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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 20 ก.ย. 2024
- How an old letter and a printing press changed our pronunciation of a Scottish name. A story about Scots - neither English nor Gaelic!
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~ Corrections & Additions ~
- The traditional Scottish pronunciation of "Gaelic" is G[ɑ]lic rather than G[eɪ]lic. Thanks to John Hamelink and others!
www.dsl.ac.uk/e...
~ The Short of It ~
This time it's the tale not of a language, but of a leid. As I prepared to shelve Early Modern English and jump to the next topic, the one that eked out a victory in my first patron vote, I couldn't quite shut my creative notebook on this subplot.
A Middle English letter got its second wind in Scotland, and was particularly useful for representing a "y" sound. When the printing press made its way to the Scottish Lallans, the Anglic being spoken there was already distinct from London English. This had become the home turf of Scots, an emerging language with its own literature that it was eager to print. But Scots printers made some spelling compromises, inadvertently paving the way for later speakers to misread a letter. Thanks to this glitch, the original pronunciations of certain Scottish names sound strange to us, while the misreadings have become perfectly standard!
~ Credits ~
Narration, art and animation by Josh from NativLang.
Sources for claims, imgs, fonts, noises and such:
docs.google.co...
The dog that provided the panting sfx just passed away. Were he with us, I think he would've lunged at the screen upon seeing the collie.
ooh so that's your little homage to the little fellow?
NativLang Unexpected sadness
NativLang RIP
I had a sheltie named Mackenzie who passed away when i was 6 years old, that collie was the reason I clicked the video!
NativLang The collie reminded me of my Sheltie Mario.
Some wise guy: "A picture is worth a thousand words"
Chinese guy: "What's a pictograph worth then?"
About four
終極神卡 sextilion
Number of pictures x 1000
Nothing, that is the point.
Oh, what about a hieroglyphic!?!
Þis is one of ȜouTube's greatest language channels.
Actually, ð
@@pyromorph6540 whats the diffrence theyre both "TH"
@@BFDI_Leaf þ is unvoiced, ð is voiced. its the same as the difference between f and v.
@@lotionman1507 i thought there was a shortened form for the word "that" which had the thorn with line through the top. That would imply that thorn (pb) was the voiced and eth (d with line), the unvoiced.
@@lotionman1507 nope, voiceless is θ, Þ can represent both θ and ð, as well as θ̠ and z, so the usage here is correct.
How about a video on Sardinian, it's a pretty obscure language even for italians, and has an interesting story of origin.
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And Corsican too.
Sicillane also.
well yeah the Feroe's Islands or whatever the name they have is pretty weird too, I guess, If somebody talks in thos kind of places
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I'm Scottish, and there's a few little things here that I'd like to point out (please do correct me if I'm mistaken!)
Scots Gaelic and Irish Gaelic are pronounced differently (gah-lic for Scots variant and gay-lic for the Irish variant)
Many people I know in Scotland who have a second name like Menzies have their name pronounced "mingus" - as if with a silent z.
John Hamelink Garlic?
Not a million miles away, but definitely closer to "ah" than "ar"
I think more folks from the north say gah-lic rather than gay-lic. Gay-lic is the common pronunciation in the central belt and south-west. Also I think it's also related to how the word is pronounced in both Irish and Scots Gaelic.
I was about to say that. I'm Scottish and I have a few friends with names like Menzies and MacKenzie. I tend to find that it varies from person to person. Menzies is more commonly pronounced the old way with the 'ng' instead of the 'z', but that is only so common outwith the central belt. MacKenzie, though, is typically pronounced with the 'z' instead of the 'ng' pretty much everywhere.
Also, just remembered (because of autocorrect messing with me) that outwith as a word only exists in Scotland. XD
John Hamelink To me Gàidhlig is pronounced "gah-lic" (although most people think I'm saying garlic), whilst Gaeilge (standard Irish) to me sounds like "gal-ga" (due to the change in tense in the modern Irish word). Gaedhlag (Ulster Irish) sounds like it is pronounced "gal-lic", close to how people pronounce gaelic when talking about Scotland.
I've heard of this letter! I also remember that the letter thorn ⟨Þ, þ⟩ started being written in English with the digraph ⟨Th⟩, but for some reason the shorthand of Þ can look-like the letter ⟨Y⟩ which is where the “Ye olde”-thing came from in modern English.
That's a great parallel, and one I've often enjoyed retelling because it pricks the bubble of familiarity and confronts English speakers with a simple diachronic question. Yogh was like that for me, though a bit less familiar.
sion8 never new that they used þ in English I just learned it from my Icelandic family members . did English ever use æ
Evangeline Reid
Although there was no standard, because of tradition Old English at some point did use ‹æ›, ‹Þ›, ‹Ð›, and ‹Ƿ› _wymm_, this last one was used as ‹W› is currently use in modern English, it also differentiated between short and long vowels (i.e. ‹A› was short where as ‹Ā› was long) among other things that it did throughout that language's existence.
Cursive þ looks like cursive y, in the font used at the time of the printing press, so for printing press, they used y for both. Look up cursive þ and y, they look near identical
@@sion8 wynn, not wymm
There once was a damsel named Menzies
Who asked, "Do you know what this thenzies?"
Her aunt, with a gasp, replied, "It's a wasp,
"And you're holding the end where the stenzies!"
Cadwaladr Very nice.
And BOOM! came all the frenzies!
Nice poem 👍🏻.
So, what dialect is this limerick in given that it attempts to rhyme grasp with wasp? In all the modern dialects of spoken English I'm aware of, those words definitely do not rhyme.
@@davidbouvier8895in scot
That yogh symbol looks a lot like how I was taught to write a cursive lowercase 'z' ,
Joined up writing - Yep, My primary school taught that z should be written like that too. {I suppose it makes it easier to join up with the next letter.}.
That's still how I write z...
Same here, though it looks more like a lowercase zeta (ζ) to me
Ya keww 😂
Same, here in Australia. 😆✌🐨
I'm a 64 yo Scot. There are still a few examples of this: The surname Dalziel (pronounced De-yell), Culzean Castle in Ayrshire (pronounced Cull-een), and the surname Menzies, now often anglicised, which in my childhood was almost always pronounced Ming-iss. Good video, thanks.
This is probably annoying for you but I just saw your comment and have to tell you my story. I think this video has it wrong, and of course you are correct. My family name is Kinney in the US, but my oldest-known ancestor had clan McKenzie tartan in his Bible. I was always under the impression McKinney is the correct Scottish Gaelic pronunciation of McKenzie. For the reasons in this video. But he pronounces it McKenyay. I've never heard that form of the name spoken, in all it's variants.
He lists Menzies as having changed, which it did not. It's like you say, to my knowledge. Like Kinney, it kept the original Gaelic pronunciation over time. Menzies in Scotland is Mingiss. Accounting for that ("enzie" = "ingi"), McKenzie would be McKingi. Soften the g sound a bit and McKinney comes a lot closer to matching this than anything else used today. Which aligns with my last known (1st to land in the US) ancestor.
I may not be Scottish in any way that matters, but Scots DO survive! I'm proud to be from those people. Toughest people in Europe, tough as nails. Toughest Americans always came from Scots too.
So a y that looks like a 3 turned into a z?!? That's delightful!
Indeed! :D
It also looks like the Cyrillic z (З, з).
Jason Rudder I was taught to write z in the longhand form.
Sounds a little bit like the german ich-laut or the Scandinavian kj-sound as well. Though a bit more throaty.
No, "Loch" is pronounced with an "ach-laut", which is further back in the throat.
When I mentioned the "ich-laut" and the "kj-lyd" I was referring to the END of "yoch", as at 1:43, but I see now that it's more like an "ach-laut" there too.
Early English and Scottish printers were working with type sets imported from Germany, so several letters in English and Scots bit the dust because they didn't exist in German. Another casualty was Thorn, which today only exists in Icelandic. It basically represents the sound today represented by "th" but printers developed a convention of using "y" to represent it. So the "Ye" in "Ye Olde _____" is actually "The"
I was raised speaking one of the dialects of Scots, Doric, and have never heard of this before at all. This question actually came up for me a week ago when I met an American girl in Iceland and she was asking about Scots and Scotland. She asked if Scots uses any characters English doesn't and I said no. Guess I wasn't entirely correct.
Yeah maybe a lesson on speaking with such certainty about things you're ignorant of. I see people doing this constantly, I think we get a false sense of confidence because we're from that region of the world.
But you're not technically wrong, modern Scots does not use these characters. Again if you compare Scots from the 1500s to the Scots of today its going to be very different. But so was the English of the 1500s very different to the English of today.
The reality is Scots is just dialectal English. Modern Scots is like modern English, Middle Scots is like Middle English. The differences are extremely negligible and they're basically entirely mutually intelligible.
@@palepilgrim1174 so you're saying I could go to england and ask anyone "fare aboots div ye bide?" And they will understand it? Since it's so 'similar'
@@aceman0000099 Nobody in Scotland would understand that or speaks like that either today so it's irrelevant.
@@palepilgrim1174 I understand it and half my friends would understand it. You've clearly never been north of dundee
@@aceman0000099 I've not, and neither has 80% of the population of Scotland. What's your point anyway, exactly? It's not standard speech, even north of Dundee. And even if it was, it's still a dialect of English for reasons I've already explained.
Please do Guaraní! It's so interesting in that it's one of those rare Native American languages that has retained its significance and I would love to learn about it!
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An interesting fact about guaraní, Is that is spoken mainly by non native american speakers( guaranis) for example, my father is son of north european inmigrants, and learned it before than spanish. It's not so of a racial and socioeconomic tension source, as are sadly, aymara or quechua in Peru and Bolivia. Sorry for my English. Aikuaa guaraní, ndahasyvei quechuaicha
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Why do Americans say the letter z as zee and the English zed? I was hoping to hear this, but it is amazing that i've never heard of this new letter that got lost from our language.
Interestingly, the modern pronounciation of Zeta has become something like "zeeta" (think of the English vowel shift, just more minor).
***** That still doesn't really explain it as American English does come from British English so i was wondering if us Brits used to say zee and changed, like with the vowel shift, or whether America changed at some point. If the latter is the case when did this happen and who instigated it? Maybe French influence after they helped you win the War of Independence? I wouldn't have thought there were enough to change things on that kind of scale. Maybe mass immigration from other countries who spoke Romance languages changed it. I don't know.
>American English does come from British English
Ok, bud, but the English dialect sounded more American before the revolution and began changing to sound more French in England even to the extent of changing their rhotic consonant. The most original sounding dialect is Houston, obviously not considering lexicon as that's incomparable.
Nope, common misconception. People often assume that just because of the rhoticity of the accent at the time, considering much of England has dropped it.
In fact, he did a video on this subject - or rather the accent of Shakespeare, which would've been the accent of many of the colonies' early settlers - which reveals the accent sounded much more like a modern English West Country accent with some elements which are still retained in Irish and Scottish English.
I notice people here saying that the "best" explanation is that Americans changed it from "zed" to "zee". This is incorrect, but fits a broad pattern among the public (on both sides of the Atlantic, surprisingly) of assuming that the way things are done in England is usually "right" or at least "original", while the way they are done in America is "wrong" or altered. In fact, innovation has happened in both countries, and each preserves some old things that the other does not. For example, "soccer" is a an older term preserved by Americans that has since become obsolete in England.
"Zee" first appears in print in a 1677 book by Thomas Lye -- in England! There is a Mental Floss article about this that claims that "zee" must have been a dialectal variant in England, and this variant later happened to become dominant in the colonies but not the motherland for some reason. The article even proposes that the Americans may have adopted the less common variant deliberately as part of the movement to distinguish themselves. But that is not the same as saying that they invented "zee" from whole cloth!
There's a place in Scotland called Culzean (pronounced cull-ayn) I've always wondered why it's pronounced like this but I think you've cleared it up for me! Thank you!!
Culzean is in Ayrshire , and many of the farm names there have this sound . Milzeoch ( Mul-yoch ) , Pennyfadzeoch ( Pinnifad-yoch ) Altizeurie ( Alti-yoorie ) Duncanziemere ( Duncan - yeemer )
as a Scot, born and bred in Edinburgh, this video is so super interesting!! I'll forever be pronouncing mackenzie as mackenye to myself when I hear it!
I enjoy the content of your videos so so much, but sometimes I have to rewind several times because the animated facial expressions of the paintings and statues are just so mesmerizing. Winner on all counts!
I always wonder why my clan's name is Dalziel (they where from the lowlands) but it was pronounced dee-EL. There's other ways to spell it, as I researched, but originally the English form had that "yogh" sound. Then it was changed to the z. Very fascinating. I love the Scotts
Why though is Dal pronounced Dee? I can understand the z having a different pronunciation to what we thought but what about the rest of the word?
Why Dee-El and not Dal-Yel?
Maybe it's a Gaelic pronunciation...???
There is a wee town in East Dumbartonshire called Milngavie. It is pronounced Mull Guy.
Interesting about McKenzie. Menzies is still pronounced Ming ies in Scotland. It used to be the name of a chain of retail shops in Scotland, but has since diversified somewhat.
Dalziel in Gaelic is Dail Gheal which means bright valley. Geal means white or bright. When it's used as an adjective attached to a noun it's lenited (the h gets added) which softens the sound so that it sounds more like a y sound.
A variant spelling of Dalziel is Dalyall. I assume the Dee-el pronunciation is the result of softening the L in Dal to the point that it becomes silent and then the y is soften to basically become silent.
Im Scottish and i can confirm its said as D L, its a fairly common surname and the name of a place
"Menzies" is still often pronounced as "Mingis".
Wooh
@jockadoobee By "Perth" you are talking about the town in Scotland, not the city in Western Australia! In Australia we had a long serving Prime Minister called Robert Menzies (definitely pronounced MenZees) although his nickname was "Ming the Merciless"!
@@michaelhalsall5684 I understand the nickname is most certainly not a joke about Asian language an ode to his last name, but it makes him sound like an old world Chinese or Taiwanese war General! LOL!
@@michaelhalsall5684 Where did the nickname come from if he didn't pronounce his name like that?
There was a Liberal Democrat in the UK called Menzies "Ming" Campbell, the media used to almost exclusively call him Ming but I'm pretty sure I heard his full name pronounced as Mingis a couple of times.
Some how, when my Grandfather's people immigrated to America, his last name got changed to Mings, he was not Asian. He was a very big man. We were always confused as how that happened until all the genealogy and other information came about. We also have the Cherokee Grandmother story, my Aunt is 5% Native American. Very informative, thank you.
This is fascinating. As a speaker of scots with family and friends in the Scottish Borders you're right about the contention of whether Scots is a dialect or a language. However I didn't know about this change in pronunciation due to the printing press.
It's not a language. People forget during these times English was a much more divided language with very distinct dialects. If you look at Northumbrian Middle English from the time period you can clearly see Scots is just that. Should also be noted that few people in Scotland actually speak 'Scots' today, they just speak poor English, haha =p
I love where your animation went from compared to your older videos, keep up the great work and thanks for your inspiring linguistic content!
I love that he does his research at the library
There isn't enough information in internet. Yesterday I wanted to do some research about old japanese, and I wasn't able to find any good source.
Libraries should really start scanning all their books. They hold a monopoly of the old and rare.
Fine, but how do they afford to do that when they are being closed just to save a few thousand pounds? :(
How do they afford to do anything when all the services are free?
They are given money by the government
Fun little video, kinda reminded me of Tom Scott's video "Why Do We Have "Ye Olde"? Obsolete Letters, and the Mysteries of Ye Olde Ming" from back in December 2013. :D
I really like these videos, shows how errors are so common that they're no longer errors, despite being inaccurate.
Well it reminds *me* of the minutephysics video on the same topic, from 2012, so there!
@No there was a letter that old english shared with icelandic called thorn, and it is þ. In icelandic it is pronounced like th in "think" in english and đ, eth, is pronounced like th in "the" in english.
I believe in old english, þ was used to mean both kinds of, however. Im not sure, but it looks like y in cursive when þ is in cursive, so for the printing press, they used y
We still play fast and loose with this in Scotland. The area of my hometown in Scotland I grew up in is spelled "Menzisehill" but pronounced Ming-is-hill. However a local department store in town "John Menzies" is pronounced "MenZees".
The politician Menzies Campbell's first name ist pronounced "Ming-es", afaik. Or "Ming" in short.
Menzieshill is Dundee I'm assuming.
@@xxmayonxx The former Australian PM Robert Menzies was nicknamed "Ming the Merciless"
"Gaelic" is only pronounced "gay-lick" if it's in reference to (Irish) Gaelic - Scottish Gaelic is pronounced "gah-lick"!
Not entirely true - in Nova Scotia, Gaelic is "gay-lick", even though it's referring to Scottish Gaelic.
True, but he's referring specifically to Scotland in this video. Cool channel by the way, I love the Speaking our Language videos!
that word ended up in my search history
_gay-lick_
Your videos are always interesting. I'm no language nerd myself but it's always engaging for your videos to pique my interest. Thanks for this!
I'm from Glasgow and I remember in first year (high school starts at around age 12) my English teacher gave us a novel to read about a girl who moves from a nice area to a council estate and she meets a friend there called Menzies and he had to explain to the class, that it was really pronounced Ming-ous instead.
And I have a book of Robert Burns poems that are all in scots that my grandpa gave me and for something written in scots its quite easy to read. But that could be because I've had exposure to scots my entire life by being on public transport in and around Glasgow (it's always fun when a junkie talks a whole load of pish on the top of a double decker bus, so long as the junkie isn't talking to you). Sadly because of people wanting their kids to speak properly, scots is dying out and is now affiliated with NED's and the people who are in Trainspotting and T2.
I was wondering about this. There's a guy in the House of Lords called Menzies Campbell but he's always called 'Ming Campbell'. So 'Menzies' was pronounced like 'mingis' apparently [I'm guessing with a voiced fricative for the 'g']. Love this channel : )
shout out to that small little Gàidhlig phrase! Tha mi ag obair an-dràsta ftw!
I'm having so many second thoughts on Outlander right now
There's (at least) one English word that preserves the yogh sound, for those half a dozen people who are aware of its existence: assoilzie. It's a legal term from Scottish meaning to absolve or acquit, and it's pronounced "a-soil-yie", with a harder "y" sound than a typical English y would get.
At the very end, that little tune uses a sample of Uilleann pipes, which are decidedly Irish. You might want to change that to some Highland bagpipes playing something Scottish.
Talk about the Tagalog. It's my second language. It has many crazy things about it, such as it avoids the use of c, f, and ph, or any word can become a noun or verb depending on its prefixes, midfixes, and suffixes.
I actually knew that Z was pronounced differently in Scottish names but I never knew why. Thanks for finally giving me an answer!
Great video! I love Scotland, even though I have no really relation to the country. I am half Swedish and half Russian, currently living in the middle east of Sweden. Still, something about Scottish culture fascinates me (not the whiskey, though!), just love Russian, Icelandic and Estonian culture does...
Well which Scottish culture, haha? Technically there were 2 major historical ethnic groups in Scotland, the English of the Lowlands and the Irish of the Highlands. The English of the Lowlands (who started calling themselves Scots for political reasons around the 1400s or so) are actually quite similar to your own Swedish people, sharing ultimate descent from the Proto-Germanic homelands of southern Scandinavia and northern Germany.
The Irish (also called Gaels) were a Celtic people. These groups were very divided, make no mistake, and did not consider each other brothers or kinsmen. In fact the situation might be somewhat parallel to the historical divide between the North Germanic peoples of Scandinavia and the Sami.
Think of Scotland as more of a Belgium of the Middle Ages, a political entity ruled by Norman kings containing 2 major ethnic blocs, English and Irish.
Interesting, mr. anderson
Scots deserves to be its own language, it's a fine Germanic tongue and if Scotland ever goes independent it should be an official language.
MacKenzie, Menzies, Dalziel, and my own surname. Not to mention Culzean. Out of curiosity, why did you choose to pronounce 'gaelic' as you did, rather than /ˈɡalɪk/ as it's generally known in Scotland? Your videos are always thoroughly researched, so I'm sure this was a conscious choice and not an error.
Bias towards my native accent in the flow of storytelling. Having encountered both pronunciations in my research, I felt free to use the mid vowel. Seeing how meaningful this is to commenters, along with a strong tendency toward the pronunciation you mention, I would do more to assimilate to that pronunciation, were I to tackle the subject again.
Thanks for the reply, it's not that big a deal at all. At the very worst, you just sound like a Sassenach. ;) Great work again on the video.
I can swicth between pronuation of gaelic in the same sentance. Etheir way I say it people get offended. I've just stop careing
Michael Hughes Spelling.
That's how Americans say Gaelic. They mean Irish.
The Old English letter mistaken for Z here ( called a “yough”) actually alternates between a “y” sound and a hard “g” sound in modern Scandinavian languages depending on the nature of the following vowel. It is the same as the “ge” prefix in German past participles. In Middle English it is a y, as in “yronne.”
I had heard about this before, but I only now realise that's why in Dalziel & Pascoe (remember that show, people?), Dalziel always had to insist people pronounce his name "Dee-ell".
Why not Dal-eel though? Or Dah-lee-el as in Galadriel? Fascinating anyhow. Though I do like the Z there, it sounds and looks more exotic. So MacKenzie is actually a Kenyan... super interesting since "Scot" means something to do with Black (which is NOT race as commonly assumed, but a symbolical and magical concept).
I'm French and love the story of english dialects, but yet it's so dense !
I'd like if you would continue this series of videos, nonetheless I think you should try explaining some polish ! And maybe compare it to some baltic languages cause they have stories in common ;)
3:24 Patrons get to vote on topics!?! Man, I should become a patron. Also, how did Tocharian not get more votes? At least Guarani got good representation :)
I was wondering that same thing for Tocharian... I thought it had that intrigue factor.
Between the video about lower case letters and this one about how printing killed a character, it makes me want a video about the advent and demise of the long s (ſ) which only remains today as half of eszett (ß)
I talk Doric Scottish and even people in Stirling (only a couple hrs away) didn't understand me haha I'd never heard of this though-thanks!
People from stirling are another breed but
Stirling doesn't really have much of a distinct accent or dialect, which I've always felt stems from the fact its basically the major crossroads of the country, and the commuter belt position it holds for east/west Scotland. My grannie would hae kent a bit o the Doric like.
@@tibbymcnaughty I noticed that right enough, i lived there a couple years (well a village just outside Stirling 15min away by bus) and I found it funny that I'd talk to people from Glasgow or Edinburgh and know right away but I was never sure when I was talking to someone native to Stirling because the accent seemed so neutral, I think Perth accents are a bit like that too, just not quite so much. It just made me laugh that a few times I'd slip into my normal accent in a shop or something and they'd say "OK your from Aberdeen, sorry you'll have to not talk so broad" lol it didn't help that its not even Aberdeen I'm originally from, it's Aberdeenshire so I talk even broader than an aberdonian haha aye sounds like your grunnie would hiv kent fit I was on aboot 😁
@@teethgrinder83 aye, it's funny how different agents and dialects can be for all that there might not be a great distance between, geographically speaking. I've spent the majority of my time in the Stirling area, my parents are both from Stirlingshire, though I've lived in the borders, East Sussex, Canada, and grew up in the Netherlands. There is a distinct Stirling accent, but it's actually vanishingly rare to hear it nowadays. My aunties, and grandparents generation had what is call the Stirling accent, but it's so subtle compared to most other places, as I said, probably due to the long-term fact is always been a trade town (like Perth), so had an amalgamation of accents all softened so folk could understand one another. It's why Aberdeen as a town isn't as broad in its Doric as the rest of Aberdeenshire, in my opinion.
Former Australian Prime Minister Robert Menzies pronounced his surname Mingus, although everyone used the Menzies pronunciation. Ming became his nickname as a result.
I first encountered the Scots "z" (yogh) when learning the tune/song Gaberlunzie Man.
I'm all for bringing back thorns, eths, yoghs, and wynns.
Yes that would be great. Thorn and Eth are crucial. Yoghs aren't that important but can make y more simple. Also the Letter Eng (Ŋŋ)is important as well (the ng sound). I think Wynns would be cool but not needed as w does that job well.
I am also looking into English spelling and reforming it, mostly for the vowels.
Yes however you can see what you say without yogh. And you dont have to argue because I am 100% for yogh.
of course context matters, but I think that it is more crucial to show what you say rather than to just assume how to pronounce it from its surroundings. You can tell the meaning, like in Japanese.
Wonder if there will be printing-press-substitution-like changes due to autocorrect at some point?
Also, since the advent of the Internet it seems like some errors are becoming common enough to tip over the line into changed usage in the near future.
I'm now seeing "loose" being swapped for "lose", "insure" swapped for "ensure", "effect" swapped for "affect" (but not so much the other way around) by journalists, PhDs, politicians, not just random Internet people who are probably still school kids.
Wow I really hope we get to see a video on Guarani
Brazilians don't value it enough, and since it was second place, oh boy I do hope it gets its chance
The z sounds still persists in a lot of Scottish words, like Menzies which is pronounced 'Ming' or Culzean which is pronounced 'Cullane'
It's a language. Like how Spanish speakers and Italian speakers can kind of understand each other, same thing goes for Scots and English.
yay,another video i will watch billions of times until a next one comes
So I've been mispronouncing my name.... Interesting.
Same. My name is McKenzie.
C. V. Yup McKenyie
No that's not how language works
This makes sense considering that most of these words/names come from Gaelic, which does not have a "z" sound but does use the "yuh" sound quite frequently.
Is this somehow related to the Cyrillic letter Зз being pronounced /z/ in most languages? O_o
It's tangential to the "z" part of the story, since I believe з is also a tailed z!
@@NativLang And also when lowercase letters came to Greece, the lowercase zeta has a tail.
Its connected to hƿy people confused Z ƿiþ Ȝ
There is a Macedonian letter #Ѕ, which is alternative Z.
The original Scottish words you mention in this video sound almost exactly like Dutch. Scot(z) - Schots. Ingles = Engels. Both words are pronounced in a virtually identical way in both languages. Your ears would not notice they were different languages. Amazing stuff.
Can you do a video about Gaeilge+Gàidhlig and their history?
It's why Culzean Castle in Ayrshire is pronounced kull-ay-ne. Always trips up tourists and new people to the area
I don't mispronounce it, I am Scottish.
What surprises me is that the McKenzies - uh, McKenyies - themselves didn't insist on the original pronunciation.
They should definitely bring back ”yogh”.
Yoȝ
@Servant of AEIE I’m most pleased to see that yoȝ is at least in the Unicode. 🙂
@@PC_Simo yep! And so is þ and ƿ
@Servant of AEIE That’s definitely good news. 👍🏻
@@PC_Simo I made a custom soft keyboard, so I can use þem hƿenever. Ƿe should at least start spelling reform by replacing W ƿiþ Ƿ, GH ƿiþ Ȝ, and TH ƿiþ Þ.
You are fantastic. I have always been obsessed with languages and their origins, spelling, phonetics, the works. And I am so happy I stumbled across your channel. Wünderbar!
Thank you!
Well this is weird. Turns out I've been pronouncing my surname wrong my entire life. Speaking of mispronouncing things though, Scottish Gaelic is more pronounced "Gah-lick" and it's the Irish that's pronounced "Gay-Lick"
Well shivers me timbers, I was taught that Gaelic should be pronounced "Jee lick". "Gah-lick" is actually how we say the translation of the word in my own tongue, Romanian, and Wallachians in the south of Romania are the same as Welsh meaning "Gaelic inhabitant of the Roman Empire". Dracula Son of the Dragon, etc...
the IPA would've made these comments so much easier to pronounce
@@AdinaIspas in english, it's pronounced either "gah-lick" or "gæ-lick". Æ=a in "cat" btw
My last name fell to this as well, and to this day some of us pronounce it correctly and some give in to ease. Also, some spell it with a Y since that gets at the sound better.
You should do Quechua
Yeah! It is an amazing language or well, group of languages
I was reading a bunch of Scots legal documents from the late 16th and early 17th centuries and kept finding what we call Shetland spelled "Zetland", but also "Yetland". I guess that explains the transition from the original Norse "Hjaltland". I'm guessing the "hj" was expressed with the yogh you're talking about.
Being of Scottish descent, I inherited a name with this very letter in it. Explaining how to pronounce Dalziel (Dalȝiel) is always a trial.
Not that hard, Dee-El
Scots is interesting because it is difficult to understand as an English speaker, but I still can understand Scots pretty well
yay Irish won the poll :) I speak Scottish Gaelic and it's rly fun. the pronunciation is so cool. Try pronouncing these words. dh'fhalbh. teachdaireachd. smaoineachadh.
Matthew Bryan those are actual words?
dh'fhalbh
Is that pronounced wee-fallow?
Nope :) It's something like "yaluv" (the IPA would be / ˈʝaɫ̪əv / I think).
@Sammy Indeed they are. Believe it or not Gaelic spelling is actually a lot more transparent than English, it's just really alien to non-speakers. (Tha mi ag ionnsachadh Gàidhlig, ach chan eil agam ach Gàidhlig beagan.)
It's relatively easy for me because I'm Irish ;) but there is obviously many differences
I always look forward to your videos! It's so awesome to learn something new about different languages.
holy shit. my last name is Mackenzie (runs and tells my whole family that we've been saying it wrong
Funny, How things change from way back then.
Mine McKenzie
The printing press also changed Irish. Certain consonants have aspirated forms, which in ye olden dayes was indicated by putting a dot over them. But when the printing press, or at least typewriters, came to Ireland, they couldn't do dots, so typists instead put a H after the aspirated consonant, since H isn't used all that much in Irish. Today, H is the proper way to spell those words.
Why does he say Scots weirdly?
Do you mean he says it like Scoats , rhyming with goats? It is the way it's said in Scotland -- when ye've a guid Scoats tung in yer heid.
I think I might donate to your pattern, though I've never considered donating to anyone else's before. that's how much I love your videos!
You're kind to think of me. I'm happy to have you watching - anything else really is a bonus! Even if you can't contribute, I do post some extras there.
Gaelic in Scotland is pronounced “Gah-lick” not “gay-lick”
🤣
Local newspapers were still using metal type letters, formes and brass rules and wooden type (for posters) in the 1960s!
Sucks to be all those little toddlers in tiaras.
On a related note: The lack of Ks and Vs in English printing presses in London are actually the reason we don't use K and V in Modern Welsh: "C for K, because the printers have not so many as the Welsh requireth", as the lexicographer and translator Gwilym Salbri (William Salesbury) said.
Also used Ỽ, ỽ for /u/ /ʊ/ and /w/ in the middle ages, and id love if we revived it.
So, if those Londoners had enough of these letters in stock, someone might write:
Dỽi'n karu Kymru, mae hi'n gỽlad harð,
Rather than:
Dwi'n caru Cymru, mae hi'n gwlad hardd.
Also, the Cornish used to use yogh to represent /ð/.
I love your videos but you have committed the Braveheart sin by using Irish bagpipes in the background music of a video about Scotland. Tisk, tisk
Same story goes for the Thorn. It's not yee old pub, it's the old pub but printers used a Y instead of a Thorn which makes the TH sound.
Last
Second Last ;)
Please do a video on the majascule (versal) eszett, ẞ, its history, and its arguable necessity in modern German orthography
Thanks for this, but you are mispronouncing Scottish Gaelic. Should sound like gal-lick.
Another minor correction - the North East of Scotland, though now Scots-speaking, is part of the Highlands; the Highland fault line runs near Stonehaven which is south of where I live (Aberdeen). The variety of Scots here is also never called "Lallans" as a result; it is called "Doric" (as opposed to the "Attic" Scots of the Southern cities!)
I find it interesting that a linguist would even consider the argument that Scots - with its distinct grammar and vocabulary - is a dialect rather than a language in its own right. If Scots Gaelic is acceptable as a medium in schools when barely anyone speaks it, why not Scots: the language spoken to and down the country? Why is it not recognised by the UK government as a language, even to this day? Yes, you can write Scots in English, but why are we not taught to write our language in proper Scots? Our native tongue is still being repressed by the government in London in a bid to stifle our rightful claims to sovereignty.
Because it's a little fuzzy and you have enough people arguing the opposite. That's really all you need, no need to drag in the English conspiracies.
Sangtrone It's not the slightest bit fuzzy. From a phonetic point of view, the vowel sounds are different, the consonant sounds are different and there are sounds in Scots which are either extinct in English or never existed in the first place. From a grammatical point of view, word order is freer in Scots, many verbs conjugate differently - and there are many more strong verbs than in English. There are more irregular plurals in Scots than English. Vocabulary is, in some cases, so different that an average English speaker wouldn't be able to understand what was being said.
As for conspiracies: it is a well known method of subjugation and cultural domination for a colonial power to attempt to extinguish local languages in favour of their own. Not only that, but it can be shown that the English did this everywhere they went. Naturally, that includes Scotland: this, too, can be shown to be true. Scots, however, is the only non-extinct, commonly spoken language in the British isles which is still not given the correct legal status to be used as a medium for education. You have to question why that is if it isn't a continuation of the historic cultural domination of the Scottish people.
To my knowledge it IS recognized as its own language. At least in Northern Ireland
Nothhelm Blodcyning Actually, Scots developed separately from English, splitting in the mid 15th century from middle English. Distinguishing the two does not require elevating English to the status of a language family as the Anglic language family covers both English and Scots. Had Scots been allowed to continue developing for more than 300 years (ie. had it not been repressed by the British government after the passing of the Acts of Union in 1707), it would have undoubtedly been more distinct now than it is.
The fact that it is mutually intelligible with English to an extent does not relegate Scots to the status of dialect. If that were the case, one could argue that Norwegian was merely a dialect of Swedish or vice-versa. Had Scotland been the dominant country in the union, and Scots had been made the formal language of education in Britain, would we not be able to argue that English was in fact a dialect of Scots? I posit that we absolutely could. Thus Scots must be a distinct language.
Quinton Beck Officially? It is nowhere near on a par with, for example, Gaelic or Welsh. Believe me, I live here. All Government communications have to be made available in English, Welsh and Gaelic. You CANNOT request a copy in Scots. They simply aren't available. It may be recognised nominally, but the evidence that it IS actually recognised is non-existant. There are no readily available Scots language learning materials and classes in Scots aren't offered in schools. Attempts by the first SNP Scottish Government to make its communications available in Scots were mocked and dismissed as political propaganda by the unionist parties.
The closest thing we've ever had to modern Scots language literature was when a Scottish national newspaper (called 'The National') published a series of articles in Scots. And it was ridiculed. The fact that it did this at all was dismissed, like the attempts by the Scottish Government before it, as political propaganda (bear in mind that this is the only pro-independence daily newspaper in Scotland). This simply would not happen with the other minority languages of the UK. That's how uneven the status of Scots is in the UK.
Oh, I thought that yogh was a g sound, because we once had a politician called Menzies Campbell, and his first name was often shortened to Ming.
Scotland, please go independent! :)
We're working on it ;)
please don't :(
Also, ration out your peat bogs. Islays just won't be the same without.
Don't. I'm an Ulster Scot and would hate to be separated from my brethren :(
Come with us then ;P
My aunt told me that Cockenzie the place near Edinburgh was pronounced Cockinnie, while the power station built there was pronounced Cockenzie with a Z sound.
The "kenzie" in both comes from the genitive of Gaelic Coinneach, which is the name Kenneth. The "ne" in Coinneach is pronounced like a "ny" sound.
first
My last name is McKinley!!! It must have branched off of that true "MacKenzie" pronunciation!!
Great stuff - I love stories like this, and I have always wondered how MacCoinnich ended up having a 'z' in its Scots counterpart.
Gareth MacColl
If MacCoinnich is anglicized as "McKinney", which seems logical, I was thinking the same thing.
this is similar to what happened to Gaelige (Irish). Irish monks began to transcribe and translate texts from the Latin world during the dark ages. As they did, they found the Latin alphabet fell short of all the sounds Gaelige needed to make. So they had to get creative and use unique character pairs to express unique Gaelige sounds. Which lead to all the Irish names that that people mispronounce as they apply English rules to Gaelige names.
It's possibly stretching things a bit to suggest that Zell was the old form of Yell. It might have been used by some, but as the name is probably Norn, and certainly not English or Scots, the sound would have been represented by a different letter - a j, or a hj, rather than a ȝ.
I heard the Kiwi musician Bret Mckenzie pronounce his name with a g sound. Amazing that the pronounciation had travelled all the way to New Zealand but most of us English are unaware of it.
The letter Z wasn't used in Old English and didn't enter English until Middle English. The guttural "yogh" sound disappeared from English ("cni3t" became "knight"with a silent "gh") at the same time the letter Z was adopted from French and actual "z" sound has become common even when written as S (is, has, was) "Is" original pronounced "iss"
kniȝt*
Thank you for your work! It helps me learn the things in a few minutes instead of spending so much time searching)))
Your videos are so interesting, thanks for making them!
There's a place near me (South West Scotland) called Culzean Castle - pronounced "Cull-ain". I once hilariously heard a gameshow presenter on English TV murder the pronunciation.
Recognized this story from an old episode of Mock the Week (a UK topical panel show), where they were talking about Scottish MP Menzies Campbell (pronouncing Menghis, rhyming with the famous Mongolian ruler). Apparently, as a child, he loved going to the goo and looking at the gebras.
Very interesting. Never thought I’d see a video on how my name, as I know it, is mispronounced and misspelled.
In Scotland, particularly in the lowlands, we pronounce "Menzies" as "Ming-iss", so it hasn't been affected quite as much by the z.
When studying in Scotland, I was instructed to pronounce Menzies, the shop downtown, Mengies. The only instance where I met the old use !