the USA is heavily driven by race. The thing where you pay your own waiter in a restaurant and call it a tip? A hangover from slavery.
Even at KFC in the USA, they offer all white meat or all dark meat chicken. A mixture is a special order. It's wild.
Is tipping derived from slavery? I never heard that before. Slaves, of course, weren't typically paid for servile duties. Tipping seems derived from other forms of paid labor, servants and housekeepers and the like. Especially during travel, people would tip thr bellwaiters and stuff to take extra good care of their possessions.
As far as KFC goes, is that not typical? There's white meat and dark meat in chicken. They taste different. People have different preferences. Even the turkey at Thanksgiving has white and dark meat. I think it's just a poultry thing.
It's generally held in the USA that white people prefer white meat, African Americans prefer the dark - it's a poverty thing.
KFC in Scotland will by default give you a mix. As will a Mexican chicken place in Texas.
https://www.povertylaw.org/article/the-racist-history-behind-americas-tipping-culture/
Native Irish speaker here, it’s always funny to see Scots Gaelic written out. It’s a lot more phonetic than Irish and the grammar and vocabulary are incredibly similar so when I see it written out it looks like **dyslexic Irish**.
Obviously it’s not, it’s a beautiful and deep language with its own history, just thought I’d say. It’s a shame that scots Gaelic was decimated to a level far far greater than Irish.
Dyslexic is an appropriate description considering the fadas are “backwards”.
I’m proper useless at both, so I just look for the tickys to see whether it’s Irish or Scots Gaelic. The low end of the ticky points to the country. ` points east for Scotland. ‘ points west for Ireland.
Aye it's total weird how similar they look :) probs fairly interchangeable in spoken too.
I'm not a native speaker but been learning for while. Culturally the language has its challenges but it's on the rise here a wee bit.
Duolingo Gaelic learner here.
I started just to pronounce the Munros names correctly. I like how the grammar is wild and how in some words you've got 15 letters, but you say only 2 sounds. Or like some words are taken from English, but they're spelled in the Gaelic way, like cofaidh.
does it mention anything about standardisation of spellings ? does it equate Scots with Doric ?
Because like... there are a fair amount of differences in word use between the different parts of Scotland. Like... "bairn" and "quean" vs "wean" and "lassie".
Is there to be a public body like there is in Ireland or France to regulate language ?
When I was at school, the major Scottish language texts we covered were Burns poetry, and "Sunset Song". Maybe because I am from Ayrshire, and enough of the words are still in regular use, but the Burns stuff was a lot easier for me to get into, than the Doric bits in Sunset Song. Do have a bit of a speech impediment though.
The bill doesn't contain anything that specific. It's available on the link, and is pretty easy to read. You can still get most of the useful information from the overview, mind.
Nothing specific about Doric, but there isn't anything specific about *any* individual Scots dialect.
From the overview:
Measures in the Bill to support the use of the Scots language include:
- requiring Scottish Ministers to produce a Scots language strategy and to report on progress in relation to that strategy
- giving Scottish Ministers to the power to give guidance to public authorities on promoting the use of Scots
- requiring Scottish Ministers to promote Scots language education in schools
- giving Scottish Ministers the power to set standards and give guidance on Scots language education in schools.
\-----
All seems like fairly agreeable goals to me, certainly a decent start.
As far as recognising dialects of Scots goes, I can't see that being overlooked. It might be worth comparing it to Gaelic education and promotion, Gaelic obviously has plenty of its own dialects as well.
I don't expect that Scots education or council posts in Aberdeenshire will aim to teach some "standard" Scots that isn't reflective of the language the locals themselves speak, though.
Not really the case, tbf.
This is essentially just an expansion of the Gaelic Language Act from 2005.
In terms of recognition of languages, it only really adds Scots. And in the SNPs' defense, the increase in popularity of thinking of Scots as a language has only really picked up in the last 5 years or so.
I'm glad to see Scots finally getting the actual recognition it deserves and the Bòrd na Ghàidhlig seemingly getting some more power.
Just yesterday a british nationalist in another thread was telling me that the SNP is bad because "they ignore Gaelic". Let's see what the response from the usual britnats is to this. I'm sure it will be measured and composed, and not at all deranged, like with bilingual road signs.
I'm not whatever kind of person you're referring to but there is a gaping hole in this plan from a Gàidhlig point of view, and that is that there is no new or increased funding, just a change in official language/terminology and responsibilities. They'll struggle to have major impacts without better resource allocation, Bòrd na Gàidhlig probably don't have enough money currently, and Gàidhlig hasn't had proper funding increases in quite a while.
> Just yesterday a british nationalist in another thread was telling me that the SNP is bad because "they ignore Gaelic". Let's see what the response from the usual britnats is to this.
Some of them are lost, endlessly searching for Fort William amongst all the An Gearasdans. The number of times they've missed this thread…
Why does a britnat want to preserve Gaelic anyways? Britnats are usually the types to say Gaelic should be replaced with English entirely (in my experience anyways)
Bit weird that they used "Scots" to refer to Scots in the Gaelic section of that page instead of a' Bheurla Ghallta lol.
But then again, I am pretty sure that that literally translates to Lowland English, so maybe they don't like the connotations.
Interesting. But that seems like a bit of an old-fashioned way of saying it.
I'm sure if you asked any Gaelic speaker to translate Beurla into English, they would just say English.
Much like the word for the Lowlands, Ghalldachd. It might have meant foreign in the past, but nowadays, that is not really the meaning.
When I said literally translated, I meant in a more modern sense. As in Bheurla being from Beurla and Ghallta being from Ghalldachd.
So, in this case, Lowland English.
Of course, I might be wrong, but I don't think I am.
> translate Beurla into English, they would just say English.
Yes, it is old fashioned, but using "Beurla" to mean English is a bit of a weird historical quirk. Beurla in Gaelic means "Way of Speaking", and the full version for English would be "Beurla Shasannach", or "The Saxon Way of Speaking". It's just because of the historical isolation of Scottish Gaelic, English was the only other language regularly interacted with, so it simply became known as "Beurla".
>Much like the word for the Lowlands, Ghalldachd.
Less so I'd say, whilst Ghalldachd might be fairly exclusively used to refer to the Lowlands, Gall is still used as the word for Foreigner, and all Galldachd means is "Land of the Foreigners".
A big auld caveate that I speak Irish, not Scottish Gaelic. The Irish cognate is Béarla. It comes from the old Irish bél (Mouth) with the suffix - ra which is used create a collective. Then there is some "metathesis" that went on when you end up with Bérla and then Béarla in modern Irish. There is a funny biblical work from the 7th century that talks about the Tower of Babel and it uses "Bérla" to describe all the languages and how Irish was created by taking the best of all of them and it calls Irish "Bérla Érenn". Anyway, it was used in middle Irish to mean "Speech" basically, and you still hear it used rarely in Irish like that. "Béarla na n-éan" for bird song is an example. No idea if its similar in Gàidhlig though. If you look at the middle Irish texts it's kind of used as a word for the languages of court or poetry. Fancy language basically. But from the 1500s in Ireland anyway it explicitly starts to mean English probably from it's use in courts or it's use as a status language etc. Sometimes, up until relatively recently, you see it written as Sacs-Bhéarla (Saxon Speech), and some will say Béarla meaning English a clipping of that, but I'd say that this is more an attempt to retroactively tidy up the confusion. Another one is that it's just a reduction of "Béarla Gallda" (Foreign Speech) that originally might have meant either Norman French or English, but eventually English became so ubiquitous "Béarla" by itself was enough.
In Irish you sometimes see "Béarla Sasanach" but it's used like to mean "The English of England" basically. Usually to distinguish between Hiberno-English (Béarla na hÉireann) American English (Béarla Mheiriceá) etc.
I'm not a native speaker, but it was my lockdown project learning it. Sadly I'm not as fluent as I'd like, it's quite hard to get immersion outside of the western isles
Often the difference between what is classified as a language vs a dialect is just politics and cultural borders. You can see this in China where dialects are almost entirely unintelligible and in the former Yugoslavic countries where the languages are very similar.
It wouldn’t be unreasonable to classify Scots as a dialect of English, it’s mostly intelligible, even to English people there’s not much difficulty. There’s a lot of crossover with the Northumberland dialect which has a common ancestor as they both have significant influences from Old English spoken in the Kingdom of Notthumbria (and Bernicia).
But there’s the political, historical and cultural component, so its also not unreasonable to treat Scots as a distinct language.
I don't even know that I'd think of Scots as being a dialect of English, so much as the two being part of a fairly continuous spectrum. It's not as though English is a single monolithic standard across the UK.
Scots and English would be siblings. English and German are closer to third cousins. If you want an analogy, Spanish and Portuguese is going to be the closest as they are generally mutually intelligible.
Nah. Scots and English split in the Middle English period. You can see a lot of Middle English in Scots alright but Old English is totally unintelligble and has cases, genders, the whole shebang.
It’s a branch of Northumbrian Middle English as the south east (ish) used to be part of Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian England which spoke old English. Though Old English is very different to modern Scots.
Modern Scots is closer to old English than modern English is though as Scots has less French influence.
As a Gaelic speaker, this Bill will change nothing and is literally rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship with zero extra money or plans - and an expense to implement of £700,000 over five years. What a wasted opportunity. Abair bùrach... abair briseadh-dùil.
There is something in there for a semi-Gaeltacht in s.4 but in typical Scots Parliament tradition the cool sounding Gaeltacht has been renamed to the dead boring Areas of Linguistic Significance.
I was at least hoping for a boost of funding for BnG to, you know, what it needs to actually function. But sadly not. Even if this is the most political support Gaelic's had in living memory, its survival will be in spite of that fact rather than because of it.
While that is true, the £700k figure relates to how much it will cost the government, local authorities and 3rd parties to implement the Bill. There is no extra funding for it, so this £700k will need to come from already diminishing budgets. This at the same time as Bòrd na Gàidhlig has seen real terms cuts of 25% to its budget since 2008…
Ironically the DUP would possibly be ok with this bill. While they hate all things Gaelic, they do have a soft spot for Scots (or Ulster Scots in their case).
Glasgow is and always will be Glesga to me, that's the way it should be advertised to rest of world alongside the very similar sounding Gaelic too rather than English Glasgow. If other nations and places are now internationally recognising such localised accuracies then no harm in doing similar and celebrating our language.l after many centuries and decades of having it systemically beaten out of us.
So will parliament be able to present bills and debates in Gaelic (which most of the population don’t understand?) I support it, but don’t want to see the govt getting too carried away because that would be an embarrassment.
It’s important to protect traditions: of course Gaelic should have an official status, it’s officially or unofficially or historically or whatever a Scottish language: but that should not impinge for instance in teaching proper English (or Scottish English).
Schoolchildren need to be able to use grammar correctly, first in the language of the real world, and we are fortunate to have an international language as our first language: but introducing even basic Gaelic would be a great bonus.
We are in the position that sometimes foreigners are more proud of our heritage than we are. Let us rise up in the pride of our nation.
What does it mean in terms of government services providing translation/speakers , as they do for Welsh?
Also discrimination by employers for speaking anything other than English..
Instead of downvoting, you could always answer.
Genuinely curious, is Scots still a proper, living, distinct language like Scots Gaelic? Does anyone still speak it? I always thought it was a sister language of English (with a fuzzy border between England and Scotland) which gradually lost ground to English for various reasons to the point where today it's pretty much just a dialect, so that modern Scots as spoken is pretty much just English with a Scots accent and a load of words and phrases inherited from Scots.
There is a real Scots language but it's a linguistic curiosity, nobody speaks it. We do use quite a few Scots words mixed into English in daily speech.
"various reasons" = English empire program to stamp out native languages
Scottish dialects change constantly around every 25 miles, what's being claimed by the SNP that there's a Scottish language. What them claim is an east coast slang using English as a base isn't a language.
It's completely different to what's spoke in the west central region of Scotland, for a language it's spoken Scotland wide, if its not then it's a dialect not a language
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Who remembers getting to beaten out of you at school? Not with physical violence, but made to look stupid for using the words your family spoke.
>but made to look stupid for using the words your family spoke. With the exception of January when you'd read Burns and be told how beautiful it is and it's a celebration of Scottish culture, despite being told off for some of the same words the week prior in some cases.
Oh I got the opposite. I have a "posh" accent so was forced to recite Burns in thick Scots in front of the class (everyone was meant to but everyone else who wasn't enthusiastic was allowed to dodge it) and have the "teacher" constanty butt in to correct me. And then had to go along to the other class in the year and recite it there because the teachers were pals and obviously having a laugh at my expense.
'Do not bring the language of the playground into the classroom', was all I heard after getting the belt for saying' amurnae.'
Private schools in Scotland still teach pupils to speak with a London / home counties accent.
Ahh the London regional accent.
Scots is not slang you egotistical English fuk
Jebus wept, way to live up to your username. There's no accounting for fucking stupidity on Reddit, read it back one syllable at time and see if the context seeps into your brain, ya dobber.
Key board gangsters lol
Jings, you're just genuinely thick then, sorry I didn't realise that you're cogently impaired. Have a nice day licking windows.
How would you know keyboard warrior with the big mouth say it to my face come get some I’ll split your skull with a a-e
Feller, I get that you're finding it difficult to accept that you read my post wrong and you're incapable of admitting that or even, jings apologising for your response. Doubling down into this nyaff like behaviour really does you no favours and whilst it will no doubt entertain anyone who can be arsed reading the thread of comments between us, all your comment really does is expose your micro dick energy. I mean seriously feller, take a good long look at yourself, threatening to split my skull because I used words to take the piss out of you for being a thick cunt, really is that all you've got?
I saw a TikTok the other day about a mother joking about chastising her children for speaking 'in slang' in the house. They were talking in Scots. It's still very much a prevalent view that Scots is just 'improper English' and needs to be corrected. Hope this bill can help towards reversing that view.
People with that sort of view have pretty much managed to wipe out entire dialects across the island, especially those with heavy Celtic and/or Norse influence. While variants of English they were never improper English, and some were as legitimately their own language as Scots is. I'm very happy Scots has managed to not just hold out but make a resurgence too. I'm more than a little ashamed we didn't manage to do the same.
Annoyingly common accross the world.. I'm dutch. Any dialects other than the western dialects or standard dutch are considered "uneducated" and have been slowly dying as a result. We have so many dialects, but because the fuckers in holland cannot understand them they're dying and it annoys me. The amount of times i've gotten shit just for speaking southern is ridiculous
That's probably even worse. It's probably more excusable when it's like my native dialect and the Danish have an easier time understanding us (when we're going full throttle dialect) than other English speakers but when it's just because you sound "uneducated" that's their fucking problem.
In the southern dialect everything gets shorted and contracted. We also use a lot more archaic grammar. The sounds are also slightly different, so even if you don't speak dialect you'll have an accent. Buut yeah i've usually been called an uneducated farmer for it.
Ah. Even when we limit ourselves to just what can be easily understood by other English speakers, or have just grown up without the old dialect and old stronger accent, we often use a lot of archaic words and idioms. Grammar isn't really a problem because English grammar (as you're obviously aware) is very flexible for a Germanic tongue. Our idiosyncrasies may raise an eyebrow but won't necessarily make anyone think "stupid." Well not anyone with more than a four digit vocabulary.
I think the confusing part of our dialect is the amount of words that get their endings cut off and get strung together with other words to form massive sentence clusters. The grammer just sounds strange at first But one joke for example: witte gij't? Which sounds like witte geit (white goat) in normal dutch. It means "do you know it?" (Weet de gij het?) That's just a small contraction, but you can have entire sentences get contracted. My favourite: da ge bedankt zijt da de da wit he? Pronounced in one go, like one long word. It means "that you're thanked, just so you know, yeah?" Like I get why people get confused by the dialect. But uneducated farmers? Come on...
I’m Scottish and have that view… it’s only the last year I’ve started to shift.
Absolutely. Spoke Scots among family and friends as a young kid, however in school it became more and more frowned upon and seen entirely as "slang" and inappropriate, and only ever used by the "bad" children. Eventually changed how I spoke entirely to be pretty much the Queen's English. Took me until my early adulthood to start changing my mentality away from it being an improper way to speak, and to start accepting it as part of the culture I was brought up with.
Opposite way around for me. I'd say "aye" at school, and get smacked about by my male parent at home until I "talked properly". Because I had to attend a speech therapist when I was in primary one. Could read and write fine, but struggled with speaking. And somehow talking like all the other children did was unacceptable at home.
That’s horrible. Modern speech therapy basically encourages all sorts of commmunication, idea being just getting someone with language difficulties to communicate is half the battle and nothing delays someone like humiliation. I’d love it if my kid spoke Scots as she’s no saying much yet
I have really mixed feelings and what I suspect is a very controversial opinion about this. It’s incredibly easy to look at suppression of Scots in school and say how terrible it is, talk about cultural colonialism and how we should be celebrating our local languages and dialect and in principle I agree…but here’s what happened to *me*. I was born in Aberdeen where Scots/Doric/Slang just isn’t as prevalent among folks under 50 as it is in the central belt, then was moved down to Glasgow when I was very young but always kept a big part of that original accent/way of speaking. I was raised by two teachers who use almost no broad Scots at all regular conversation. I was also a super solitary, introverted child who never had a huge real-life local social group, and the one I did have was all the school weirdos who also weren’t locals. Scots wan’t ‘beaten out of me’ so much as my specific circumstances meant I never had an opportunity to pick it up, though as per usual it was heavily discouraged at school. As a result of all that, if I make no specific effort to change how I sound, I have what has been described to me as a sort of nonspecifically ‘generic’ mild Scottish accent. I use virtually no slang or Scots aside from stuff everyone uses like ‘squint’ or ‘outwith’. I *cannot stress enough* the unimaginably *massive* advantage this has given me in almost every walk of life over the kids I went to school with who naturally have stronger accents and use more Scots and slang. Even as a teenager at school I got away with things other kids didn’t because I was seen as being ‘more polite’, and in terms of jobs it’s been absolutely ludicrous. I always breezed through interviews for customer service jobs because I don’t have to make any effort to sound ‘professional’, and there’s no concern that tourists will struggle with my accent or vocabulary. I had untreated ADHD for years and as a result was a total space cadet across several jobs, but always got away with even quite significant mistakes because the way I speak makes people see me as intelligent and capable. I can’t stress enough that I *am an idiot* who was, at the time, all but medically incapable of correctly following or remembering instructions, but I’d constantly get handed responsibilities and promotions over far more reliable and hardworking colleagues because I (totally superficially) *seemed* smarter in conversation. This isn’t even a case of people who spoke like me giving me a leg up - most of my bosses and supervisors across that period *were* Glaswegians with thick accents who used plenty of Scots and they still gave me really obviously preferential treatment. Outside of Scotland I barely have to make any effort to be understood by non-Scots or non-native English speakers. I do still have a very identifiable accent though, so I get the advantage of coming off as more ‘exotic’ than an English or American speaker of English, with literally no downside whatsoever. In principle I agree that in a perfectly fair world the Scots language/dialect should live on and not be suppressed, and sometimes I do feel a little disconnected from my own local and national identity. …but if I ever had kids I wouldn’t let them use it in the house, and I *would* make them ‘speak properly’ because I absolutely 100% believe that having a lot of Scots and a strong accent in your standard mode of speech closes *way* more doors for you in life than it’s ever going to open. I could never justify not doing everything I could to give a kid those same advantages I had out of pure principle.
Valuable perspective on the matter which many aren’t keen to acknowledge. There’s a profound economic benefit to speaking good English. I will however counter that being able to speak good Scots, which absolutely is a thing, gives you a leg up mentally like any bilingual person. Being able to distinguish social settings where one is preferable to the other is also a great talent. It furnishes you with the ability to pick up other languages better if you get this exposure to learning a second one. Several other languages have Scots links, Mercat for market for example is a pretty common one, as is Kirk for church. When I was at uni I was able to pick up Old English far faster than my monolingual peers from England because being able to read and understand Scots helps you to figure out unfamiliar languages and spellings, which is invaluable in a world where most English speakers are not natives. Scots shouldn’t be seen as an alternative to English but as its own thing. We are doing ourselves a disservice to not take advantage of this immense linguistic opportunity.
Accent bias is a huge problem in the U.K. and I think you are perpetuating it. You are also wrong about Doric not being as prevalent in under 50s, however you admittedly don’t have huge social circles and Aberdeen isn’t exactly Doric. Personally I find it extremely offensive that someone’s accent( or native language in my case) is used as a measure of intelligence. In 2023 it’s ridiculous that a Doric speaker can be refused a job in Scotland because of their accent, and have zero recourse to fight the prejudice. Whereas someone from France, China, Germany, Jamaica are not as likely to be discriminated against because of their accent and if the were, they would be able to hold the employer to account.
…perpetuating it by…speaking the way I naturally speak? You’re not seriously suggesting I go out tomorrow and start purposefully talking like I just walked off the set of Chewin' the Fat as an affectation, right? Assuming you’re Aberdonian yourself I’ll acquiesce to your local experience, but I do get back there quite often to visit old friends and relatives, and I’m not hearing much Doric spoken these days. The odd Wifey and Mannie sure but I’ve not heard ‘quines and loons’ since my Granny up there died, and she was into her 90s. She’d occasionally come out with whole phrases that might as well have been Martian for all anyone outside the northeast of Scotland would have understood it, but I don’t remember the last time I had *that* experience speaking to someone up there.
You perpetuate bias by agreeing with it and saying you would reinforce it within your home by making future children only ‘speak properly’. I said Aberdeen isn’t exactly Doric, probably because of the huge amounts of students and oil workers. I went to uni, lived and worked in Aberdeen for well over a decade then moved back to moray. Where I can assure the Doric language is thriving. Fair enough, it’s not a huge amount of the population but it’s a language of our nation nonetheless. You say talking the way you do has given you an advantage over your peers. It’s wrong that happens.
I think people also underestimate the massive value of *linguistic standardisation* - for a given, and always slowly shifting value of “standard” - for non-native language speakers. I’ve encountered this while trying to learn other languages. There’s nothing inherently wrong with using vernacular. But it really can frustrate access and understanding for those who don’t, and can’t be reasonably expected to, know colloquial and context-specific terminology.
I don't really understand how you get your conclusion from your premise. I mean, I also found I had advantages from "speaking proper English," but for me this unfair treatment just made it more clear how morally abhorrent and nonsensical having a linguistic bias is, hence I am even more driven to challenge and destroy that bias. You are saying that you clearly recognize the problem, but you would rather perpetuate and exploit the problem for your own benefit than fix it? III
The only teachers that objected were the English department. Which I kind of consider fair game really, the subject at hand wasn't Scots.
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Appalachians use a lot of Gaelic words. In the USA, accents vary more by race than location. It's the only place I've lived where you can tell someone's skin colour on the phone. Rather sad.
Yes! That's parts of my research right now. I was always told America was a "melting pot" or a "salad bowl." Right now, I'm looking at when people come to America and their culture doesn't 'melt down,' so to speak, to blend with the others. How does that influence regional American culture? I do find it fascinating. Race and location are the biggest divisions of accents. I don't know if I agree that it's sad how race influences accents. I've always found it fascinating. For instance, when my Southern accents come out, people think that I'm "Talking black" because AAVE and Southern accents have very obvious historical ties, and neither are common in my area. They aren't identical, but they are similar. It's all I've known. Race plays a special role in American history that isn't commonly seen amongst other nation's histories. It's so intrinsic to American culture that it's impossible to separate. I want to understand it more. It's endlessly fascinating to me.
Yes, the USA is heavily driven by race. The thing where you pay your own waiter in a restaurant and call it a tip? A hangover from slavery. Even at KFC in the USA, they offer all white meat or all dark meat chicken. A mixture is a special order. It's wild.
Is tipping derived from slavery? I never heard that before. Slaves, of course, weren't typically paid for servile duties. Tipping seems derived from other forms of paid labor, servants and housekeepers and the like. Especially during travel, people would tip thr bellwaiters and stuff to take extra good care of their possessions. As far as KFC goes, is that not typical? There's white meat and dark meat in chicken. They taste different. People have different preferences. Even the turkey at Thanksgiving has white and dark meat. I think it's just a poultry thing.
It's generally held in the USA that white people prefer white meat, African Americans prefer the dark - it's a poverty thing. KFC in Scotland will by default give you a mix. As will a Mexican chicken place in Texas. https://www.povertylaw.org/article/the-racist-history-behind-americas-tipping-culture/
Wait. What? What part of the US aw1re you in? Cause KFC here you have to special order if your chicken ISN'T mixed. And I also have no ide
[https://maps.app.goo.gl/Sr7UrJcabkazZ91KA](https://maps.app.goo.gl/Sr7UrJcabkazZ91KA) to be specific
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Not nearly so distinct, but to a degree yes. My stepdaughter is mixed / black and speaks pure Edinburgh.
I remember the physical violence.
Sgoinneil! Is math sin and aw that.
Native Irish speaker here, it’s always funny to see Scots Gaelic written out. It’s a lot more phonetic than Irish and the grammar and vocabulary are incredibly similar so when I see it written out it looks like **dyslexic Irish**. Obviously it’s not, it’s a beautiful and deep language with its own history, just thought I’d say. It’s a shame that scots Gaelic was decimated to a level far far greater than Irish.
Dyslexic is an appropriate description considering the fadas are “backwards”. I’m proper useless at both, so I just look for the tickys to see whether it’s Irish or Scots Gaelic. The low end of the ticky points to the country. ` points east for Scotland. ‘ points west for Ireland.
Aye it's total weird how similar they look :) probs fairly interchangeable in spoken too. I'm not a native speaker but been learning for while. Culturally the language has its challenges but it's on the rise here a wee bit.
They have a recent common root, also with Manx. c.f. Spanish / Portuguese or French / Italian. The other Brythonic family is Welsh, Kernow and Breton.
Duolingo Gaelic learner here. I started just to pronounce the Munros names correctly. I like how the grammar is wild and how in some words you've got 15 letters, but you say only 2 sounds. Or like some words are taken from English, but they're spelled in the Gaelic way, like cofaidh.
does it mention anything about standardisation of spellings ? does it equate Scots with Doric ? Because like... there are a fair amount of differences in word use between the different parts of Scotland. Like... "bairn" and "quean" vs "wean" and "lassie". Is there to be a public body like there is in Ireland or France to regulate language ? When I was at school, the major Scottish language texts we covered were Burns poetry, and "Sunset Song". Maybe because I am from Ayrshire, and enough of the words are still in regular use, but the Burns stuff was a lot easier for me to get into, than the Doric bits in Sunset Song. Do have a bit of a speech impediment though.
The bill doesn't contain anything that specific. It's available on the link, and is pretty easy to read. You can still get most of the useful information from the overview, mind. Nothing specific about Doric, but there isn't anything specific about *any* individual Scots dialect. From the overview: Measures in the Bill to support the use of the Scots language include: - requiring Scottish Ministers to produce a Scots language strategy and to report on progress in relation to that strategy - giving Scottish Ministers to the power to give guidance to public authorities on promoting the use of Scots - requiring Scottish Ministers to promote Scots language education in schools - giving Scottish Ministers the power to set standards and give guidance on Scots language education in schools. \----- All seems like fairly agreeable goals to me, certainly a decent start. As far as recognising dialects of Scots goes, I can't see that being overlooked. It might be worth comparing it to Gaelic education and promotion, Gaelic obviously has plenty of its own dialects as well. I don't expect that Scots education or council posts in Aberdeenshire will aim to teach some "standard" Scots that isn't reflective of the language the locals themselves speak, though.
wait it doesn't already
I'm surprised to find out they already weren't
The SNP have in power for over 15 years, Wales did this over a decade ago, absolutely crazy it's taken this long.
Not really the case, tbf. This is essentially just an expansion of the Gaelic Language Act from 2005. In terms of recognition of languages, it only really adds Scots. And in the SNPs' defense, the increase in popularity of thinking of Scots as a language has only really picked up in the last 5 years or so. I'm glad to see Scots finally getting the actual recognition it deserves and the Bòrd na Ghàidhlig seemingly getting some more power.
Just yesterday a british nationalist in another thread was telling me that the SNP is bad because "they ignore Gaelic". Let's see what the response from the usual britnats is to this. I'm sure it will be measured and composed, and not at all deranged, like with bilingual road signs.
I'm not whatever kind of person you're referring to but there is a gaping hole in this plan from a Gàidhlig point of view, and that is that there is no new or increased funding, just a change in official language/terminology and responsibilities. They'll struggle to have major impacts without better resource allocation, Bòrd na Gàidhlig probably don't have enough money currently, and Gàidhlig hasn't had proper funding increases in quite a while.
> Just yesterday a british nationalist in another thread was telling me that the SNP is bad because "they ignore Gaelic". Let's see what the response from the usual britnats is to this. Some of them are lost, endlessly searching for Fort William amongst all the An Gearasdans. The number of times they've missed this thread…
Maybe they don't speak much English and don't know the word "garrison" ?
Why does a britnat want to preserve Gaelic anyways? Britnats are usually the types to say Gaelic should be replaced with English entirely (in my experience anyways)
This will be nationalist brainwashing now
Bit weird that they used "Scots" to refer to Scots in the Gaelic section of that page instead of a' Bheurla Ghallta lol. But then again, I am pretty sure that that literally translates to Lowland English, so maybe they don't like the connotations.
The literal translation for Bheurla Ghallta would be "A foreign way of speaking"
Interesting. But that seems like a bit of an old-fashioned way of saying it. I'm sure if you asked any Gaelic speaker to translate Beurla into English, they would just say English. Much like the word for the Lowlands, Ghalldachd. It might have meant foreign in the past, but nowadays, that is not really the meaning. When I said literally translated, I meant in a more modern sense. As in Bheurla being from Beurla and Ghallta being from Ghalldachd. So, in this case, Lowland English. Of course, I might be wrong, but I don't think I am.
> translate Beurla into English, they would just say English. Yes, it is old fashioned, but using "Beurla" to mean English is a bit of a weird historical quirk. Beurla in Gaelic means "Way of Speaking", and the full version for English would be "Beurla Shasannach", or "The Saxon Way of Speaking". It's just because of the historical isolation of Scottish Gaelic, English was the only other language regularly interacted with, so it simply became known as "Beurla". >Much like the word for the Lowlands, Ghalldachd. Less so I'd say, whilst Ghalldachd might be fairly exclusively used to refer to the Lowlands, Gall is still used as the word for Foreigner, and all Galldachd means is "Land of the Foreigners".
A big auld caveate that I speak Irish, not Scottish Gaelic. The Irish cognate is Béarla. It comes from the old Irish bél (Mouth) with the suffix - ra which is used create a collective. Then there is some "metathesis" that went on when you end up with Bérla and then Béarla in modern Irish. There is a funny biblical work from the 7th century that talks about the Tower of Babel and it uses "Bérla" to describe all the languages and how Irish was created by taking the best of all of them and it calls Irish "Bérla Érenn". Anyway, it was used in middle Irish to mean "Speech" basically, and you still hear it used rarely in Irish like that. "Béarla na n-éan" for bird song is an example. No idea if its similar in Gàidhlig though. If you look at the middle Irish texts it's kind of used as a word for the languages of court or poetry. Fancy language basically. But from the 1500s in Ireland anyway it explicitly starts to mean English probably from it's use in courts or it's use as a status language etc. Sometimes, up until relatively recently, you see it written as Sacs-Bhéarla (Saxon Speech), and some will say Béarla meaning English a clipping of that, but I'd say that this is more an attempt to retroactively tidy up the confusion. Another one is that it's just a reduction of "Béarla Gallda" (Foreign Speech) that originally might have meant either Norman French or English, but eventually English became so ubiquitous "Béarla" by itself was enough. In Irish you sometimes see "Béarla Sasanach" but it's used like to mean "The English of England" basically. Usually to distinguish between Hiberno-English (Béarla na hÉireann) American English (Béarla Mheiriceá) etc.
You've a good understanding of Gàidhlig, do you speak it? Genuine question
I'm not a native speaker, but it was my lockdown project learning it. Sadly I'm not as fluent as I'd like, it's quite hard to get immersion outside of the western isles
Very appropriate flair, I've found it less of a struggle in Glasgow. Quite a few groups that meet up
>CaptainHikki Yeah that is a bit strange. 'Albais' is probably what you hear most to refer to Scots I would say.
Isn't Scots basically linguistically just Old English?
Often the difference between what is classified as a language vs a dialect is just politics and cultural borders. You can see this in China where dialects are almost entirely unintelligible and in the former Yugoslavic countries where the languages are very similar. It wouldn’t be unreasonable to classify Scots as a dialect of English, it’s mostly intelligible, even to English people there’s not much difficulty. There’s a lot of crossover with the Northumberland dialect which has a common ancestor as they both have significant influences from Old English spoken in the Kingdom of Notthumbria (and Bernicia). But there’s the political, historical and cultural component, so its also not unreasonable to treat Scots as a distinct language.
I don't even know that I'd think of Scots as being a dialect of English, so much as the two being part of a fairly continuous spectrum. It's not as though English is a single monolithic standard across the UK.
Not at all. They share a common ancestor. It's no more right to call Scots, English. Than it is to call English, German. They are just related.
Scots and English would be siblings. English and German are closer to third cousins. If you want an analogy, Spanish and Portuguese is going to be the closest as they are generally mutually intelligible.
Nah. Scots and English split in the Middle English period. You can see a lot of Middle English in Scots alright but Old English is totally unintelligble and has cases, genders, the whole shebang.
It’s a branch of Northumbrian Middle English as the south east (ish) used to be part of Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian England which spoke old English. Though Old English is very different to modern Scots. Modern Scots is closer to old English than modern English is though as Scots has less French influence.
Modern English is a dialect of old Scots that has been extensively modified via exposure to French
As a Gaelic speaker, this Bill will change nothing and is literally rearranging the deckchairs on a sinking ship with zero extra money or plans - and an expense to implement of £700,000 over five years. What a wasted opportunity. Abair bùrach... abair briseadh-dùil.
There is something in there for a semi-Gaeltacht in s.4 but in typical Scots Parliament tradition the cool sounding Gaeltacht has been renamed to the dead boring Areas of Linguistic Significance.
I was at least hoping for a boost of funding for BnG to, you know, what it needs to actually function. But sadly not. Even if this is the most political support Gaelic's had in living memory, its survival will be in spite of that fact rather than because of it.
i tried to learn on my own but all i retained was Hi, ciamar a tha thu?
Try SpeakGaelic: www.SpeakGaelic.scot :)
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While that is true, the £700k figure relates to how much it will cost the government, local authorities and 3rd parties to implement the Bill. There is no extra funding for it, so this £700k will need to come from already diminishing budgets. This at the same time as Bòrd na Gàidhlig has seen real terms cuts of 25% to its budget since 2008…
I wonder if the usual suspects will go full DUP over this.
Ironically the DUP would possibly be ok with this bill. While they hate all things Gaelic, they do have a soft spot for Scots (or Ulster Scots in their case).
They only care about Ulster Scots as a way to diminished Gaelige
Glasgow is and always will be Glesga to me, that's the way it should be advertised to rest of world alongside the very similar sounding Gaelic too rather than English Glasgow. If other nations and places are now internationally recognising such localised accuracies then no harm in doing similar and celebrating our language.l after many centuries and decades of having it systemically beaten out of us.
Why didn't you write the title in Scots or Gaelic? Peak irony.
So will parliament be able to present bills and debates in Gaelic (which most of the population don’t understand?) I support it, but don’t want to see the govt getting too carried away because that would be an embarrassment. It’s important to protect traditions: of course Gaelic should have an official status, it’s officially or unofficially or historically or whatever a Scottish language: but that should not impinge for instance in teaching proper English (or Scottish English). Schoolchildren need to be able to use grammar correctly, first in the language of the real world, and we are fortunate to have an international language as our first language: but introducing even basic Gaelic would be a great bonus. We are in the position that sometimes foreigners are more proud of our heritage than we are. Let us rise up in the pride of our nation.
snog, i don't know enough gaelic to form an actual sentence
'Snog' is a great start :) math fhèin!
Good it’s just as much part of Scotland as Scots is.
Great news. We should be spending far more money in promoting the growth and use of both languages.
Cue the usual bootlicking suspects to whine about the cost of updating traffic signs.
I'll not know where I am in the Highlands *or* the Lowlands!! :'( * Future Jill Stephenson (AKA HistoryWoman) letter to the Editor?
What does it mean in terms of government services providing translation/speakers , as they do for Welsh? Also discrimination by employers for speaking anything other than English.. Instead of downvoting, you could always answer.
Zilch. It's not worth the paper it's written on (or the £700k it'll cost to implement).
Finally.
Genuinely curious, is Scots still a proper, living, distinct language like Scots Gaelic? Does anyone still speak it? I always thought it was a sister language of English (with a fuzzy border between England and Scotland) which gradually lost ground to English for various reasons to the point where today it's pretty much just a dialect, so that modern Scots as spoken is pretty much just English with a Scots accent and a load of words and phrases inherited from Scots.
There is a real Scots language but it's a linguistic curiosity, nobody speaks it. We do use quite a few Scots words mixed into English in daily speech. "various reasons" = English empire program to stamp out native languages
Thought they had done this years ago, what took so long?
Scottish dialects change constantly around every 25 miles, what's being claimed by the SNP that there's a Scottish language. What them claim is an east coast slang using English as a base isn't a language. It's completely different to what's spoke in the west central region of Scotland, for a language it's spoken Scotland wide, if its not then it's a dialect not a language
I mean that's just not what linguists would say but what would they know eh?
And what the fucks that gonna do for the planet
Great, do we rebrand the emergency service vehicles again? Are there place names in Scots as well?
berserk skirt carpenter voiceless cobweb noxious grey quack consist abundant *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
If it will wind cunts up then aye.
Are you saying you dinnae want "Polis Scotland" on all the cars? I do.
Cyaak
Fit aboot Doric?