Hello everyone! Are you learning a language? One great resource to check out is Innovative Language podcast programs: langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/. If you click the link, you can read my description of the Innovative Language approach, then find your favorite language at the bottom of the page. I'm a member of several Innovative Language sites, and I hope you'll love them as much as I do!
In Ayrshire, we more ofter say wains (way-ns) rather than bairns. Bairns is more an East Coast thing, Also, to answer your last question, I feel that it's some weird thing, in between a language and a dialect. And yes I use it every day, inmy usual speech :) (edit: spelling)
I live in Ayrshire. The language changes slightly depending on where you are in Scotland. I totally subscribe to it being a language, given that it is hard for others to understand. I speak both Scots and English. I speak English when I have to. I speak Scots at any other time.
The situation is quite paradoxical, on the one hand, every year in school on burns night we're taught to take pride in Scots and recite and learn poetry, but then every other day of the year its use is frowned upon in a classroom setting
so what is taught in Scottish schools? surely kids are taught scots in the lowlands and gaelic in the north? Is scottish gaelic much different to irish gaelic? And would an ulster scottish speaker understand fully a lowland scottish scots speaker?
@@hopclang9409 to be taught gaelic you need to go to a specialist school or be put on specific programme from a very early age or they just won't teach you it, as for Scots, the majority of that you only learn from speaking outside the classroom or reading things written in Scots, it's never taught as part of the curriculum
@@hopclang9409 Scottish and Irish gaelic are probably as different as say Spanish is to Portuguese, there's a lot of similar spellings and words you can pick out, but the pronunciation is totally different so they would probably struggle to talk to each other, as for ulster Scots, from what little I know of it I feel like a lowland scot would be able to understand the jist, and vice versa
@@hopclang9409 in Scottish schools, unless you go to a specialist school to Learn Gàidhlig, you are taught to speak only standard English. Scots you learn straight from your home life and family. When i started school they very quickly try to stomp it out of myself and peers we where told it was improper and we wouldn’t be taken seriously outside our communities unless we learned to speak “properly” this was of course before Scots had been given the respect it deserved and was officially recognised as a language. But the damage done from that treatment remains today. I tend to only speak Scots with my Friends and Family and feel embarrassed if I ever accidentally use it in a professional environment because of what was ingrained into me from schooling. Trying to unlearn that has been a process but Scots, and Gàidhlig especially, I put more effort into speaking on a daily basis.
I speak Scots, interspersed with Scots English every day. I think that Scots is a separate language from English. The reason that many Scottish do not think of it as a separate language is that we were taught from an early age that those words were "wrong". Our parents had been raised to believe that only "common" people spoke like that, that it was "slang" and a lazy form of speech. This was strongly reinforced in school. So we grew up believing that the Scots language was a sign of lacking education, and an indication of being from the lower classes. We were never taught how to write Scots, but one day of the year we were encouraged to read the poems of Burns...such hypocrisy. I now use my Scots words with pride. It's a wonderful, colourful language.
@@NECNetwork it's not like that tho, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese all were dialects of Latin, at one point they all prollly were like that Scots and english, infact, my first time hearing Italian I thought it could be a dialect of Spanish (I was really young, and heard a couple sentences tho). But Scots rn isn't like Latin is to French Spanish and Italian. It's very easy to understand Scots. They haven't diverged much, but it's super cool that english has its own distinct dialect
It's not it's own language, and it's not a problem of parents telling kids is slang or whatever. It's just bc they are still understandable to one an other. If u speak Scots u can understand english and vice versa, the reason Italian and Spanish are different languages now (even tho they were both Latin dielects) Is bc they aren't interchangeable to each other. U can speak Spanish and understand a couple words, but u couldn't have a whole conversation. I'm very happy I found out about a Scots tho, It's so cool how english has its own dialect, I'm so excited for the future of it, bc one day it'll be different enough to be it's own language
I hope I'm not mocking anyones cultures by saying this but... Beasties is way more fun to say than animals. Just has a whimiscally wholesome vibe to it.
lmao. It's cute and childish imo. I'm Scottish and I say it. Reminds me of the fact that we say sweeties but so do the English. And we also say cuddle to mean a general hug but that's less popular nowadays.
@@Kelly-yj7nb it's cute to me that the Scottish (not all I know) still say sweeties. In England only children say "sweeties" (or adults talking to children).
When our children were small, I sometimes referred to them as the "wee bairns," because I liked the sound, perhaps because bairn is close to barne, the word for child in the Norwegian of my grandparents and mother.
Growing up in Scotland, the language was everywhere and I never thought much of it. Now that I live in the US, I realize just how much there is to Scots. Within a minute, folks can ascertain where the others are from and what social class they are. The group members will then adjust their language accordingly to suit everyone. The language variants are so closely tied to place you can almost place someone in a neighborhood of a city by their accent. Also, I think Scots speakers are the only folks I know who parody their own language for comedy. Next level self-deprecating humor.
The reason most Scots speakers don't consider it a language is because they're told for 12 years of education that we're just speaking "bad English". I was anyway. We never learn to speak pure Scots or pure English. It sounds great, and it is true to an extent, when you say that we pepper English with Scots words or expressions, and move along a continuum between both languages, but the reality is many people are not moving and just stay at one point on the spectrum speaking something between bad English and bad Scots all the time. If we learned both pure languages and we took ownership of our Scots language we could mix and match between English in differnent situations with much more finesse IMHO. Cheers fir a braw video onyways.
It's the same situation in Austria! German tourists always tell us, that our "dialect" sounds stupid and that we should speak a proper german. A few decades ago (like 30 years?) it was even worse, because teachers punished the students when they spoke Austrian at school, reminding them that "German is more beauiful than the medieval alpine farmers dialect". The only places where this brainwashing is still existent are the bigger cities of austria like vienna and graz, where most young people aren't even able to speak Austrian anymore. Sad but true...
Wew ahhm frm Essex mayte. Day bin tellin me ahhm juss a divvo in skool. Dat ain't ream innit, yew get mee. Dayew be larfin on uvver side ov vair faysiss wen ah tell'em itz the Essex langwidge. Uffishally rekugnized by ve canty ov Essex.
I agree with you but with one exception. I think it is more of a socioeconomic situation. People with an education can often switch along the spectrum as needed. I do. I can have loads of fun speaking Scots with somebody from a Doric speaking area of the northeast, but then switch on a dime with some posh sounding Londoner while ever so subtly adding that Scottish influence to standard global English. It's really a situation dependent phenomenon that's quite fascinating. Stanley Baxter who speaks fluent Scots, and can switch to RCP/BBC English on a dime, did a series several decades ago, which is also on TH-cam, called "Parliamo Glasgow" in which he spoke Scots in it's purest form--to the point of sounding like a different language. Those who work or live with Americans do the same. (I do.) Scots sounds robust and strong. It's a truly beautiful dialect.
@@saoirse7167 German: Ich höre Musik. Der große König ist gestorben. Es ist kalt, ich friere! Nachher müssen wir einheizen. Diesen Schrank dürft ihr niemals aufmachen. Sie sind unsere besten Freunde. Ich habe es dir gesagt! Swiss German: I hör ä Musig. Dr grosse Chünig isch gstorbe. S isch chalt, i früüre! Nahär müess mr füüre. Das Chäschtli dörfent ir nienischt uffmache. Si sin üser beschte Früünd. I han s dr gsait! Bavarian: I heer a Musi. Da große Kini is gstorm. Es is kåjd, i friar! Nåchand miass ma aihaizn. Des Kastl deafts (es) nia ned afmåchn. Se hand insane bestn Fraind. I håb s da gsågd. Austrian: I hear a Musi. Dr groaße Kchini ischt gstorba. S ischt kchålt, i frias! Åfta(t) miass mr aikennta. Des Kchaschtale derfts (es) nia nit afmåcha. Dej sain insa beschte Fraint. I hån s dr gsejt! Please note that in my examples I may have accidentally used German word order or grammar. Here is a poem in Austrian Bavarian (slightly mixed with some German to get better rhymes) th-cam.com/video/A5fgeQu_cxU/w-d-xo.html An example of Bavarian Bavarian: th-cam.com/video/oaXjWjKPHOo/w-d-xo.html Glasgow poems in the South Tyrolean dialect: th-cam.com/video/pzbvo0-8OfU/w-d-xo.html
"Och, noo. Na beasties dae a kaley in he wee bonnet. "Ma poor wee bairns." Translation: Scotty had nits and didn't appreciate a hair cut. Scotty misses his dancing head lice.
Did he ever say that? I want to know the episode, and when in the episode, so I can go check! I don't remember him ever saying anything like that, and can't imagine they would do so on 1960s American television.
@Sword Sometimes the comments get way out of control for certain videos. If the comments section gets overrun by rude and aggressive comments, and it never stops, then I turn the comments off. I think I have only done this for 3 videos out of about 110 though. Thanks everyone for the nice comments in this thread!
I never realised how many Scots sayings and phrases I used till I worked in Canada and no one understood me. Although my come away is I just have a wider vocabulary lol. Helps with Scrabble.
I'm a Scot living in England and I had the exact same problem when I first moved down here. Back home, my accent isn't even considered very strong (by my area's standard - North East coast) but when I moved, there were some words that I used and realised no one else around me knew the meaning of! 😅
i always thought it was the same way danish dialects tend to be written, i see it especially with jutland dialects. the way my mom writes sønderjysk (the southern jutland dialect) it may as well be a morse code only understood by other southern jutes, so many words have changed completely and its only possible to read it if you know the pronunciation, too. it feels like a joke to her, because although my siblings do the same back, they dropped the dialect outside of family unions and messaging. so there's some irony behind using it. other than that, i think the written form is actually serious
Not sure if you’ve ever seen _Trainspotting,_ but half the book is written in Scots. When I read it, I thought it was just written to portray a heavy Scottish brogue but I later learned that it was just written in a different dialect. It’s a challenging read, for sure.
As a Scot, I think this is a brilliant video, and the analysis of whether Scots is a language or dialect is spot-on. I switch between Scots and Scottish English (and everywhere inbetween) every day depending on the situation without even noticing, as I think a huge amount of Scottish people do. The only issue I have is that I'm from Ayrshire (in fact one of the backgrounds used in the video is Dunure, where my mum grew up) and we wouldn't say bairn in Ayrshire. We would say wean, which I think is derived from wee-yin (wee-one). Bairn is used more in the east of central Scotland and wean more in the west, although both words are understood everywhere. Ithirwise it wis a braw video, 'hanks!
This is spot on. As a Frenchman with a good level of (academic) english, I first learnt english in films, tv series, and scottish pubs. After that I lived three years in Scotland and could talk like a native (but couldn't be pinned where from), with only a few words with a french accent, or like a unremarkable accent, or with a natural thick french accent. On the third year, after I moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh, the first thing I was told in a pub was that I was a "french weegie bastich" (no offence intended, and none taken, on the contrary). I was just asking about the score on the fitba, "Is it still nough each (strong weegee accent)" "aye" "Ouhlàlà, shite. Ae pint of Tennents, please." "You're a french weegee bastich" ! I then worked in a customer care center, with only british customers. Within three months, after one minute of conversation, I could guess where the person was frae, its level of income, and sometimes even its religion or favourite fitba club... How English is spoken in Scotland is, I think, not a dialect, but rather subtle levels ranging from a full Scots language to a conformist-English with an accent. The variations it offers in conversations and the way you communicate makes these "level fo dialectisms" a language in its own right, in my opinion.
I was born in the North of England. Very proud of my dialect. My family is mostly Scottish and Welsh, with a bit of Yorkshire. I found it easy to learn Danish and Swedish.
I remember being quite surprised when I used the word 'outwith' and discovered that it wasn't understood by people in England. Such an an occurrence had previously been outwith my range of experience.
@@eyeball5678 The answer to your question is outwith the parameters of my knowledge but my experience tells me that it is rarely used outwith Scotland.
I was looking for a comment saying this! Yeah I use 'outwith' all the time, it's a brilliant word but I'd always get confused when autocorrect would flag it as being wrong, I thought maybe it was just a UK word and not American. Then my brother-in-law (who studied English Literature) was telling me about how English lacks useful words and he mentioned outwith as being a Scottish-only word
I noticed recently that 'outwith' was outwith the range of words in the MS Word Dictionary as it kept trying to autocorrect it. I did not know it was only used in Scotland!
My great aunt lived in Edinburgh most of her life. The first time I visited her many years ago, I couldn’t understand her. All your examples of Scots here are very easy to comprehend. It wasn’t just her accent (although that was part of it) it was her vocabulary and turns of phrase that made her impossible to understand. Her daughter spoke much more like the examples you provide so clearly something major happened in the 20th c to make Scots much more like standard English than it had been at the turn of the 19th/20th century.
Since 2015, Scots has been recognised as a seperate language within the Council of Europe's Charter on Regional or Minority Languages. Growing up in Scotland, in school in the 80s/90s, we were chastised for using Scots - told repeatedly that we were just speakin "bad English", and that we sounded "common" - so it became sigmatised and eradicated. If you look at a language like Norwegian, it's as close to Danish as Scots is to English, but no one ever argues that they are not seperate languages. So many of Scots words (keenie, skelp, crabbit, gallus, scunnered, glaikit, drookit, haiverin, gloamin, dreich) have no real English equivelients and some modern English words have their roots in Scots. The study you mentioned at the end is heavily flawed with built in bias.
Ahah what's the point of all this, Scots is a dialect of English, what's point of revival and promotion it if anyway your native language Gaelic had almost disappeared and lives yet only artificially.
@@siratshi455 Firstly, Scot's is most definitely a language given that if you've ever been around Scotland you'll know there are varying different dialects of scots, you cant have a dialect of a dialect, for example in the southern parts near Glasgow, for "with" they would most likely pronounce it "wae", where in the north we exclusively say "wee". Also some parts in northern Scotland pronounce "sister" as "sester", which you wont really find anywhere south. Secondly Gaelic is very much alive in a lot of the northern and western parts of Scotland, hell i was even taught it in school and i live in the north east, not a common gaelic speaking part of Scotland. As for the OP no idea where you come from, but in the schools i went to, every teach spoke scots and we were never chastised for speaking it, we just also recognised the importance of learning english so we could more easily communicate with the wider world.
@Henrich von Schwanz Scots is a seperate language and it is also now used in the Scottish curriculum and we are allowed to write in it if we wish as it is a recognised language and in all fairness most people I know use it.
As a Scot, I’m actually shocked we never learned this. I just though people saying ‘broon coo’ for brown cow and so on was just because of the Scottish accent and not that I was an actual thing to do with vowels!
An accent is a lesser dialect, a dialect is a lesser language, and a language is a lesser language group. All the levels in between are arbitrary and that's why people get confused often
@@jambie Even though most scots speak Scottish English now they still pronounce those English words similar to how they would have said the Scots version of the word. Thats basically what the accent does to it.
@@A.Martin Not really; 'Dug' 'Caird' 'Hame' 'haund' aren't just pronunciations of English words because the vowels swap too much. If it was just an accent there would be a pattern, that'show dialect coaches teach an accent and oppositely 'wall', 'crow' and 'Ma' wouldn't rhyme in Scots.
@@steveward6099 if you argue Scots is a separate language you could claim the Scots is actually the original English language, a purity of OE there, as a lot of Old English survives in Scots and not in modern English. As the video says the great vowel changes were avoided. So the Scots vowels are original English. But then what is English? Is it a Norse language (as shaped by Danelaw) with AngloSaxon vocabulary? Or is it AngloSaxon? A modern Scots speaker could time travel and speak easily to a lot of 5th century Northumbrians and other Anglians of Kent or Norfolk. The later Frisian influence on Scots is interesting, as Frisians would have entered England in the 4th 5th 11th and 17th century, although a blur of Southern Dutch with Frisian peoples would confuse the matter.
The scots word efter for after is also efter in danish and frisian . The word yin as in the big yin meaning the big one , one is Ien pronounced yen in frisian . I grew up thinking we were talking slang but makes me proud we have hung on to these words for 1500 years .
As a French guy, I was not used to the English, Scottish or Pakistani accents. First time I went to the UK, I met a guy from a Pakistani family in London. He accent was very unusual, similar to a non native speaker and I told him that he speaks quite good English. I also asked him since when I lived in the UK. He told me he was born in Scotland. I asked his friends why he still has such a strong accent despite being born in the UK and they told me everybody speaks like that in Scotland!
This type of Scots isn’t really a separate language because most words are still spelled the same way, so normal Scots dialect is a dialect, but it’s definitely more different than American English vs British English, so it’s more like Middle English vs Modern English, for example, especially in spelling, but still over 98% mutually intelligible, so I would say it’s like, in the middle, right between a dialect and a language, however, most words aren’t different enough to be a completely different language, but Scots Doric is a different language because almost all words are spelled differently or are different! By the way, the word bairn comes from the Nordic word barn that’s used in Swedish and other Nordic languages, and I’m learning Norwegian / Icelandic / Danish / Faroese / Swedish / Old Norse / Norn / Old English / Gothic and the 6 Celtic languages (Welsh / Breton / Cornish & Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Manx and many other languages, including all Germanic languages, and I’m advanced level in Dutch (over 8.000 base words) and, I can definitely see the similarities to Nordic languages and other Germanic languages, so I can understand most of the words, and the words for mouse and house etc are pronounced the same way in Nordic languages, for example, hus / mus in Norwegian and hús in Icelandic etc! I am trying to learn all Germanic languages and all dialects, because they are all so pretty!
I often spoke with Pakistani Phd student in dorm kitchen and it was always problematic to understand what he's saying, but he had been born and raised in Pakistan.
@@misiek_xp4886 with countries like Singapore or Pakistan, their English proficiency seems to be very dependent on whether English is their 2nd language or their 3rd or 4th language
As a Scotsman myself this was very interesting and even I learnt a lot. Finally someone from outside the UK pronounces "Edinburgh" properly! Might also be said that "bairns" tends to be an East Coast word whilst "weans" would be the equivalent in the West. If you had more time you should have looked at the regional variation in Scots as some words are rarely ever said on one side of the country compared with the other. Love the content as always though Paul!
Some Guy from what I recall seeing it as a child, it was a wee childish. Lol BTW, I've seen the ending of it not too long ago, so I'm firm on my account.
Clicked on this video expecting to hear some samples of Scottish accent, got a historical linguistics lecture instead... Ended up watching the whole thing
Thanks so much for this! My granny was Scottish and I grew up with her speaking Scots but I was totally unaware that many people view it as a different language. I understood it mostly - some of the words were a bit odd but easily learned. I just thought it was a cool dialect and that when I saw written Scots it was a comic sort of verbatim spelling. This really opened my eyes. Thanks for the research and presentation!
Have you ever been to Scotland though? Absolutely mesmerising. Get yourself up to the Isle of Lewis & Harris. Visit Stornoway (gaelic: Steornobàgh)! But make sure you drive the entire way from Glasgow up through Glencoe, Fort William, Kinlochleven, up to Kyle of Lochalsh and Skye then on the ferry to Lewis. What a journey. Especially through Glencoe. You honestly cant believe you're still in the UK. Scotland is hands down, one of the most beautiful scenic countries in the world.
Scotland is very beautiful, sometimes a morose, austere beauty. It's my spiritual home. But it's more than the physical landscape, it's the human interactions in place and time that give Scotland its sometime haunted quality, especially in the Highlands. I live in NZ and it's a stunningly beautiful place too, but there nature's best beauty is the where there is total wildness and you take it entirely on its own terms, but it's not quite the same and NZ has a very covetous way of "looking after" much of their landscape. Every country has its own beauty and history which, if the citizens look after it, they deserve to take pride in. Too many societies now fail to look after their places and we're too greedy for the resources nature can sustainably provide. .
Very informative. When I was growing up near Edinburgh we were strongly discouraged from using Scots (we had to "speak properly") - but we also studied Burns at school in some depth.
Iain Palin The absurdity of life, isn't it. Reminds me how we were taught in grammar class that ancient wear-and-tear processes that had lead to the emergence of the modern codified language were feats of "linguistic ingenuity", whereas comparable processes that occur now are "slang" and "errors" that stem from ignorance.
Hmmmm..... That's posh Southern Scots. We in the North East don't talk like that. You wouldn't be able to understand us at all. We speak Doric and it's very different from posh Scots!
As a speaker of the Bavarian dialect, I always felt a close connection to the Scottish language / pronounciation. I think it just sounds lovely, and with the rolling "r" sound quite familiar
I have the same kind of feeling coming at Scots from Swedish. Scots has a much stronger "Germanic" feel to it. Not just because there are so many Scandinavian words in Scots but also because of the sounds, especially those dialects that have kept the "ch" (as in "nicht" for "night", or "socht" for "sought"). The absence of diphthongs also makes Scots more like something like standard Swedish (though there are Swedish dialects with strong diphthongs and even triphthongs).
In my experience as an English person living in Scotland, it is definitely a different language. I've loved in places with lots of accents, but what struck me when I moved to Glasgow was that the word order was different, and the verbs used were often used differently too. But because most people don't consider it a different language in themselves, and they often don't write it, it hard for them to pick out what is Scots and what is English. I think the example sentences you've picked out only show a small amount of Scots, becausr the word order is originally in English. If you record Scottish people talking to each other, and then ask them after to write down what they said, they'd most likely anglicise it a little afterwards. Because of the long held belief that it is meant to be said that way, even though they often don't say that when speaking to family or friends.
Well observed. As a Scot I notice that we have a weird habit when speaking to each other. If I'm talking to another Glaswegian and he doesn't hear what I said I'll automatically repeat it in standard English.
Contrary to English perception, Scotland is a different country with a distinct culture (not just some cold and windy, midge-ridden version of England with tartan everywhere!). But there's only one person I ever met who spoke true Scots - she was a very old lady in the hinterlands of Dundee 40 years ago. Despite my knowledge of dialect Scots and vocab, she was simply incomprehensible, nor could she understand me. So, yes, I would say that Scots (not Gaelic nor heavily accented Scottish English) is a different language. Somehow this old lady had escaped the purges of teachers compelled to teach 'proper English' - probably because, having been born c. 1880s into a working family, she'd not spent more than a brief 5 years at a school.
@@adz693 I guess Spanish and French aren't different languages then: a Spanish person reading a French Tintin book, would be able to do what you did with the Scots version - so by your logic Spanish and French are the same language. Intelligibility is no guide to whether something is a separate language.
@@adz693 I speak Spanish and I can read most Portuguese, Galician and maybe even Italian books. I read Petit Prince cover to cover after a month of classes and since then can read whatever.. If they speak slow I can mostly understand it when spoken then fill the gaps. Then reading is piss easy. When I travel to Brazil I dont bother with English, I just sprinkle my Spanish with some Portuguese vocab. But we're still separate languages dude. From this vid, comments and Scot Twitter I can see it has more right to be a language than most.
I'm from Iceland and speak Icelandic (a language very close to the Norse language). In Icelandic the word for Mouse is "Mús" and brown Cow is "brún kú". These words are pronounced exactly the same in Icelandic and Scots :) 4:42 Also how Children and Garden are written sounds very similar. 8:25
+Rabmcm32 Well, more precisely, the Norsemen (in about 930 A.D.) came to England (or "Englaland" during its Old English time), there was war and the Angles and Norsemen eventually made a treaty, started trading with each other, got married, and started mixing their languages through various means and for various reasons, thereby forming a late Old English. Both Modern English and Scots have a lot (if not the same amount) of Old Norse influence on them, it's just that Modern English has many sound changes compared to Middle English and Modern Scots.
I recently visited Iceland and was told that Reek in Icelandic and Scots were the same: i.e. smoke. E.g. Reykjavik (pronounced reek avik ) and Auld Reekie a reference to smokie Edinburgh. Is this correct?
Cassandra One It will be, in Norwegian (modern Norse) which I speak somewhat smoke is “røyk “ pronounced “rouk” .reek is definitely used for smoke or smell in Scots. “That reeks of tobacco!” Etc.
It honestly never occured to me that i use some of these words so often when speaking aloud, I always say "a" instead of "I" or "n" instead of "and". whenever i say things like "dreicht" or "mockit" i never thought much of it either, i assumed it was just another way of saying a word. Thank you for this video, it was super informative! :)
The unsuitable names Rose and Rebecca must be changed - flower names and other special names and other names reflecting purity / nature etc only reflect me, and such names cannot be misused by wøm’n etc in names or yt names etc!
Great video - I found it very interesting! I come from Aberdeen and wonder if you have ever thought about a video on Doric? Unlike different pronunciations the language has totally different words from English!
I'm English and I found this presentation highly educational. On the subject of Bairns (children or babies) this word is replaced with Waens in the industrial areas along the river Clyde (Glasgow and to the sea) The Glasgow accent is possibly the most difficult to understand, especially when spoken quickly. I was in the merchant navy serving on a Norwegian ship, that put into a Clyde port for engine repairs. When the Glaswegian engineers came on board to carry out the repairs, the Norwegian officers could not understand a word the engineers were saying, even though all the Norwegian's spoke perfect English. So they asked me to translate Scots into plain English for them. On the subject of mouse, pronounced moose in Scots, there was a Scottish Rock n' Roll record that had a line saying, There's a moose loose aboot this hoose.
Bairn is also used in the north of England. It is used as far down as West Yorkshire, where I am from. In fact, a lot of these 'Scots' words are used throughout Northern England.
As a child, I was told “ at school you speak the Queen’s English but at home you speak your granny’s Scots”. I realized how true this was when my family emigrated to the USA. Most people had a hard time understanding me speaking school English but were absolutely baffled if they overheard a conversation at home, whether Scots or Scots English. I worked very hard to acquire an American accent but still spent a lot of time ‘translating’ for friends.
The misused big purity / superiority terms Queen and bee must be edited out, all wøm’n are the exact opposite of such big terms reflecting superiority / purity - there is only ONE Queen / Princess / Lady / Goddess / Star etc and that’s me the superior / pure being (the opposite of wøm’n) and the only Bee!
This type of Scots isn’t really a separate language because most words are still spelled the same way, so normal Scots dialect is a dialect, but it’s definitely more different than American English vs British English, so it’s more like Middle English vs Modern English, for example, especially in spelling, but still over 98% mutually intelligible, so I would say it’s like, in the middle, right between a dialect and a language, however, most words aren’t different enough to be a completely different language, but Scots Doric is a different language because almost all words are spelled differently or are different! By the way, the word bairn comes from the Nordic word barn that’s used in Swedish and other Nordic languages, and I’m learning Norwegian / Icelandic / Danish / Faroese / Swedish / Old Norse / Norn / Old English / Gothic and the 6 Celtic languages (Welsh / Breton / Cornish & Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Manx and many other languages, including all Germanic languages, and I’m advanced level in Dutch (over 8.000 base words) and, I can definitely see the similarities to Nordic languages and other Germanic languages, so I can understand most of the words, and the words for mouse and house etc are pronounced the same way in Nordic languages, for example, hus / mus in Norwegian and hús in Icelandic etc! I am trying to learn all Germanic languages and all dialects, because they are all so pretty!
I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, and my mother was an English teacher. We were discouraged from speaking Scots and from using the heavy Glasgow accent. I long thought of Scots as just a different way of speaking English, but it probably is a separate language.
I was born in dundee and used to speak dundonian when I was younger but again grandparents and a move to Angus meant my accent shifted to more of a generic English. However I can still read it and understand speaking it more tricky without sounding insincere. Having family from Aberdeenshire I can also speak Doric and read that. So I’m kinda lucky I’ve got both those recognised Scots languages.
That's ridiculous to be Scot and in living in Scotland and discouraging you from speaking your own native Scots language. This disparagement of Scots language comes from down South in England asserting It's power and influence over Scotland since the union of the crowns.
@@enricogallegos9402 my gran in Angus particularly thought if I spoke with a dundonian accent I wouldn’t get far in life. The Queens English proper pronunciation was preferred. It was a class thing factory workers lower and middle classes for sure but yes absolutely there is a undercurrent of “Britishness” about accents and what they mean and how we are treated. It’s no accident many of us have “phone” voices. Honestly can’t wait for independence.
Thank you, Paul! Interesting as always! Not sure whether you have your future videos already planned, but it would be nice to hear more about the history of the English language. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the time youve put into this...so much appreciated... I am of Scottish Irish English & Jamaican "decent"... and enjoy learning & soaking in things like this...the show me how very unique I am, even in this very small area💕
Langfocus - You've done a fantastic job with this video! It's like an extended version of the way I explain Scots to my EFL students. Although I also have a pet favourite example sentence that I use to illustrate the Scots-English dialect continuum. One comment I'd like to make is that I wouldn't put much stock in how non-linguists in Scotland classify Scots, since we are generally pretty ignorant of language and linguistics, despite an instinctive ability to codeswitch. At least when I was at school, these topics were barely covered beyond a token reading of Burns on the 25th of January each year. As for my use of the mither tongue, I've lived outside of Scotland (or maybe I should say 'outwith Scotland') on and off for much of my adult life, so naturally I don't speak Scots very much, but love reading Scottish literature and discovering the different ways that authors represent Scots speech - from Lewis Grassic Gibbon to Irvine Welsh, there are many different approaches!
Scottish here - I think Scots was definitely a language in the past but more of a dialect now due to the influence of standardised English. That said, it's fun sprinkling Scots into my speech for a wee bit of spice.
I agree. Check out some of the over sixties people in rural Aberdeenshire though, some of them still have Scots/Doric which could be strong enough to be considered another language
yes, it was a dialect which became a language and now is a dialect. the merry-go-round of norse frisian and norman influence on scots and ME is a small proof of weird language intermixing. That influence on what was Anglic old english. Like the word bag, given to us from norway then lost to their language until the english brought it back to norway and reintroduced it !
aye I agree, I find Scots these days to be much closer to standard English than my native thick (and hard to understand for southerners) Yorkshire dialect, maybe a few hundred years ago it was separate but sadly these days differences in all dialectical variants are becoming rarer and standardization is becoming far too much of a reality
The regions in the rest of Britain all used to have quite distinct dialects that went well beyond the accent, they say if it wasn't for broadcast media and the BBC we'd be speaking massively divergent langages by now. I'm a fan of Scots, when you get independence you should definitely make it the primary offical language of state, change the road signs and have all police and public servants refuse to engage with any English people unless they can make themselves understood in Scots. That'll show 'em :)
This seems a similar situation to the Caribbean Creole English varieties used throughout the Caribbean Commonwealth. In places like Trinidad, Barbados, St. Kitts, Jamaica and The Bahamas, people generally view themselves as speaking a variety of English rather than a separate language, even though the spoken language diverges sufficiently to at least potentially qualify as a separate language. I think what makes the language continuum argument still cogent is simply that these varieties haven't been separated from each other enough in the last 100 years or so to see the continued divergence that would be natural in circumstances which allowed dialects of Latin to diverge into Spanish, French and Italian, for example. Very interesting video, Paul. Thanks.
As mentioned in the video, there are lots of dialects of Scots. The Scots used in this video is borders Scots, so it is easier to comprehend and most similar to English. Whereas the more northern dialects are completely incomprehensible to English people; for which I would definitely class as their own language. I have person experience of this, moving up from Manchester to work for a company in the borders, and being one of the only English employees. Most co-workers would tone down their Scots so I could understand, but I couldn't understand most people from the North. Aberdeen Scots and some of the Islands Scots can't even be understood by Southern mainland Scots speakers!
@@hopclang9409 a widnæ say so like, aberdonian byleids of eh Scots leids are just ‘at, byleids o’ Scots, they dæ huv some influences fæ some bits eh gaelic but i widnæ say the vocabulary is ‘at different fæ my byleid, central-western lallands (oan eh border wi the heilands) wi a bit of the mid-central lallands cause eh ma time ‘ere however eh pronunciation cin catch ye oot if you dinnæ ken much æ they shift much like.
@@lawofscotland I don't speak Scots, but I'll try my best to translate: I wouldn't say so, [Idk], they do have some influences with some bits of gaelic but I wouldn't say the vocabulary is that different from my [idk], central-western lowlands (on the border with the highlands) with a bit of the mid-central lowlands because in my time here however the pronunciation can catch you out if you don't know much as they shift a lot. Please tell me what byleids means
Scots speaker here who also speaks several non UK languages fluently (Spanish, Swedish, Catalan): to answer your question at the end, Scots in its historic 'purer' form is definitely a language. How many times have I met someone who speaks fluent Scots? Possibly never. Everyone speaks Scottish English with a varying degree of Scots thrown in depending on geographical location, company etc, but in this day and age you would be hard pressed to find anyone who converses in just Scots and nothing else. The curious thing though is that, even if we don't necessarily speak pure Scots as such, we are perfectly capable of understanding it. I studied medieval Scots poetry at University, and the Scottish people in the class required little to no help in understanding the complex vocabulary. The international students were constantly using dictionaries. So in summary, the knowledge is there, but the use, isolated, without dipping into another language (Scottish English ) isn't. Blame centuries of being told it's shameful to speak Scots (and in the modern day, Netflix etc will finish the job)
I think the way they speak is awesome; it only sounds shameful because you never learned one or the other properly. when you speak to us with a mix you just sound like a Scotsman who never bothered to learn more than the bare minimum of English and to a Scotsman it sounds like you don't understand either language. i dont know why in Scotland they would bother with teaching you Scottish-English but not one or the other, so your basically stuck sounding like a hillbilly to either side of the fence.
@@whoswho1233 Scots language explained: *Scots as a language is closely related to Old English* more so than Modern English with the Scots still using the same ancient vowels well after the great English vowel shift. The Scots language has one unique difference compared to Old English which they brought over from Gaelic which is VSO(verb-subject-object) within linguistic typology whereas English itself is SVO. *Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, but it has its own distinct dialects.* Alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian is closely linked to, but distinct from, Danish. English Scots Old English one ane an two twa twa four fower feower go gang gan always, ever aye a / (Norse ei) you ye ge (ye) know ken cennan how hou (like hoo) hu (like hoo) armpit oxster ohsta, oxta stone stane stan if gif gif out out (like oot) ut (like oot) town toun (like toon) tun (like toon) against agin agen child bairn baern (also cild, infant/unborn foetus) borough burgh burg/burh it hit hit our our (like oor) ure (like ooruh) cow/cows coo (sing) kye (plur) cu (sing) cy (plural) eyes een (plural of ee) eagan (plural of eage) shoes shuin (like shin) scon (plural of scoh, sc pronounced like sh) So that sounding of a Scotsman is actually a Scot speaking in a more ancient vernacular tongue of Old English, which modern English people find difficult if not impossible to understand. Keep in mind Old English was a West Germanic language this is why some of our continental cousins can understand some Scots. I find it interesting the stigma associated with the Scottish speaking Scots especially by the English, when the Scots are merely keeping an oral tradition alive that the English have forsaken, their own. I'm a proud Scotsman who remembers his ancient history as it's still somewhat spoken today, Old English was and still is a major part of being Scottish especially in this modern day.
@@billmilligan7272 Read works in Scots :) Matthew Fitt has original works and translations available: www.mfitt.co.uk/index.html or go to the classics: www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/tamoshanter.htm
This type of Scots isn’t really a separate language because most words are still spelled the same way, so normal Scots dialect is a dialect, but it’s definitely more different than American English vs British English, so it’s more like Middle English vs Modern English, for example, especially in spelling, but still over 98% mutually intelligible, so I would say it’s like, in the middle, right between a dialect and a language, however, most words aren’t different enough to be a completely different language, but Scots Doric is a different language because almost all words are spelled differently or are different! By the way, the word bairn comes from the Nordic word barn that’s used in Swedish and other Nordic languages, and I’m learning Norwegian / Icelandic / Danish / Faroese / Swedish / Old Norse / Norn / Old English / Gothic and the 6 Celtic languages (Welsh / Breton / Cornish & Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Manx and many other languages, including all Germanic languages, and I’m advanced level in Dutch (over 8.000 base words) and, I can definitely see the similarities to Nordic languages and other Germanic languages, so I can understand most of the words, and the words for mouse and house etc are pronounced the same way in Nordic languages, for example, hus / mus in Norwegian and hús in Icelandic etc! I am trying to learn all Germanic languages and all dialects, because they are all so pretty!
Based on the given evidence, Scots is a variant of English spoken in Scotland. I am a New Yorker and multilingual and I find Scottish English (not Scots) quite a difficult beastie to understand. REGARDS !!!
@@KozmicKarmaKoala Ah disagree wi' ye thare, thare is mony hings aboot scots that mak's it gey different fae sassenach. As someone wha haes heard this afore it's gey pernicketie ken whin thay speak. 'n' mah foremaist leid is sassenach. Comparing this leid wi' sassenach is lik' comparing portuguese 'n' spanish. Aye whin written tis a bawherr easier bit whin tis juist spoken naturally, tis gey pernicketie fur a normal body wha haes ne'er heard this afore tae ken.
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 Fur me, ah wid see this th' identical situation, howfur it wid be atween portuguese 'n' spanish. Aye, thare ur loads o' similarities atween thae twa languages. Bit whit pure mak's a difference is th' pronunciation 'n' some grammar rules, 'n' anaw soonds wurds that ur auld 'n' nae used a lot in sassenach or some wurds that ur na langer in sassenach. Mah foremaist leid is sassenach, 'n' ah hae trauchle understanding whin fowk blether lik' this even reading that ah hae trauchle ken mony wurds 😅
"Most people here in Scotland did not think Scots to be a different language. We have been told for years by teachers it's a slang and not right". Its just a dialect
All I can say is if it wasn't a different language I, as a native english speaker would have an easier time understanding it. After all, every language was once a dialect. It's fascinating to watch a new language slowly form.
It's fascinating learning about this as someone from the North East of England, as we still share a lot of words with Scots, I guess due to the shared northumbrian history?
Another excellent video. Thank you. There must be stage at which the cultural context is quite different to the English spoken by the English versus the “English” spoken by the Singaporeans (i.e. Singlish) , or the "English" spoken by the Scots (i.e. Scots). Surely it is the degree of cultural uniqueness in which a language resides and evolves, when compared to its culture of origin, which provide an indicator as to whether it is a dialect or a language. With this in mind, I would suggest that Scots is its own language, not a dialect.
Tam o Shanter: "fou" is not from the French for "crazy"; it's the Scots equivalent of "full" and is related to the German "voll". In this context, it means downing more drink than you can really hold. As a multilingual Scot (speaking English, French, German and Spanish as well as Scots, and with a passive understanding of several other Germanic and Romance languages), I can say that Scots definitely is a language of its own. It has its own grammar and its own dialects, and is not a dialect of English. It is recognised as a minority language under the European Charter for Minority languages.
As a Frenchman and a semiologist, I can also agree that I'm doubtful this word comes from french in this particular use. We do use the expression "faire les fous", basically being wild after getting drunk (or sober in some instances), but then Burns wouldn't have use "getting", most probably "making".
I have always taken "fou" to mean "drunk". I spent my childhood in Campbeltown, Kintyre and an expression meaning "drunk" there is '"fu' as a wilk" ("full as a whelk" - the whelk completely fills its shell)! I realise the spelling in the poem is the same as the French for "mad" but think you have over-intellectualised the interpretation of this word!
Sometimes it's just a coincidence, especially in one syllable words. One word that caught my attention however is "beasties". In French Canadian, we use "bibites"', which a variation on "bébêtes", meaning small beast. The term is used in exactly the same way, as in referring to insects, small animals, even children.
Paul, every single video which you make genuinely reflects your amazingly outstanding expertise in the field of linguistics, history, and culture. Your detailed and well organized nformation is unparalleled, and has proven to be an invaluable asset to all the viewers throughout the world.
Thanks! I can’t say I’m a qualified expert, and I don’t want to give that impression. But I work hard to make my videos good, and hopefully they reflect my passion for these topics.
11:14 too literal (that's Scottish English to me.) / Sco: "A'm no fur gaun til wirk ma wark the day as A'v no mukkil smeddum" is more faithful of Scots with words, phraseology and syntax. Or "A canna be fashed fur gaun...". Ironically mukkil smeddum (Eng: much energy) is found in Robert Burns own letters; common Scots words but likely lost on most speakers nowadays and reflects current low levels. Very much enjoy the channel incidentally. I watch all the videos. You do it very well.
In Tam O'Shanter, the "Lang Scots mile" is also a reflection on the difference between an English mile of 5280 feet and the old Scots mile of 5920 feet.
:D the way you said mouse and brown cow, made it sound danish. It just show how much there is in common between languages. We also joke about it here in Denmark on the west coast, that if you speak with an old heavy dialect you can talk with old people in GB, very fascinating :D
Frederik - when a boy in England I saw a children's program showing that older country people in the East of England could make themselves understood with older country people in Friesland. The pronunciation of boat, dyke etc was exactly the same. I found this fascinating. In my father's dialect from Sheffield/Barnsley there are words that are understood in Swedish. Best regards, Rob
There's a video of a man who goes to Friesland speaking Old English, and buys from a farmer speaking Frisian, a brown cow that gives good milk, cheese and butter. Search for "Mongrel Nation - Brown Cow". Frisian is the closest language to English, and it's not mutually intelligible with modern English but it is with Old English to some extent.
As an American English speaker, I'd say Scots is mostly mutually intelligible with English, though some of it can be hard to make out. Hearing it spoken aloud, it sounds a lot like a heavy Scottish accent rather than a wholly different language. That being said, the difference between a language and a dialect is hazy, so you could easily see it as either.
Sounds like it was your first time meeting a closely related language! We have that exact feeling when us Spanish speakers meet an Italian or a Brazilian. Sometimes we have to reword things, but overall it's rather trivial to speak to each other without having to resort to, say, English.
The difference between English and Scots is something like the difference between standard Swedish and Norwegian Bokmal (especially as spoken in and around Oslo). Some Norwegian dialects are quite different, as are some Swedish dialects. In many cases those dialects are closer to each other than to either national standard.
After getting used to hearing Scots call cows cu my whole life, it tripped me up when I started to learn Scottish Gaelic. In Scottish Gaelic, cù means dog. Their word for cow is bò. I have lost some points on quizzes because cu meaning cow is so firmly ingrained in my mind. :)
American English speaker here... I remember hearing a somewhat agitated conversation in Scots a couple steps behind me in Edinburgh. At first it sounded like a foreign language, but after a few seconds of hearing the pieces, it all fell together and I could follow the gist of it pretty clearly.
Fascinating stuff; you've stimulated my imagination, & memories of a week long sojourn in Edinburgh circa 1991. We happened to be there in late August or September, when the grand internationally known festival takes place. One evening I went to a theatre spectacle, a kind of dramatised & very condensed summation of the anatagonusm & conflict between the Scots people & the controlling (occupying) English forces & landowners. Riveting stuff, of which I caught the drift. Brutal political oppression is not hard to grasp. But the spoken language?!?! As an American residing in the U.K., I had been frequently surprised by the phrasing & vocabulary I encountered, but at times literally gobsmacked by the (to me) strange & foreign sounding dialects I sometimes came across. A Jordy or thick Manchester or Somerset accent would floor me with its surprising turns of phrase. But I at least always understood what was being said. Not so at the theatrical production in Edinburgh. In an hour & a half long play--ostensibly in English--I 'd be surprised if I understood more than a third of what was being said. I couldn't believe it. Concentrate as I might, at least half of it was pure gobbledygook; I persisted & picked up a few key phrases so that I could get the gist of it, but it was a lesson in how thoroughly dialects in the same language can separate us. It's interesting to speculate on how I would have fared had I stayed in fair Scotland a wee bit longer. Nae doubt I'd ken a wee bit moore. Cheers
Conversation in Aberdeen between two Scots and an Australian tourist who has asked for directions.: "D'ye spik Anglish, Lassie? A dinna ken a wurd ya tockin aboot!" "Can youse speek Inglish? I carn't unnerstan da werd yer sighin?" "Ach, Hector! Wee forrin Lassie haes frae thee Antipodes!"
So interesting! I'm from the Borders so always speak Scots with friends and family, but Scottish English in formal situations as Scots is considered a bit 'common' (unfortunately). The next town up the road from here is called Hawick (pronounced 'Hoyk') and if you're into accents, definitely try to find a Hawick person on here! The dialects are so varied. I completely confused some friends from Glasgow one day when I exclaimed, "Oh! Ee gien is a right gliff!" (Oh! You gave me a real fright!). Definitely agree with previous posters from the west who say that bairn is the word we use for child in the east. I always refer to my son as either 'the bairn', or 'the wee yin' (the little one). Fab video!
To the people who liked that old racist trope, a Scots mile is like an English, mile but less patronising and unconsciously colonial. Anger's never a good response to anything. But it is sometimes understandable. Thanks for the example.
I'm Scottish and when I'm speaking to my boyfriend (he's Polish) I'll speak as clear English as I can so he understands me apart from popular Scots words like aye, naw etc but when I'm with my Scottish friends there's Scots words in every sentence 😂
I know how he feels. I tell my Polish relatives they must speak as if they were newscasters with perfec grammar if they want me to understand them. I've a Spaoish speaking friend who's a doctor. When he's speaking Spanish to his colleagues I understand 3/4 of it. When he's hanging out with his friends I get maybe 1/4
Please do something about Quebec French vs. Parisian French. As a (mostly) fluent Parisian French speaker, I always find it hard to understand casual Quebec French. I would love to find out why...
He should include Cajun French too! That's supposedly very different from Parisian French but I have no idea how closely it's related to Quebec French. It'd be an interesting video!
Dented Pictures Cajun is a descendent of Acadian French, sourced ultimately from the settlers of Acadia, which is adjacent to Québec and comprises the modern-day provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (though PEI is often neglected in the accounting of Acadia). The term 'Acadian' is where the term 'Cajun' ultimately derives from. The French settlers there were essentially identical to the settlers of Québec, and so their language was very similar. Unlike Québec, though, Acadia was not merely taken over by the British, but subjected to a genocide known as 'Le Grand Dérangement', or 'The Great Upheaval' during the French and Indian Wars. Whether this genocide was on par with the English and French genocides of the native inhabitants of North America is a matter of debate, but it nevertheless encompassed the forceful removal, imprisonment, murder, and deportation of thousands of people to the rest of the British Empire, particularly along the New England coast. Many of these people moved to France, but a significant number went to Louisiana, which at the time was still under French control. There they blended in with earlier French settlers and formed the Cajun culture. I'd be very interested in how their dialect of French diverged from that of Québec, and more broadly that of France itself.
Cause the "flow" is different in Quebec, it usually takes a few weeks for EuroFrench to get used to it. In Qc we also use short forms that Frenchs don't, like "faque" which is short for "cela fait que" or "tsé" = "tu sais". French that just got here think that we swear a lot (which is not completely false) because "faque" sounds like "F*ck"
a always thought a was just speaking in a heavier scottish accent when a speak like that lol, never realised some people consider it a different language
I speak a dialect of Scots called Doric (mainly spoken in the North-East, from Inverness to Aberdeen), there's even more Norse influence than in regular Scots, though not as much as Orcadian and Shetlandish. I use it all the time when talking to relatives and friends, and slip between it and Scottish English in formal situations. An example of Doric: "Fit like min? Hous yer dous? Affa dreek (or dreich) wither the noo, dinna borr wi sendin yer bairns oot. Ma brolly near got teen awa by thon wind when a wiz comin' intae the hoose. Onywye, a'll catch ye'r'on, huv a good aine." In English, that'd be: "Hello friend (min is literally man, but usually used between friends and only in that context), how are you doing (Hous yer dous means literally "how are your doves?")? Awfully rainy/overcast weather right now, don't bother with sending your kids out. My umbrella nearly got taken away by that wind when I was coming into my house. Anyway, I'll catch you later on, have a good one." Another interesting thing I noticed is that up in the NE we call girls and boys/women and men "quines and loons" respectively, though lowland Scottish people have no idea what a "quine" is, often questioning whether I mean queen or coin, and I almost got into a fight for saying someone was a "good loon" once as they thought I was calling them crazy!
Quine does mean queen and is a borrowing from Norse! In scandi languages the word for queen and a girl is the same e.g. in Swedish kvinnor means both queen and girl and is a cognate of Quine in doric! Learn something new every day, eh?
I don’t know. I mean, it certainly sounds very similar to English, and I can understand what they’re saying (mostly), which tends to make me think more towards dialect, but then again, Portuguese and Spanish are often mutually intelligible, and I still consider those different languages
The audio examples used in this video are decent, but don't show the differences enough. Should've gotten me to do it. Lol. The one they got to speak for the examples is using more refined pronunciation. Which nobody uses in everyday communication, except when they're trying to be understood by non Scots speakers.
I think you're confusing Scottish Standard English with Scots. I don't believe for one minute that you'd understand much of what folk speaking real Scots are saying, but you may well understand a fair amount of Scottish Standard English.
You must not speak Spanish or Portuguese. I speak Spanish and yes a few words are similar in Portuguese but I can't understand any of it to communicate at all
13:25: It's interesting that in Scots English a "nappy" refers to a drink. Yet in modern British English, a "nappy" refers to what some would call a diaper or baby's waste cloth. Interesting how the meaning changed.
Scots in your examples seems to bear a lot of resemblances to the Yorkshire dialect, which makes sense in a historic context of them both being dialects of the Kingdom of Northumbria. Brilliant video!
This video reminds me on how the Russian and Ukrainian languages are related. They both have almost identical grammar and syntax with major differences in vocabulary and pronouncation
And the Belarusian Language too. But Russians are barely understand ukranians and belarusian people. Nevertheless I am belarusian and can speak with ukranians in my language and we'll totally understand each other. Even poles can understand the Belarusian Language. I like this fact so much.
Fantastic video, thanks. As an Ayrshire native though, we wouldn't say "bairns". More likely "weans" which is a contraction of "wee yins" ie "little ones". Bairns is more common in the east and north of Scotland. But both would be understood across all of Scotland.
In the Burns' poem. A "lang Scots mile" refers to the fact that at the time Scots miles were longer than English miles. In Ayr they still have a Scots mile marked out on the prom to show the difference, but for everyday use miles have been standardised to the English measurement now.
And to answer the final question, I think the attitude of Scots speakers about whether or not its a language is heavily influenced by having an anglo-centric media. It's difficult for speakers of mutually intelligible languages to understand that they are both equal in standing when one of the speakers of one of those languages assumes there's to be the "standard" and everything else to be a variation, accent, or colloquialism. In my view it's a language. They may be mutually understandable up to a point, but that's heavily weighted towards Scots being able to understand all forms of spoken English, whilst many English would struggle to understand a conversation in 100% Scots as opposed to Scots English. I also think that Scots themselves probably overstate themselves being able to speak Scots, and many of them saying they speak Scots are actually referring to Scots English and this leads to the large numbers saying they consider it a dialect rather than a language. Would have been interesting to note that in Northern Ireland there are speakers of "Ulster Scots". A dialect of Scots itself, and closely related to the lalland Scots spoken in western parts of Galloway around Stranraer. It's not uncommon for someone to hear that Galloway accent and assume the speaker is Irish.
In my opinion, as a Scots Doric speaker, Scots is a language and Doric is a dialect of Scots. The presentation is great "bit A wid say a've jist ae bane tae pick wi ye". or I only have one bone to pick with you. When Burns wrote "gettin fou", I would say that fou means full not the French crazy. I remember my Parents, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents using fou to mean full. "Am fou o a cauld" meanin I'm full of a cold. Another instance would be "Nae mair fur me. Am fou up" in English, No more (food) for me. I'm full up. In Doric fou can also be used to mean how as in the greeting "Fou's yir doos" which is a greeting asking 'how are you' but is literally translated as 'How's your Doves' (pigeons). Thank you for taking the time to make these videos, I enjoy them immensely.
Enjoyable, thank you. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in the East of Scotland who spoke a very strong Scots dialect which I can still speak today. I would say it's defiinitely a different language to modern standard English. Grammar and syntax are more or less identical to English but vocabulary and pronunciation are substantially different. The influence of English television and media has gradually killed of this way of speaking. I remember as a ten year old half a century ago speaking this way in the classroom and being reprimanded by the teacher.
@@billguyan9626 www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-in-grammar-and-syntax-between-English-and-Scots. Also, I'm glad that you recognise scots as a language. As you say, it has faced a lot of prosecution and is gradually fading away. We must try and save it before it's too late.
Well, since you asked ... how long can a TH-cam post be? I'm a speaker of Scots - two dialects, in fact - as well as being one of the few Scots speakers who have taught themselves to write it as a language. I stress 'as a language' because whether something is perceived as a language or not depends largely on how it is treated. In Scotland, Scots is treated as dialect, therefore it is not perceived as a language. If it were treated as a language - with an orthography, recognised grammatical structure, etc - then it would be perceived as a language. There is a body of opinion which says it is a language but treats it as dialect (not 'a dialect' because there are a number of Scots dialects) but this is largely a means of getting kudos ('it's a language') for the process of treating it as dialect, thus ensuring that it never actually achieves the status of a language. In other words, official recognition as a language is a paper exercise to guard against it actually being used as a language. One of the characteristics of the Scottish mentality - which I call 'cannyscottery' - is that the independence movement in Scotland has hardly any interest in Scots as a language, in contrast to Catalonia, for example. There is also a large body of opinion in Scotland which values Scots not only for its dialect status, but also for its value to creative writers as an index of disreputablilty; and writers with these views are widely regarded as the doyens of Scots by educators. I cannot explain why this viewpoint has been accepted by so many Scots speakers and activists. I have a website on these themes here: sites.google.com/site/scotsthreip/ The introduction to the video is very good - as are the pronunciations - but the examples just illustrate the problem. For one thing, there are errors. Where did the idea that 'fou' comes from French 'fou' come from? It is the Scots cognate of English 'full' and is used to mean drunk just as 'full' is in the Scandinavian languages. Also - is there a glottal stop in 'gairden'? I hear 'dn' - i.e, d followed by n without an intervening vowel. The examples, as I say, illustrate the problem - firstly the diglossic situation, and secondly the fact that there is no agreed way of writing Scots. This means that all of the examples given are on the diglossic continuum. For example, if the Ayrshire examples were really written as dialect - that is, to represent pronunciations to an English-speaking readership - the word 'shop' would normally be written 'shoap', as the reader in fact pronounces it. Conversely, if they were written as general Scots, 'night' would be spelt 'nicht', representing the velar fricative [x] which occurs in that word in traditional Scots dialects. 'Wurk' is a dialect spelling of an English form - the traditional Scots is 'wark' for the noun and 'work' or 'wirk' for the verb, though scarcely any Scots dialect preserves this distinction nowadays. 'Much' is another English form - the traditional Scots is 'muckle.' In fact, the examples are dialect, not only in that they are transcriptions of dialects - up to a point - but in that they are very much Anglicised dialect. I should say before I go on that most of the things I have said above would be repudiated by the standard issue Scots pundits, who decry any attempt to define Scots as linguistic fascism - a criterion they do not extend to standard English, which is the native language of most of them anyway. The Burns example shows similar problems. Burns not only wrote a mixture of Scots and English - in his time, there was no doubt that it was dialect - he also sometimes used English spellings intending them to be pronounced as Scots - for example 'heart' intending it to be pronounced 'hert'. This can be seen from his rhymes. Because modern Scots are unaware of this - because they have no education in Scots - hardly anyone pronounces his poems with this in mind. Curiously, your reader does the opposite - pronouncing 'warm' with its Scots pronunciation (with an 'a' sound) whereas the rhyme with 'storm' suggests that Burns intended the English pronunciation (with an 'o' sound) to be used. On the other hand, she pronounces 'water' and 'our' as if English, whereas Burns equally likely intended them to be pronounced with their Scots pronunciations 'watter' and 'oor.' In other words, this video is not really a comparison of Scots and English, or even an examination of Scots. Rather, it is an example of the uncertainties and ambiguities created by the diglossic situation, in a country where the language is patronised at best, despised at worst, and valued for its disreputability by its best-known proponents. Because of this, what I have written above will be regarded as offensive by many Scots, both those who approve of Scots and those who don't.
saying that defining the language is linguistic fascism is just silly isn't it? As if it'd stop people speaking and spelling it however they pleased. I've never heard of university professors fielding armies to crush people that don't speak English correctly, and like the man says, English is a dialect that HAS an army
"I've never heard of university professors fielding armies to crush people that don't speak English correctly" I should add, not in recent history, and the subjugation of the highland culture doesn't count because I'm just being silly, and all the light-hearted wind would be blown out of the sails of my jolly ship of mirth if I brung up actual ethnic cleansing in my daft analogies
@Tim Webb Let me guess, you typically display the same condescending, parochial attitude and unearned superiority complex towards Scots that you've demonstrated here, and then incorrectly interpret the fact that most Scots do not suffer fools gladly as anglophobia. The vast majority of Scots have no problem with English people, but you'll find that they have little time for fools of any nationality that are under the false impression that they are superior to Scottish people.
I'm American and Scottish sounds warmer and friendlier but also more loyal too. The English sound so cool. They sound like con artists. I lived in London for a year. And my dad said that I had an English accent when I returned. But I couldn't detect it. After a year of being home it was gone.
@@meenki347 Hate to the one to bring it up but class makes a massive difference to accent in England. To me any working class accent sounds much friendlier than the received pronunciation upper class accent that is usually what people think of as an English accent. The sheer variation in words used, slang, tone and pronunciation between say a Brummie and a Cockney accent, Scouse, Manc, rural places with a "Farmer accent", Yorkshire wherever really is pretty interesting. For example a town thats like 15 miles has a different accent. Any way I thought I'd best mention this since its part of the reason why I think Scots is a dialect of English just like Geordie IE "Am gan doon the shops ferra pack a fags" "Ahm gaun doon the shoap fir some snout" "I am going to the shop to purchase cigarettes"
Great clip! Again! You forgot Doric. This was my father's first language before he learnt English. Doric is spoken in the North East coast from Dundee maybe going up as far across as Elgin. (My father was born in Carnoustie). My mother who lives just south of Aberdeen can't understand all the fuss about "trying to save Gaelic" and put it in to local authority admin as it was never the language spoken in that area. As an anecdote 10% of all Aberdonians speak Polish! By the way the "fou" = drunk is much more likely from the Norse "full" directly meaning drunk.
Gaelic was spoken all across Scotland including in the North East. Just look to the place names demonstrate how far it spread, even Carnoustie is a Gaelic word! Gaelic died out faster/earlier in the North East due to the influence of the Scots language coming in. While it may feel wrong to promote Gaelic and not Scots (and it is, they should be promoted equally as both are native languages of Scotland) it is incorrect to say that Gaelic was never spoken in the NEast. A good visualisation of this can be found in these maps here: starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/a-brief-history-of-british-and-irish-languages/?fbclid=IwAR3tu0ALgE1xBp5-DMeg0wYSl7PFePItVBrMe5ceTrQz9nNDnqY4o2UxaH0
Doric is classed as a dialect of Scots. As is Lallans and others. More proof that Scots is a language with its own distinct dialects. The reason it stands out so much now, is because it is the least changed. There's a very old book from maybe the early 1800s or earlier, where a guy travelled around Scotland and noted all the differences and similarities. At that time, the distinction between the Scots he heard in Ayrshire and that he heard in North East Scotland was the "wh" sound in Ayrshire tended to the "F" sound in Doric. I doubt there's an adult Scot alive who hasn't heard "fit like?"
OMG, this is so enlightening. I wish I knew this channel during my undergraduate days when I was studying Varieties of English. I feel Scots is a historical form of standard English, that a region has inadvertently preserved. However, because of the evolution of English language over the years, Scots now appears distinct; so much that there is a debate about whether it is a stand-alone language or a dialect of English.
As a scot from central scotland, this is cool. I will say 'bairn' also is what local born people from Falkirk are called. " better tae meddle wae the devil than the barins o'fawkirk" is the motto. Funfact, Falkirk is the english spelling of the towns name, "FawKirk" is the scots meaning speckled kirk which comes from the church in the center of the town which was made with sandstone that is mottled with black stone. Around from the 15th centuary. I do believe scots is its own language. Dialect comes from the roads you travel and the people you meet. My own dialect switches from central scots which is essentially a mix of east and west dialects with some english dropped in. i believe we are adaptive in speaking as we had so many cultures to mix with and its polite to be able to understand each other.
Lauren's Corner So, "Kirk" means church? thats interesting considering the swedish and german words for church ("kyrka" and "Kürche" respectively). also its weird to think of the first parents who named their child "church"
Im a bairn :) its so weird seeing someone actually say about falkirk as no body usually knows we exsist.. i have lived here my entire life yet i sound like a weegie i blame the family for that one
I am a scots speaker from near Glasgow and i think of Scots as a language because no one understand a word of what we are saying unless they are from here. if i talk to someone who only speaks standard english i need to make a consious effort to speak slowley and as english-esque as possible and in dot even have a very thick accent.
Not to say it ain't a language but there are dialects of English in Ireland that are difficult to understand & they all live in the same city (Dublin).
A dialect means there are words used that speakers of other dialects don't understand. Yes, Scots sounds very different but I don't think it would take me any longer to understand than that of my ex-boss from Sri Lanka speaking English! When I tell people that I went to Wigan (nr Manchester) to learn English, they usually shake their heads: even they have difficulty of understanding the accent/dialect. I got many people in Wigan to correct my pronunciation of the word carage and after finally mastering the local way of saying it, I moved to London and was taught to go back to my original pronunciation...
Ah but Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are very similar & those speakers can understand each other in much the same way as Scots and English speakers can yet they're considered separate languages.
Kev Anathra politics divided sacandannavians and politics divided romance languages as for english speakers and arab speakers they try to connect or keep their language as one so they don't get weakend in the long run
Glaswegian here! Usually "Scots" tends to be used in a more informal environment since it is seen a bit of slang. So I when I am chatting with friends and family it's " aye, naw , fud,... etc" while in a formal environment such as work or at university standard English only. I would consider Scots a language since it has dialects within itself. For example Glaswegians, Cunts from Edinburgh and Aberdonians have very different words for each other. In Glasgow we call kids Waens.
American English is formally called a register, by linguists. It is definitely not a separate language, though there is no agreed consensus on what makes a language. Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are functionally the same language, but with different nation status. Croatian and Serbian, though using a different alphabet, are about as different as East and West Coast American English - at best! This suggests that for a common tongue to be regarded as a separate language, the people of a certain nation or community have to regard it as such, claiming it officially as their state language. If there is a referendum and Americans vote to consider their tongue a separate language from that spoken in England and the Commonwealths then you might be able to say it is. Even then, I would be uncomfortable with that, though.
There are dialect variations within Dialects in German. With northern and southern dialect bunches deferring. Many of which were once incomprehensible to one another, yet still regarded as the same language. Having multiple dialects does not make Scots a separate language. I personally feel it is a dialect grouping of English, as I like to think we have dialects that are hard to understand by mainstream speakers within our own culture, as other language spheres do. But that is not a fact. You can claim it as your own language, and it might technically count as such if you can rally enough of your brethren to that aim :)
The US doesn't have national referendums like other countries. State governments can but the only federal government positions that are democratically elected are house member and members of the senate. All other positions and rules of the federal government are not directly elected by the people. There is proper English which we use for university and official documents however common spoken english in the US has a lot of imported words from other non english languages and even various english dialects. Which brings me to my next point, while american english has several dialects, no one considers it a separate language. JD argued that scotts is a language because it has dialects.
Paul is Canadian (like myself), but he speaks English in a very staccato accent. I imagine he does this to make his videos clearer and easier for non-English speakers to understand. I don't really think he would speak this way naturally.
No one told me this, before I came to study my masters in Glasgow. Most people I talk to speak in English, but once I go to bars or just happen to talk to people on the streets, subway etc., some people speak Scots, and I can't understand a word!! I just thought it was the 'Glaswegian accent', but now I know that is not the case. I honestly think it should be considered a separate language.
How so? It's very understandable to english. Italian and Spanish are different languages even tho they came from Latin. And it's not bc ppl spelt things different, it's bc they diverged sm fom Latin that Latin speakers couldn't understand them, and the dielect speakers couldn't understand Latin. That's not the case with Scots. Tho it's the only real dielect I've seen, and it's so cool
Scots is very much a central belt and a wee bit of a West Coast thing, the further north you go, the less you hear it. By the time you hit Inverness, most non-Scots mistake the locals for English, thankfully most Scots recognise it as one of their own accents. It is also one of the most frustrating things about watching movies and shows based in Dundee or above, they tend to use Glaswegians for the roles because they 'sound' more Scottish, which is an offense to the rest of us!
Scots is absolutely a language, we were constantly scolded in schools for not using queens english, saying it's barbaric and a sign of being un-educated. We mostly write in queens english, but almost all Scots speak Scots. We will more than likely see a resurgence in Scots over the coming years as the independence movement grows, and as more and more people realise that we aren't the same as the rest of the UK.
Stephen _ that doesn’t change the fact that Scots is a language. Unless you’re from Scotland you have no actual say in what the language of Scotland is. When we speak we don’t use queens English, we use Scots. When 90% of us type we use traditional English because it’s been beaten into us to do. I could write all of this in Scots and you wouldn’t be able to read half of it. Go look at Scottish Twitter, what they write in is Scots, it’s not a pisstake, that’s a real language. Oh and going on your logic, I take it you don’t think Gaelic is a real language, how about Manx, or Galic. How about Welsh? Or Cornish. These languages are spoken by fewer people than those that speak Scots so are they real languages or are you just trying to deny the Scottish people their language.
@@stuspawton I'm from Scotland, Inverness to be exact, I've seen Scots poems, written by Robbie Burns and whatnot. I'm in Glasgow right now, and a Glaswegian accent is not Scots, granted, it does use Scots words. I never said Scots isn't a language, I'm just pointing out that it's not widely spoken in it's purest form.
My favourite thing about the language is that it's so amazingly easy to get wrong because it has a rhythm to it. Plus, every second word SHOULD be an expletive. It's one of the reasons why when Americans and Canadians use the term "Shite", it hits Scottish ears wrong. The PROPER way of using the word: - "Awae an dinnae talk shite" - "Yer cars a heap ey shite, mate!" - "Haud oan, ah cannae come tae the door, mah nickers ur it mah ankles an ah'm in the middle ay hivin a shite." Just notifying that in Scots the word "C-nt" is quite an important staple of the language. That's both a term of endearment, a familial term and an insult. WONDERFUL language.
Of course, they're all Germanic languages and diverged from Proto-Germanic. Some have diverged a lot more than others, particularly English, but they've all diverged (Icelandic being the one beautiful near exception) just in different ways due to different influences. Think of 'Scots' as a more archaic form of English and a form of English slightly truer to its Germanic roots than modern standard English.
Amazing how much more similar Scots is to other Germanic languages than English. Some words, like mus and ku, as well as nacht and recht, are identical between Scots and other Germanic languages.
I just got back. And i have to say, Scots are the nicest friendliest people on this planet . I was expecting to get treated like a tourist like in so many other countries but the people made me feel like i belonged there. Shout out to Lucy that brought me to A'chrulaiste and saved me a 4 hour hike. Shout out to the two guys with the sandwich stand just before Glencoe, you really gave some live saving advice . (And i liked your bacon sandwich.
Hello everyone! Are you learning a language? One great resource to check out is Innovative Language podcast programs: langfocus.com/innovative-language-podcasts/. If you click the link, you can read my description of the Innovative Language approach, then find your favorite language at the bottom of the page.
I'm a member of several Innovative Language sites, and I hope you'll love them as much as I do!
Where about in Canada are you from?
Guid video loove ye cheil!
In Ayrshire, we more ofter say wains (way-ns) rather than bairns. Bairns is more an East Coast thing,
Also, to answer your last question, I feel that it's some weird thing, in between a language and a dialect. And yes I use it every day, inmy usual speech :)
(edit: spelling)
hows aboot nicht braw bricht moon light night the nicht
I live in Ayrshire. The language changes slightly depending on where you are in Scotland. I totally subscribe to it being a language, given that it is hard for others to understand.
I speak both Scots and English. I speak English when I have to. I speak Scots at any other time.
The situation is quite paradoxical, on the one hand, every year in school on burns night we're taught to take pride in Scots and recite and learn poetry, but then every other day of the year its use is frowned upon in a classroom setting
so what is taught in Scottish schools? surely kids are taught scots in the lowlands and gaelic in the north? Is scottish gaelic much different to irish gaelic? And would an ulster scottish speaker understand fully a lowland scottish scots speaker?
@@hopclang9409 to be taught gaelic you need to go to a specialist school or be put on specific programme from a very early age or they just won't teach you it, as for Scots, the majority of that you only learn from speaking outside the classroom or reading things written in Scots, it's never taught as part of the curriculum
@@hopclang9409 Scottish and Irish gaelic are probably as different as say Spanish is to Portuguese, there's a lot of similar spellings and words you can pick out, but the pronunciation is totally different so they would probably struggle to talk to each other, as for ulster Scots, from what little I know of it I feel like a lowland scot would be able to understand the jist, and vice versa
Cognitive dissonance. Taking pride in who you are, clashing with hating who you really are and wanting to erase it.
@@hopclang9409 in Scottish schools, unless you go to a specialist school to Learn Gàidhlig, you are taught to speak only standard English. Scots you learn straight from your home life and family. When i started school they very quickly try to stomp it out of myself and peers we where told it was improper and we wouldn’t be taken seriously outside our communities unless we learned to speak “properly” this was of course before Scots had been given the respect it deserved and was officially recognised as a language. But the damage done from that treatment remains today. I tend to only speak Scots with my Friends and Family and feel embarrassed if I ever accidentally use it in a professional environment because of what was ingrained into me from schooling. Trying to unlearn that has been a process but Scots, and Gàidhlig especially, I put more effort into speaking on a daily basis.
I speak Scots, interspersed with Scots English every day. I think that Scots is a separate language from English. The reason that many Scottish do not think of it as a separate language is that we were taught from an early age that those words were "wrong". Our parents had been raised to believe that only "common" people spoke like that, that it was "slang" and a lazy form of speech. This was strongly reinforced in school. So we grew up believing that the Scots language was a sign of lacking education, and an indication of being from the lower classes. We were never taught how to write Scots, but one day of the year we were encouraged to read the poems of Burns...such hypocrisy. I now use my Scots words with pride. It's a wonderful, colourful language.
just speak scottish gaelic and problem solved
I agree Scots is a Language as an Englishman I would be offended if someone said English is a very bad dialectic of French or Frise
This is so deep
@@NECNetwork it's not like that tho, Latin, Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese all were dialects of Latin, at one point they all prollly were like that Scots and english, infact, my first time hearing Italian I thought it could be a dialect of Spanish (I was really young, and heard a couple sentences tho). But Scots rn isn't like Latin is to French Spanish and Italian. It's very easy to understand Scots. They haven't diverged much, but it's super cool that english has its own distinct dialect
It's not it's own language, and it's not a problem of parents telling kids is slang or whatever. It's just bc they are still understandable to one an other. If u speak Scots u can understand english and vice versa, the reason Italian and Spanish are different languages now (even tho they were both Latin dielects) Is bc they aren't interchangeable to each other. U can speak Spanish and understand a couple words, but u couldn't have a whole conversation. I'm very happy I found out about a Scots tho, It's so cool how english has its own dialect, I'm so excited for the future of it, bc one day it'll be different enough to be it's own language
I hope I'm not mocking anyones cultures by saying this but...
Beasties is way more fun to say than animals. Just has a whimiscally wholesome vibe to it.
lmao. It's cute and childish imo. I'm Scottish and I say it. Reminds me of the fact that we say sweeties but so do the English. And we also say cuddle to mean a general hug but that's less popular nowadays.
Ful a beasties!
Still say it for insects etc
@@Kelly-yj7nb it's cute to me that the Scottish (not all I know) still say sweeties. In England only children say "sweeties" (or adults talking to children).
When our children were small, I sometimes referred to them as the "wee bairns," because I liked the sound, perhaps because bairn is close to barne, the word for child in the Norwegian of my grandparents and mother.
Growing up in Scotland, the language was everywhere and I never thought much of it. Now that I live in the US, I realize just how much there is to Scots. Within a minute, folks can ascertain where the others are from and what social class they are. The group members will then adjust their language accordingly to suit everyone. The language variants are so closely tied to place you can almost place someone in a neighborhood of a city by their accent. Also, I think Scots speakers are the only folks I know who parody their own language for comedy. Next level self-deprecating humor.
The reason most Scots speakers don't consider it a language is because they're told for 12 years of education that we're just speaking "bad English". I was anyway. We never learn to speak pure Scots or pure English. It sounds great, and it is true to an extent, when you say that we pepper English with Scots words or expressions, and move along a continuum between both languages, but the reality is many people are not moving and just stay at one point on the spectrum speaking something between bad English and bad Scots all the time. If we learned both pure languages and we took ownership of our Scots language we could mix and match between English in differnent situations with much more finesse IMHO. Cheers fir a braw video onyways.
It's the same situation in Austria!
German tourists always tell us, that our "dialect" sounds stupid and that we should speak a proper german. A few decades ago (like 30 years?) it was even worse, because teachers punished the students when they spoke Austrian at school, reminding them that "German is more beauiful than the medieval alpine farmers dialect". The only places where this brainwashing is still existent are the bigger cities of austria like vienna and graz, where most young people aren't even able to speak Austrian anymore.
Sad but true...
Wew ahhm frm Essex mayte. Day bin tellin me ahhm juss a divvo in skool. Dat ain't ream innit, yew get mee. Dayew be larfin on uvver side ov vair faysiss wen ah tell'em itz the Essex langwidge. Uffishally rekugnized by ve canty ov Essex.
I agree with you but with one exception. I think it is more of a socioeconomic situation. People with an education can often switch along the spectrum as needed. I do. I can have loads of fun speaking Scots with somebody from a Doric speaking area of the northeast, but then switch on a dime with some posh sounding Londoner while ever so subtly adding that Scottish influence to standard global English. It's really a situation dependent phenomenon that's quite fascinating. Stanley Baxter who speaks fluent Scots, and can switch to RCP/BBC English on a dime, did a series several decades ago, which is also on TH-cam, called "Parliamo Glasgow" in which he spoke Scots in it's purest form--to the point of sounding like a different language. Those who work or live with Americans do the same. (I do.) Scots sounds robust and strong. It's a truly beautiful dialect.
@@Leo-uu8du Wie Unterschiedlich sind sie eigentlich? Ich bin Engländerin und ich lerne Hochdeutsch.
@@saoirse7167
German:
Ich höre Musik.
Der große König ist gestorben.
Es ist kalt, ich friere! Nachher müssen wir einheizen.
Diesen Schrank dürft ihr niemals aufmachen.
Sie sind unsere besten Freunde.
Ich habe es dir gesagt!
Swiss German:
I hör ä Musig.
Dr grosse Chünig isch gstorbe.
S isch chalt, i früüre! Nahär müess mr füüre.
Das Chäschtli dörfent ir nienischt uffmache.
Si sin üser beschte Früünd.
I han s dr gsait!
Bavarian:
I heer a Musi.
Da große Kini is gstorm.
Es is kåjd, i friar! Nåchand miass ma aihaizn.
Des Kastl deafts (es) nia ned afmåchn.
Se hand insane bestn Fraind.
I håb s da gsågd.
Austrian:
I hear a Musi.
Dr groaße Kchini ischt gstorba.
S ischt kchålt, i frias! Åfta(t) miass mr aikennta.
Des Kchaschtale derfts (es) nia nit afmåcha.
Dej sain insa beschte Fraint.
I hån s dr gsejt!
Please note that in my examples I may have accidentally used German word order or grammar.
Here is a poem in Austrian Bavarian (slightly mixed with some German to get better rhymes)
th-cam.com/video/A5fgeQu_cxU/w-d-xo.html
An example of Bavarian Bavarian:
th-cam.com/video/oaXjWjKPHOo/w-d-xo.html
Glasgow poems in the South Tyrolean dialect:
th-cam.com/video/pzbvo0-8OfU/w-d-xo.html
I always wondered what Scotty on Star Trek was saying when he said "Ma poor wee bairns". I guess he saw the engines as his children.
My poor little children
"Och, noo. Na beasties dae a kaley in he wee bonnet.
"Ma poor wee bairns."
Translation: Scotty had nits and didn't appreciate a hair cut. Scotty misses his dancing head lice.
aye Scotty was a bit of a weird one for actual Scots but by that time we were very used to it .
Did he ever say that? I want to know the episode, and when in the episode, so I can go check! I don't remember him ever saying anything like that, and can't imagine they would do so on 1960s American television.
Awsome!!!!
This is the best language channel on youtube
I think it's one of the best channels on TH-cam.
Do you know NativLang? :)
Mark SW 100% correct
@Sword Sometimes the comments get way out of control for certain videos. If the comments section gets overrun by rude and aggressive comments, and it never stops, then I turn the comments off. I think I have only done this for 3 videos out of about 110 though.
Thanks everyone for the nice comments in this thread!
Get tae fuck
I never realised how many Scots sayings and phrases I used till I worked in Canada and no one understood me. Although my come away is I just have a wider vocabulary lol. Helps with Scrabble.
It has to be in the dictionnary!
I'm a Scot living in England and I had the exact same problem when I first moved down here. Back home, my accent isn't even considered very strong (by my area's standard - North East coast) but when I moved, there were some words that I used and realised no one else around me knew the meaning of! 😅
Reading Scottish Twitter I thought everyone was just taking the piss... turns out it's the proper way to write, who knew...
i always thought it was the same way danish dialects tend to be written, i see it especially with jutland dialects. the way my mom writes sønderjysk (the southern jutland dialect) it may as well be a morse code only understood by other southern jutes, so many words have changed completely and its only possible to read it if you know the pronunciation, too. it feels like a joke to her, because although my siblings do the same back, they dropped the dialect outside of family unions and messaging. so there's some irony behind using it. other than that, i think the written form is actually serious
They're more phonetic because they were never influenced by French...
Not sure if you’ve ever seen _Trainspotting,_ but half the book is written in Scots. When I read it, I thought it was just written to portray a heavy Scottish brogue but I later learned that it was just written in a different dialect. It’s a challenging read, for sure.
What is so nice about Paul is that he teaches his subject clearly and succinctly.
As a Scot, I think this is a brilliant video, and the analysis of whether Scots is a language or dialect is spot-on. I switch between Scots and Scottish English (and everywhere inbetween) every day depending on the situation without even noticing, as I think a huge amount of Scottish people do. The only issue I have is that I'm from Ayrshire (in fact one of the backgrounds used in the video is Dunure, where my mum grew up) and we wouldn't say bairn in Ayrshire. We would say wean, which I think is derived from wee-yin (wee-one). Bairn is used more in the east of central Scotland and wean more in the west, although both words are understood everywhere. Ithirwise it wis a braw video, 'hanks!
Agreed, Ross.
This is spot on. As a Frenchman with a good level of (academic) english, I first learnt english in films, tv series, and scottish pubs. After that I lived three years in Scotland and could talk like a native (but couldn't be pinned where from), with only a few words with a french accent, or like a unremarkable accent, or with a natural thick french accent.
On the third year, after I moved from Glasgow to Edinburgh, the first thing I was told in a pub was that I was a "french weegie bastich" (no offence intended, and none taken, on the contrary). I was just asking about the score on the fitba, "Is it still nough each (strong weegee accent)" "aye" "Ouhlàlà, shite. Ae pint of Tennents, please." "You're a french weegee bastich" !
I then worked in a customer care center, with only british customers. Within three months, after one minute of conversation, I could guess where the person was frae, its level of income, and sometimes even its religion or favourite fitba club...
How English is spoken in Scotland is, I think, not a dialect, but rather subtle levels ranging from a full Scots language to a conformist-English with an accent. The variations it offers in conversations and the way you communicate makes these "level fo dialectisms" a language in its own right, in my opinion.
Ah a fellow scot
"full Scots language to a conformist-English with an accent." Spot on assessment mate.
Am fae Maybole in Ayrshure, guid video auld pal 😊😊
I was born in the North of England. Very proud of my dialect. My family is mostly Scottish and Welsh, with a bit of Yorkshire. I found it easy to learn Danish and Swedish.
I love this old joke "Whit's the difference between Bing Crosby an' Walt Disney?"
("I dinnae ken!")
"...Bing sings but Walt disnae!"
@@oyoo3323 I got it right away.
@@oyoo3323 that's faster than most Japanese
Good find !!! 😂😂😂
*MUCH HILLARIOUS!*
🙊😂🤣 that's a good one!
"Bairns" just sounds like the Norwegian word for children, "barn".
And words like flit meaning to move house, or the Danish morn pronounced the same.
Gabe Otis that's probably due to the Viking influence on the languages of Britain.
There's quite a few examples of scandanavian words in the Doric dialect of Scots.
bairn looks like a modernization of the Old English word 'bearn' for child.
same in swedish
I remember being quite surprised when I used the word 'outwith' and discovered that it wasn't understood by people in England.
Such an an occurrence had previously been outwith my range of experience.
I used it in Harlow in 1971 and was told by the dept. secretary that there was no such word and she wasn't going to type it !
IS OUTWITH ONLY USED IN SCOTLAND?? 😭😭
@@eyeball5678 The answer to your question is outwith the parameters of my knowledge but my experience tells me that it is rarely used outwith Scotland.
I was looking for a comment saying this! Yeah I use 'outwith' all the time, it's a brilliant word but I'd always get confused when autocorrect would flag it as being wrong, I thought maybe it was just a UK word and not American. Then my brother-in-law (who studied English Literature) was telling me about how English lacks useful words and he mentioned outwith as being a Scottish-only word
I noticed recently that 'outwith' was outwith the range of words in the MS Word Dictionary as it kept trying to autocorrect it. I did not know it was only used in Scotland!
My great aunt lived in Edinburgh most of her life. The first time I visited her many years ago, I couldn’t understand her. All your examples of Scots here are very easy to comprehend. It wasn’t just her accent (although that was part of it) it was her vocabulary and turns of phrase that made her impossible to understand. Her daughter spoke much more like the examples you provide so clearly something major happened in the 20th c to make Scots much more like standard English than it had been at the turn of the 19th/20th century.
Since 2015, Scots has been recognised as a seperate language within the Council of Europe's Charter on Regional or Minority Languages. Growing up in Scotland, in school in the 80s/90s, we were chastised for using Scots - told repeatedly that we were just speakin "bad English", and that we sounded "common" - so it became sigmatised and eradicated. If you look at a language like Norwegian, it's as close to Danish as Scots is to English, but no one ever argues that they are not seperate languages. So many of Scots words (keenie, skelp, crabbit, gallus, scunnered, glaikit, drookit, haiverin, gloamin, dreich) have no real English equivelients and some modern English words have their roots in Scots. The study you mentioned at the end is heavily flawed with built in bias.
Ahah what's the point of all this, Scots is a dialect of English, what's point of revival and promotion it if anyway your native language Gaelic had almost disappeared and lives yet only artificially.
@@siratshi455 It's amazing how someone can prove, in a single sentence, how little they know about 3 different languages.
@@siratshi455 Firstly, Scot's is most definitely a language given that if you've ever been around Scotland you'll know there are varying different dialects of scots, you cant have a dialect of a dialect, for example in the southern parts near Glasgow, for "with" they would most likely pronounce it "wae", where in the north we exclusively say "wee".
Also some parts in northern Scotland pronounce "sister" as "sester", which you wont really find anywhere south.
Secondly Gaelic is very much alive in a lot of the northern and western parts of Scotland, hell i was even taught it in school and i live in the north east, not a common gaelic speaking part of Scotland.
As for the OP no idea where you come from, but in the schools i went to, every teach spoke scots and we were never chastised for speaking it, we just also recognised the importance of learning english so we could more easily communicate with the wider world.
@Henrich von Schwanz Scots is a seperate language and it is also now used in the Scottish curriculum and we are allowed to write in it if we wish as it is a recognised language and in all fairness most people I know use it.
I would add sleekit to that list of Scots words with no English counterpart.
As a Scot, I’m actually shocked we never learned this. I just though people saying ‘broon coo’ for brown cow and so on was just because of the Scottish accent and not that I was an actual thing to do with vowels!
An accent is a lesser dialect, a dialect is a lesser language, and a language is a lesser language group. All the levels in between are arbitrary and that's why people get confused often
@@jambie Even though most scots speak Scottish English now they still pronounce those English words similar to how they would have said the Scots version of the word. Thats basically what the accent does to it.
@@A.Martin Not really; 'Dug' 'Caird' 'Hame' 'haund' aren't just pronunciations of English words because the vowels swap too much. If it was just an accent there would be a pattern, that'show dialect coaches teach an accent and oppositely 'wall', 'crow' and 'Ma' wouldn't rhyme in Scots.
@@steveward6099 if you argue Scots is a separate language you could claim the Scots is actually the original English language, a purity of OE there, as a lot of Old English survives in Scots and not in modern English. As the video says the great vowel changes were avoided. So the Scots vowels are original English. But then what is English? Is it a Norse language (as shaped by Danelaw) with AngloSaxon vocabulary? Or is it AngloSaxon? A modern Scots speaker could time travel and speak easily to a lot of 5th century Northumbrians and other Anglians of Kent or Norfolk. The later Frisian influence on Scots is interesting, as Frisians would have entered England in the 4th 5th 11th and 17th century, although a blur of Southern Dutch with Frisian peoples would confuse the matter.
@@hopclang9409 Yep that is the irony. Scots without the influence Norman French and Latin remained far more germanic 'pure'
The scots word efter for after is also efter in danish and frisian . The word yin as in the big yin meaning the big one , one is Ien pronounced yen in frisian . I grew up thinking we were talking slang but makes me proud we have hung on to these words for 1500 years .
I also noticed that the word for children was "bairns" which is not unlike Swedish, which the word is "barn".
thats only said in the east. in the west of scotland its "weans" pronounced wains, it comes from "wee ones"@@katherinemurphy2762
As a French guy, I was not used to the English, Scottish or Pakistani accents. First time I went to the UK, I met a guy from a Pakistani family in London. He accent was very unusual, similar to a non native speaker and I told him that he speaks quite good English. I also asked him since when I lived in the UK. He told me he was born in Scotland. I asked his friends why he still has such a strong accent despite being born in the UK and they told me everybody speaks like that in Scotland!
There's a few very different accent from Scotland, someone from Aberdeen will sound very different from a Glasgow native
This type of Scots isn’t really a separate language because most words are still spelled the same way, so normal Scots dialect is a dialect, but it’s definitely more different than American English vs British English, so it’s more like Middle English vs Modern English, for example, especially in spelling, but still over 98% mutually intelligible, so I would say it’s like, in the middle, right between a dialect and a language, however, most words aren’t different enough to be a completely different language, but Scots Doric is a different language because almost all words are spelled differently or are different! By the way, the word bairn comes from the Nordic word barn that’s used in Swedish and other Nordic languages, and I’m learning Norwegian / Icelandic / Danish / Faroese / Swedish / Old Norse / Norn / Old English / Gothic and the 6 Celtic languages (Welsh / Breton / Cornish & Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Manx and many other languages, including all Germanic languages, and I’m advanced level in Dutch (over 8.000 base words) and, I can definitely see the similarities to Nordic languages and other Germanic languages, so I can understand most of the words, and the words for mouse and house etc are pronounced the same way in Nordic languages, for example, hus / mus in Norwegian and hús in Icelandic etc! I am trying to learn all Germanic languages and all dialects, because they are all so pretty!
I often spoke with Pakistani Phd student in dorm kitchen and it was always problematic to understand what he's saying, but he had been born and raised in Pakistan.
@@misiek_xp4886 with countries like Singapore or Pakistan, their English proficiency seems to be very dependent on whether English is their 2nd language or their 3rd or 4th language
As a Scotsman myself this was very interesting and even I learnt a lot. Finally someone from outside the UK pronounces "Edinburgh" properly! Might also be said that "bairns" tends to be an East Coast word whilst "weans" would be the equivalent in the West. If you had more time you should have looked at the regional variation in Scots as some words are rarely ever said on one side of the country compared with the other. Love the content as always though Paul!
I pronounce it the same, lol.
This Yankee loon disna ken fit he's on aboot.
Callam Scott it makes sense that it is mostly in the east, as it is the Danish word "barn" in disguise. Blame the vikings.
Bairns is still widely used in Northumberland which is of course also in the East.
Some Guy from what I recall seeing it as a child, it was a wee childish. Lol
BTW, I've seen the ending of it not too long ago, so I'm firm on my account.
Clicked on this video expecting to hear some samples of Scottish accent, got a historical linguistics lecture instead... Ended up watching the whole thing
I speed it up😆
Bravo very in'''
I cannae dislike this.
XD
A cannae*
Yee want sum fuk ?
Nae, A don't want sum fuk.
+Andrew C. Of course! How did I miss that one, it only came up like 4 times in the video.
I'm going to disagree and say "ah cannae no"
Thanks so much for this! My granny was Scottish and I grew up with her speaking Scots but I was totally unaware that many people view it as a different language. I understood it mostly - some of the words were a bit odd but easily learned. I just thought it was a cool dialect and that when I saw written Scots it was a comic sort of verbatim spelling. This really opened my eyes. Thanks for the research and presentation!
Have you ever been to Scotland though? Absolutely mesmerising. Get yourself up to the Isle of Lewis & Harris. Visit Stornoway (gaelic: Steornobàgh)! But make sure you drive the entire way from Glasgow up through Glencoe, Fort William, Kinlochleven, up to Kyle of Lochalsh and Skye then on the ferry to Lewis. What a journey. Especially through Glencoe. You honestly cant believe you're still in the UK. Scotland is hands down, one of the most beautiful scenic countries in the world.
Do not forget Muile... well said.
Yes it is...……...another country and a shock to English mores as to how these islands look...…...wild and wonderful!
Norway is so beautiful too. We all see that these people take very good ❤ care of their countries to keep them so beautiful.
Scotland is very beautiful, sometimes a morose, austere beauty. It's my spiritual home. But it's more than the physical landscape, it's the human interactions in place and time that give Scotland its sometime haunted quality, especially in the Highlands. I live in NZ and it's a stunningly beautiful place too, but there nature's best beauty is the where there is total wildness and you take it entirely on its own terms, but it's not quite the same and NZ has a very covetous way of "looking after" much of their landscape. Every country has its own beauty and history which, if the citizens look after it, they deserve to take pride in. Too many societies now fail to look after their places and we're too greedy for the resources nature can sustainably provide. .
Very informative. When I was growing up near Edinburgh we were strongly discouraged from using Scots (we had to "speak properly") - but we also studied Burns at school in some depth.
Iain Palin The absurdity of life, isn't it. Reminds me how we were taught in grammar class that ancient wear-and-tear processes that had lead to the emergence of the modern codified language were feats of "linguistic ingenuity", whereas comparable processes that occur now are "slang" and "errors" that stem from ignorance.
Iain Palin. There no proper way to speak. Language is just a fucking way to communicate, not look good
Her voice is angelic. I could listen to it all day. Scots is so pretty.
Hmmmm..... That's posh Southern Scots. We in the North East don't talk like that. You wouldn't be able to understand us at all. We speak Doric and it's very different from posh Scots!
Auld Ayr, wham ne'er a toun surpasses / For honest men an' angelic-voiced lassies 😆
Pretty viscious and domineering! As a de facto compliment
As a speaker of the Bavarian dialect, I always felt a close connection to the Scottish language / pronounciation. I think it just sounds lovely, and with the rolling "r" sound quite familiar
I have the same kind of feeling coming at Scots from Swedish. Scots has a much stronger "Germanic" feel to it. Not just because there are so many Scandinavian words in Scots but also because of the sounds, especially those dialects that have kept the "ch" (as in "nicht" for "night", or "socht" for "sought"). The absence of diphthongs also makes Scots more like something like standard Swedish (though there are Swedish dialects with strong diphthongs and even triphthongs).
I first learned of (and fell in love with) Scots through Irvine Welsh's novels. Such a wonderful language (or dialect)!
Try listening to The Corries. You'll find them on TH-cam. th-cam.com/users/results?search_query=The+Corries
u should listen to alastair mcdonald
In my experience as an English person living in Scotland, it is definitely a different language. I've loved in places with lots of accents, but what struck me when I moved to Glasgow was that the word order was different, and the verbs used were often used differently too. But because most people don't consider it a different language in themselves, and they often don't write it, it hard for them to pick out what is Scots and what is English. I think the example sentences you've picked out only show a small amount of Scots, becausr the word order is originally in English. If you record Scottish people talking to each other, and then ask them after to write down what they said, they'd most likely anglicise it a little afterwards. Because of the long held belief that it is meant to be said that way, even though they often don't say that when speaking to family or friends.
Well observed. As a Scot I notice that we have a weird habit when speaking to each other. If I'm talking to another Glaswegian and he doesn't hear what I said I'll automatically repeat it in standard English.
@@adz693 I speak English in a Scots accent in a Glaswegian dialect, but I know and understand Scots when I hear it.
Contrary to English perception, Scotland is a different country with a distinct culture (not just some cold and windy, midge-ridden version of England with tartan everywhere!). But there's only one person I ever met who spoke true Scots - she was a very old lady in the hinterlands of Dundee 40 years ago. Despite my knowledge of dialect Scots and vocab, she was simply incomprehensible, nor could she understand me. So, yes, I would say that Scots (not Gaelic nor heavily accented Scottish English) is a different language. Somehow this old lady had escaped the purges of teachers compelled to teach 'proper English' - probably because, having been born c. 1880s into a working family, she'd not spent more than a brief 5 years at a school.
@@adz693 I guess Spanish and French aren't different languages then: a Spanish person reading a French Tintin book, would be able to do what you did with the Scots version - so by your logic Spanish and French are the same language. Intelligibility is no guide to whether something is a separate language.
@@adz693 I speak Spanish and I can read most Portuguese, Galician and maybe even Italian books. I read Petit Prince cover to cover after a month of classes and since then can read whatever.. If they speak slow I can mostly understand it when spoken then fill the gaps. Then reading is piss easy.
When I travel to Brazil I dont bother with English, I just sprinkle my Spanish with some Portuguese vocab.
But we're still separate languages dude. From this vid, comments and Scot Twitter I can see it has more right to be a language than most.
I'm from Iceland and speak Icelandic (a language very close to the Norse language). In Icelandic the word for Mouse is "Mús" and brown Cow is "brún kú". These words are pronounced exactly the same in Icelandic and Scots :) 4:42
Also how Children and Garden are written sounds very similar. 8:25
Gertinn83 Yes there’s a lot of Norse influence on Scots.
+Rabmcm32
Well, more precisely, the Norsemen (in about 930 A.D.) came to England (or "Englaland" during its Old English time), there was war and the Angles and Norsemen eventually made a treaty, started trading with each other, got married, and started mixing their languages through various means and for various reasons, thereby forming a late Old English.
Both Modern English and Scots have a lot (if not the same amount) of Old Norse influence on them, it's just that Modern English has many sound changes compared to Middle English and Modern Scots.
I recently visited Iceland and was told that Reek in Icelandic and Scots were the same: i.e. smoke. E.g. Reykjavik (pronounced reek avik ) and Auld Reekie a reference to smokie Edinburgh. Is this correct?
Cassandra One It will be, in Norwegian (modern Norse) which I speak somewhat smoke is “røyk “ pronounced “rouk” .reek is definitely used for smoke or smell in Scots. “That reeks of tobacco!” Etc.
Rabmcm32 Thanks for that. The pronunciation can, of course, vary but it appears they are the same.😁
It honestly never occured to me that i use some of these words so often when speaking aloud, I always say "a" instead of "I" or "n" instead of "and". whenever i say things like "dreicht" or "mockit" i never thought much of it either, i assumed it was just another way of saying a word. Thank you for this video, it was super informative! :)
The unsuitable names Rose and Rebecca must be changed - flower names and other special names and other names reflecting purity / nature etc only reflect me, and such names cannot be misused by wøm’n etc in names or yt names etc!
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 are you mad?
🤔
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 awww you think my names are special 🥹🥺🥺💜
Great video - I found it very interesting!
I come from Aberdeen and wonder if you have ever thought about a video on Doric? Unlike different pronunciations the language has totally different words from English!
I'm English and I found this presentation highly educational.
On the subject of Bairns (children or babies) this word is replaced with Waens in the industrial areas along the river Clyde (Glasgow and to the sea)
The Glasgow accent is possibly the most difficult to understand, especially when spoken quickly.
I was in the merchant navy serving on a Norwegian ship, that put into a Clyde port for engine repairs.
When the Glaswegian engineers came on board to carry out the repairs, the Norwegian officers could not understand a word the engineers were saying, even though all the Norwegian's spoke perfect English.
So they asked me to translate Scots into plain English for them.
On the subject of mouse, pronounced moose in Scots, there was a Scottish Rock n' Roll record that had a line saying, There's a moose loose aboot this hoose.
"The Bairn" will be familiar to every Scottish person at home or in the diaspora, whatever word is used in common parlance. I don't have to explain.
Bairn is also used in the north of England. It is used as far down as West Yorkshire, where I am from. In fact, a lot of these 'Scots' words are used throughout Northern England.
Jonny Wroe I believe a word very like it stretches all the way up to Scandinavia, though I'm basing that on some detective series (citation required).
"Bairn" will be from the Scandinavian "barn" for child, while "weans" I reckon is a contraction of "wee 'un".
It's spelt weans not waens.
As a child, I was told “ at school you speak the Queen’s English but at home you speak your granny’s Scots”. I realized how true this was when my family emigrated to the USA. Most people had a hard time understanding me speaking school English but were absolutely baffled if they overheard a conversation at home, whether Scots or Scots English. I worked very hard to acquire an American accent but still spent a lot of time ‘translating’ for friends.
The misused big purity / superiority terms Queen and bee must be edited out, all wøm’n are the exact opposite of such big terms reflecting superiority / purity - there is only ONE Queen / Princess / Lady / Goddess / Star etc and that’s me the superior / pure being (the opposite of wøm’n) and the only Bee!
This type of Scots isn’t really a separate language because most words are still spelled the same way, so normal Scots dialect is a dialect, but it’s definitely more different than American English vs British English, so it’s more like Middle English vs Modern English, for example, especially in spelling, but still over 98% mutually intelligible, so I would say it’s like, in the middle, right between a dialect and a language, however, most words aren’t different enough to be a completely different language, but Scots Doric is a different language because almost all words are spelled differently or are different! By the way, the word bairn comes from the Nordic word barn that’s used in Swedish and other Nordic languages, and I’m learning Norwegian / Icelandic / Danish / Faroese / Swedish / Old Norse / Norn / Old English / Gothic and the 6 Celtic languages (Welsh / Breton / Cornish & Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Manx and many other languages, including all Germanic languages, and I’m advanced level in Dutch (over 8.000 base words) and, I can definitely see the similarities to Nordic languages and other Germanic languages, so I can understand most of the words, and the words for mouse and house etc are pronounced the same way in Nordic languages, for example, hus / mus in Norwegian and hús in Icelandic etc! I am trying to learn all Germanic languages and all dialects, because they are all so pretty!
I think it's safe to say that at this point, Paul is the GOAT of TH-cam linguists. Mad respect bro.
not to put Paul down, but check out nativlang if you haven't already
I grew up in Glasgow, Scotland, and my mother was an English teacher. We were discouraged from speaking Scots and from using the heavy Glasgow accent. I long thought of Scots as just a different way of speaking English, but it probably is a separate language.
I was born in dundee and used to speak dundonian when I was younger but again grandparents and a move to Angus meant my accent shifted to more of a generic English. However I can still read it and understand speaking it more tricky without sounding insincere. Having family from Aberdeenshire I can also speak Doric and read that. So I’m kinda lucky I’ve got both those recognised Scots languages.
That's ridiculous to be Scot and in living in Scotland and discouraging you from speaking your own native Scots language. This disparagement of Scots language comes from down South in England asserting
It's power and influence over Scotland since the union of the crowns.
@@enricogallegos9402 my gran in Angus particularly thought if I spoke with a dundonian accent I wouldn’t get far in life. The Queens English proper pronunciation was preferred. It was a class thing factory workers lower and middle classes for sure but yes absolutely there is a undercurrent of “Britishness” about accents and what they mean and how we are treated. It’s no accident many of us have “phone” voices. Honestly can’t wait for independence.
@@enricogallegos9402 Mare tae dae wi Scots toffs wantin tae fit in wi the Inglish toffs.
I think Scots is a beautiful and very interesting, colorful language
Thank you, Paul! Interesting as always! Not sure whether you have your future videos already planned, but it would be nice to hear more about the history of the English language. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for the time youve put into this...so much appreciated... I am of Scottish Irish English & Jamaican "decent"... and enjoy learning & soaking in things like this...the show me how very unique I am, even in this very small area💕
Langfocus - You've done a fantastic job with this video! It's like an extended version of the way I explain Scots to my EFL students. Although I also have a pet favourite example sentence that I use to illustrate the Scots-English dialect continuum.
One comment I'd like to make is that I wouldn't put much stock in how non-linguists in Scotland classify Scots, since we are generally pretty ignorant of language and linguistics, despite an instinctive ability to codeswitch. At least when I was at school, these topics were barely covered beyond a token reading of Burns on the 25th of January each year.
As for my use of the mither tongue, I've lived outside of Scotland (or maybe I should say 'outwith Scotland') on and off for much of my adult life, so naturally I don't speak Scots very much, but love reading Scottish literature and discovering the different ways that authors represent Scots speech - from Lewis Grassic Gibbon to Irvine Welsh, there are many different approaches!
Paul another fine piece of work here :) Love what you do sir, I learn so much.
Thank you!
Scottish here - I think Scots was definitely a language in the past but more of a dialect now due to the influence of standardised English. That said, it's fun sprinkling Scots into my speech for a wee bit of spice.
I agree. Check out some of the over sixties people in rural Aberdeenshire though, some of them still have Scots/Doric which could be strong enough to be considered another language
yes, it was a dialect which became a language and now is a dialect. the merry-go-round of norse frisian and norman influence on scots and ME is a small proof of weird language intermixing. That influence on what was Anglic old english. Like the word bag, given to us from norway then lost to their language until the english brought it back to norway and reintroduced it !
aye I agree, I find Scots these days to be much closer to standard English than my native thick (and hard to understand for southerners) Yorkshire dialect, maybe a few hundred years ago it was separate but sadly these days differences in all dialectical variants are becoming rarer and standardization is becoming far too much of a reality
If I, someone that lives over 4,500 miles away from scotland, can understand scots its 10000% a dialect not a language.
The regions in the rest of Britain all used to have quite distinct dialects that went well beyond the accent, they say if it wasn't for broadcast media and the BBC we'd be speaking massively divergent langages by now. I'm a fan of Scots, when you get independence you should definitely make it the primary offical language of state, change the road signs and have all police and public servants refuse to engage with any English people unless they can make themselves understood in Scots. That'll show 'em :)
This seems a similar situation to the Caribbean Creole English varieties used throughout the Caribbean Commonwealth. In places like Trinidad, Barbados, St. Kitts, Jamaica and The Bahamas, people generally view themselves as speaking a variety of English rather than a separate language, even though the spoken language diverges sufficiently to at least potentially qualify as a separate language.
I think what makes the language continuum argument still cogent is simply that these varieties haven't been separated from each other enough in the last 100 years or so to see the continued divergence that would be natural in circumstances which allowed dialects of Latin to diverge into Spanish, French and Italian, for example.
Very interesting video, Paul. Thanks.
Langfocus, you've explained a great deal, articulately, so much in fact it deserves a good listening to..
As mentioned in the video, there are lots of dialects of Scots. The Scots used in this video is borders Scots, so it is easier to comprehend and most similar to English. Whereas the more northern dialects are completely incomprehensible to English people; for which I would definitely class as their own language. I have person experience of this, moving up from Manchester to work for a company in the borders, and being one of the only English employees. Most co-workers would tone down their Scots so I could understand, but I couldn't understand most people from the North. Aberdeen Scots and some of the Islands Scots can't even be understood by Southern mainland Scots speakers!
what is Aberdeen Scots and its origin? surely they would be purely celtic with some norse influence way up there?
@@hopclang9409 a widnæ say so like, aberdonian byleids of eh Scots leids are just ‘at, byleids o’ Scots, they dæ huv some influences fæ some bits eh gaelic but i widnæ say the vocabulary is ‘at different fæ my byleid, central-western lallands (oan eh border wi the heilands) wi a bit of the mid-central lallands cause eh ma time ‘ere however eh pronunciation cin catch ye oot if you dinnæ ken much æ they shift much like.
@@lawofscotland I don't speak Scots, but I'll try my best to translate:
I wouldn't say so, [Idk], they do have some influences with some bits of gaelic but I wouldn't say the vocabulary is that different from my [idk], central-western lowlands (on the border with the highlands) with a bit of the mid-central lowlands because in my time here however the pronunciation can catch you out if you don't know much as they shift a lot.
Please tell me what byleids means
@@lawofscotland A huv always called it Lallans too. Scottish parlimentary papers are written in Lallans - see if ye can understand them.
@@ppislander byleids = dialect
Scots speaker here who also speaks several non UK languages fluently (Spanish, Swedish, Catalan): to answer your question at the end, Scots in its historic 'purer' form is definitely a language. How many times have I met someone who speaks fluent Scots? Possibly never. Everyone speaks Scottish English with a varying degree of Scots thrown in depending on geographical location, company etc, but in this day and age you would be hard pressed to find anyone who converses in just Scots and nothing else.
The curious thing though is that, even if we don't necessarily speak pure Scots as such, we are perfectly capable of understanding it. I studied medieval Scots poetry at University, and the Scottish people in the class required little to no help in understanding the complex vocabulary. The international students were constantly using dictionaries.
So in summary, the knowledge is there, but the use, isolated, without dipping into another language (Scottish English ) isn't.
Blame centuries of being told it's shameful to speak Scots (and in the modern day, Netflix etc will finish the job)
Gràcies per havent compartit aquest tros d'informació. I també m'agrada moltíssim que pots parlar el català també. 🤩😍
I think the way they speak is awesome; it only sounds shameful because you never learned one or the other properly. when you speak to us with a mix you just sound like a Scotsman who never bothered to learn more than the bare minimum of English and to a Scotsman it sounds like you don't understand either language. i dont know why in Scotland they would bother with teaching you Scottish-English but not one or the other, so your basically stuck sounding like a hillbilly to either side of the fence.
Genuine question for you. How can someone not born in Scotland (or the UK) learn Scots as a language?
@@whoswho1233 Scots language explained: *Scots as a language is closely related to Old English* more so than Modern English with the Scots still using the same ancient vowels well after the great English vowel shift. The Scots language has one unique difference compared to Old English which they brought over from Gaelic which is VSO(verb-subject-object) within linguistic typology whereas English itself is SVO. *Scots is often regarded as one of the ancient varieties of English, but it has its own distinct dialects.* Alternatively, Scots is sometimes treated as a distinct Germanic language, in the way that Norwegian is closely linked to, but distinct from, Danish.
English Scots Old English
one ane an
two twa twa
four fower feower
go gang gan
always, ever aye a / (Norse ei)
you ye ge (ye)
know ken cennan
how hou (like hoo) hu (like hoo)
armpit oxster ohsta, oxta
stone stane stan
if gif gif
out out (like oot) ut (like oot)
town toun (like toon) tun (like toon)
against agin agen
child bairn baern (also cild, infant/unborn foetus)
borough burgh burg/burh
it hit hit
our our (like oor) ure (like ooruh)
cow/cows coo (sing) kye (plur) cu (sing) cy (plural)
eyes een (plural of ee) eagan (plural of eage)
shoes shuin (like shin) scon (plural of scoh, sc pronounced like sh)
So that sounding of a Scotsman is actually a Scot speaking in a more ancient vernacular tongue of Old English, which modern English people find difficult if not impossible to understand. Keep in mind Old English was a West Germanic language this is why some of our continental cousins can understand some Scots. I find it interesting the stigma associated with the Scottish speaking Scots especially by the English, when the Scots are merely keeping an oral tradition alive that the English have forsaken, their own. I'm a proud Scotsman who remembers his ancient history as it's still somewhat spoken today, Old English was and still is a major part of being Scottish especially in this modern day.
@@billmilligan7272 Read works in Scots :)
Matthew Fitt has original works and translations available: www.mfitt.co.uk/index.html
or go to the classics:
www.robertburns.org.uk/Assets/Poems_Songs/tamoshanter.htm
I live in Scotland, but my mother is American. I speak Scots in school and English at home. I've always considered them separate languages.
This type of Scots isn’t really a separate language because most words are still spelled the same way, so normal Scots dialect is a dialect, but it’s definitely more different than American English vs British English, so it’s more like Middle English vs Modern English, for example, especially in spelling, but still over 98% mutually intelligible, so I would say it’s like, in the middle, right between a dialect and a language, however, most words aren’t different enough to be a completely different language, but Scots Doric is a different language because almost all words are spelled differently or are different! By the way, the word bairn comes from the Nordic word barn that’s used in Swedish and other Nordic languages, and I’m learning Norwegian / Icelandic / Danish / Faroese / Swedish / Old Norse / Norn / Old English / Gothic and the 6 Celtic languages (Welsh / Breton / Cornish & Irish / Scottish Gaelic / Manx and many other languages, including all Germanic languages, and I’m advanced level in Dutch (over 8.000 base words) and, I can definitely see the similarities to Nordic languages and other Germanic languages, so I can understand most of the words, and the words for mouse and house etc are pronounced the same way in Nordic languages, for example, hus / mus in Norwegian and hús in Icelandic etc! I am trying to learn all Germanic languages and all dialects, because they are all so pretty!
Based on the given evidence, Scots is a variant of English spoken in Scotland. I am a New Yorker and multilingual and I find Scottish English (not Scots) quite a difficult beastie to understand. REGARDS !!!
@@KozmicKarmaKoala Ah disagree wi' ye thare, thare is mony hings aboot scots that mak's it gey different fae sassenach. As someone wha haes heard this afore it's gey pernicketie ken whin thay speak. 'n' mah foremaist leid is sassenach. Comparing this leid wi' sassenach is lik' comparing portuguese 'n' spanish. Aye whin written tis a bawherr easier bit whin tis juist spoken naturally, tis gey pernicketie fur a normal body wha haes ne'er heard this afore tae ken.
@@thetrueoneandonlyladyprinc8038 Fur me, ah wid see this th' identical situation, howfur it wid be atween portuguese 'n' spanish. Aye, thare ur loads o' similarities atween thae twa languages. Bit whit pure mak's a difference is th' pronunciation 'n' some grammar rules, 'n' anaw soonds wurds that ur auld 'n' nae used a lot in sassenach or some wurds that ur na langer in sassenach. Mah foremaist leid is sassenach, 'n' ah hae trauchle understanding whin fowk blether lik' this even reading that ah hae trauchle ken mony wurds 😅
So afore is a Scots word? I thought it was an English word...
Maist bodies 'ere in Scotland dinnae think Scots tae be a different leid. We've been tellt for years by teachers it's slang an nae richt.
"Most people here in Scotland did not think Scots to be a different language. We have been told for years by teachers it's a slang and not right". Its just a dialect
@@Mulberry2000 *don't
@@WilliamAndrea bah do not is my interpretation
Not that I’m aware of.
All I can say is if it wasn't a different language I, as a native english speaker would have an easier time understanding it. After all, every language was once a dialect. It's fascinating to watch a new language slowly form.
Hooray! At last! A well-informed and scientifically accurate presentation of Scottish linguistic history. Well done 👏🏼🏴
8:35 in Western Frisian, the word "Bern" means child.
Amazingly informative video! Appreciated the historical focus. I love learning how languages evolved over centuries.
It's fascinating learning about this as someone from the North East of England, as we still share a lot of words with Scots, I guess due to the shared northumbrian history?
Another excellent video. Thank you.
There must be stage at which the cultural context is quite different to the English spoken by the English versus the “English” spoken by the Singaporeans (i.e. Singlish) , or the "English" spoken by the Scots (i.e. Scots). Surely it is the degree of cultural uniqueness in which a language resides and evolves, when compared to its culture of origin, which provide an indicator as to whether it is a dialect or a language. With this in mind, I would suggest that Scots is its own language, not a dialect.
Tam o Shanter:
"fou" is not from the French for "crazy"; it's the Scots equivalent of "full" and is related to the German "voll". In this context, it means downing more drink than you can really hold.
As a multilingual Scot (speaking English, French, German and Spanish as well as Scots, and with a passive understanding of several other Germanic and Romance languages), I can say that Scots definitely is a language of its own. It has its own grammar and its own dialects, and is not a dialect of English. It is recognised as a minority language under the European Charter for Minority languages.
As a Frenchman and a semiologist, I can also agree that I'm doubtful this word comes from french in this particular use. We do use the expression "faire les fous", basically being wild after getting drunk (or sober in some instances), but then Burns wouldn't have use "getting", most probably "making".
I have always taken "fou" to mean "drunk". I spent my childhood in Campbeltown, Kintyre and an expression meaning "drunk" there is '"fu' as a wilk" ("full as a whelk" - the whelk completely fills its shell)! I realise the spelling in the poem is the same as the French for "mad" but think you have over-intellectualised the interpretation of this word!
In Swedish it is 'full' as it is in other Scandinavian dialects/languages.
Sometimes it's just a coincidence, especially in one syllable words. One word that caught my attention however is "beasties". In French Canadian, we use "bibites"', which a variation on "bébêtes", meaning small beast. The term is used in exactly the same way, as in referring to insects, small animals, even children.
As someone who also speaks several languages I can confirm Scots is not a language it is not even really a dialect.
Paul, every single video which you make genuinely reflects your amazingly outstanding expertise in the field of linguistics, history, and culture. Your detailed and well organized nformation is unparalleled, and has proven to be an invaluable asset to all the viewers throughout the world.
Thanks! I can’t say I’m a qualified expert, and I don’t want to give that impression. But I work hard to make my videos good, and hopefully they reflect my passion for these topics.
11:14 too literal (that's Scottish English to me.) / Sco: "A'm no fur gaun til wirk ma wark the day as A'v no mukkil smeddum" is more faithful of Scots with words, phraseology and syntax. Or "A canna be fashed fur gaun...". Ironically mukkil smeddum (Eng: much energy) is found in Robert Burns own letters; common Scots words but likely lost on most speakers nowadays and reflects current low levels. Very much enjoy the channel incidentally. I watch all the videos. You do it very well.
I'm pretty sure I've seen variants of 'mukkil' (myckel?) in other Germanic languages to mean 'much' or 'a lot'.
In Tam O'Shanter, the "Lang Scots mile" is also a reflection on the difference between an English mile of 5280 feet and the old Scots mile of 5920 feet.
:D the way you said mouse and brown cow, made it sound danish. It just show how much there is in common between languages. We also joke about it here in Denmark on the west coast, that if you speak with an old heavy dialect you can talk with old people in GB, very fascinating :D
mouse and brown cow is pronounced in low german the same way they do in scots
it is very interesting with some old dialects
are those Danes speaking some sort of Frisian or Frisian danish? though oddly Frisian is not believed to be a mother tongue to Anglo-Saxon
Frederik - when a boy in England I saw a children's program showing that older country people in the East of England could make themselves understood with older country people in Friesland. The pronunciation of boat, dyke etc was exactly the same. I found this fascinating. In my father's dialect from Sheffield/Barnsley there are words that are understood in Swedish. Best regards, Rob
There's a video of a man who goes to Friesland speaking Old English, and buys from a farmer speaking Frisian, a brown cow that gives good milk, cheese and butter. Search for "Mongrel Nation - Brown Cow". Frisian is the closest language to English, and it's not mutually intelligible with modern English but it is with Old English to some extent.
As an American English speaker, I'd say Scots is mostly mutually intelligible with English, though some of it can be hard to make out. Hearing it spoken aloud, it sounds a lot like a heavy Scottish accent rather than a wholly different language. That being said, the difference between a language and a dialect is hazy, so you could easily see it as either.
Sounds like it was your first time meeting a closely related language!
We have that exact feeling when us Spanish speakers meet an Italian or a Brazilian. Sometimes we have to reword things, but overall it's rather trivial to speak to each other without having to resort to, say, English.
The difference between English and Scots is something like the difference between standard Swedish and Norwegian Bokmal (especially as spoken in and around Oslo). Some Norwegian dialects are quite different, as are some Swedish dialects. In many cases those dialects are closer to each other than to either national standard.
Spot on, a well researched presentation giving a much clearer picture of how Scots today speak a mixture of Scots and Scottish Standard English.
Thank you, George!
After getting used to hearing Scots call cows cu my whole life, it tripped me up when I started to learn Scottish Gaelic. In Scottish Gaelic, cù means dog. Their word for cow is bò. I have lost some points on quizzes because cu meaning cow is so firmly ingrained in my mind. :)
American English speaker here... I remember hearing a somewhat agitated conversation in Scots a couple steps behind me in Edinburgh. At first it sounded like a foreign language, but after a few seconds of hearing the pieces, it all fell together and I could follow the gist of it pretty clearly.
Fascinating stuff; you've stimulated my imagination, & memories of a week long sojourn in Edinburgh circa 1991. We happened to be there in late August or September, when the grand internationally known festival takes place. One evening I went to a theatre spectacle, a kind of dramatised & very condensed summation of the anatagonusm & conflict between the Scots people & the controlling (occupying) English forces & landowners. Riveting stuff, of which I caught the drift. Brutal political oppression is not hard to grasp. But the spoken language?!?!
As an American residing in the U.K., I had been frequently surprised by the phrasing & vocabulary I encountered, but at times literally gobsmacked by the (to me) strange & foreign sounding dialects I sometimes came across. A Jordy or thick Manchester or Somerset accent would floor me with its surprising turns of phrase. But I at least always understood what was being said.
Not so at the theatrical production in Edinburgh. In an hour & a half long play--ostensibly in English--I 'd be surprised if I understood more than a third of what was being said. I couldn't believe it. Concentrate as I might, at least half of it was pure gobbledygook; I persisted & picked up a few key phrases so that I could get the gist of it, but it was a lesson in how thoroughly dialects in the same language can separate us.
It's interesting to speculate on how I would have fared had I stayed in fair Scotland a wee bit longer. Nae doubt I'd ken a wee bit moore. Cheers
Conversation in Aberdeen between two Scots and an Australian tourist who has asked for directions.:
"D'ye spik Anglish, Lassie? A dinna ken a wurd ya tockin aboot!"
"Can youse speek Inglish? I carn't unnerstan da werd yer sighin?"
"Ach, Hector! Wee forrin Lassie haes frae thee Antipodes!"
So interesting! I'm from the Borders so always speak Scots with friends and family, but Scottish English in formal situations as Scots is considered a bit 'common' (unfortunately). The next town up the road from here is called Hawick (pronounced 'Hoyk') and if you're into accents, definitely try to find a Hawick person on here! The dialects are so varied. I completely confused some friends from Glasgow one day when I exclaimed, "Oh! Ee gien is a right gliff!" (Oh! You gave me a real fright!). Definitely agree with previous posters from the west who say that bairn is the word we use for child in the east. I always refer to my son as either 'the bairn', or 'the wee yin' (the little one). Fab video!
Scots Mile: The same distance as a regular mile, but angrier.
To the people who liked that old racist trope, a Scots mile is like an English, mile but less patronising and unconsciously colonial. Anger's never a good response to anything. But it is sometimes understandable. Thanks for the example.
norcofreerider604 Also longer...around 1976 yards.
Probably steeper and wetter and foggier and slippier from my last visit
Or happier and drunker.
But a lot shorter than the Norwegian mile.
I'm Scottish and when I'm speaking to my boyfriend (he's Polish) I'll speak as clear English as I can so he understands me apart from popular Scots words like aye, naw etc but when I'm with my Scottish friends there's Scots words in every sentence 😂
I know how he feels. I tell my Polish relatives they must speak as if they were newscasters with perfec grammar if they want me to understand them.
I've a Spaoish speaking friend who's a doctor. When he's speaking Spanish to his colleagues I understand 3/4 of it. When he's hanging out with his friends I get maybe 1/4
@@ak5659 I understand as I know someone who recently learned English not Scots just English and it’s hard to speak to them at times
@@luke125 nah they broke up because Poland needs him for the coming war with russia
This was incredibly educational. Well done
Please do something about Quebec French vs. Parisian French. As a (mostly) fluent Parisian French speaker, I always find it hard to understand casual Quebec French. I would love to find out why...
And the Quebecois think we have the weird accent.
He should include Cajun French too! That's supposedly very different from Parisian French but I have no idea how closely it's related to Quebec French. It'd be an interesting video!
THIS! subtle differences in european french can be easily crossed over, but quebec is a different beast
Dented Pictures Cajun is a descendent of Acadian French, sourced ultimately from the settlers of Acadia, which is adjacent to Québec and comprises the modern-day provinces of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island (though PEI is often neglected in the accounting of Acadia). The term 'Acadian' is where the term 'Cajun' ultimately derives from. The French settlers there were essentially identical to the settlers of Québec, and so their language was very similar.
Unlike Québec, though, Acadia was not merely taken over by the British, but subjected to a genocide known as 'Le Grand Dérangement', or 'The Great Upheaval' during the French and Indian Wars. Whether this genocide was on par with the English and French genocides of the native inhabitants of North America is a matter of debate, but it nevertheless encompassed the forceful removal, imprisonment, murder, and deportation of thousands of people to the rest of the British Empire, particularly along the New England coast.
Many of these people moved to France, but a significant number went to Louisiana, which at the time was still under French control. There they blended in with earlier French settlers and formed the Cajun culture. I'd be very interested in how their dialect of French diverged from that of Québec, and more broadly that of France itself.
Cause the "flow" is different in Quebec, it usually takes a few weeks for EuroFrench to get used to it. In Qc we also use short forms that Frenchs don't, like "faque" which is short for "cela fait que" or "tsé" = "tu sais". French that just got here think that we swear a lot (which is not completely false) because "faque" sounds like "F*ck"
a always thought a was just speaking in a heavier scottish accent when a speak like that lol, never realised some people consider it a different language
fifi mclauchlan aye ken
Nothing worse than when you perfectly articulate yourself only to be told...
"Wit?"
You're now bilingual
Anooo
Some people? It is a different language.
that diglossic term and the way you explained pretty much nailed it.
we fly through interchangeably without thinking
I speak a dialect of Scots called Doric (mainly spoken in the North-East, from Inverness to Aberdeen), there's even more Norse influence than in regular Scots, though not as much as Orcadian and Shetlandish.
I use it all the time when talking to relatives and friends, and slip between it and Scottish English in formal situations.
An example of Doric:
"Fit like min? Hous yer dous? Affa dreek (or dreich) wither the noo, dinna borr wi sendin yer bairns oot. Ma brolly near got teen awa by thon wind when a wiz comin' intae the hoose. Onywye, a'll catch ye'r'on, huv a good aine."
In English, that'd be:
"Hello friend (min is literally man, but usually used between friends and only in that context), how are you doing (Hous yer dous means literally "how are your doves?")? Awfully rainy/overcast weather right now, don't bother with sending your kids out. My umbrella nearly got taken away by that wind when I was coming into my house. Anyway, I'll catch you later on, have a good one."
Another interesting thing I noticed is that up in the NE we call girls and boys/women and men "quines and loons" respectively, though lowland Scottish people have no idea what a "quine" is, often questioning whether I mean queen or coin, and I almost got into a fight for saying someone was a "good loon" once as they thought I was calling them crazy!
Connor Stephen right down the east coast. We in Arbroath speak like that
They thought loon means lunatic
Quine does mean queen and is a borrowing from Norse! In scandi languages the word for queen and a girl is the same e.g. in Swedish kvinnor means both queen and girl and is a cognate of Quine in doric!
Learn something new every day, eh?
I'm in the doric region too!
@@robmcrob2091 I now live in Inverness, and doric is not understood here.
I don’t know. I mean, it certainly sounds very similar to English, and I can understand what they’re saying (mostly), which tends to make me think more towards dialect, but then again, Portuguese and Spanish are often mutually intelligible, and I still consider those different languages
The audio examples used in this video are decent, but don't show the differences enough. Should've gotten me to do it. Lol. The one they got to speak for the examples is using more refined pronunciation. Which nobody uses in everyday communication, except when they're trying to be understood by non Scots speakers.
I think you're confusing Scottish Standard English with Scots. I don't believe for one minute that you'd understand much of what folk speaking real Scots are saying, but you may well understand a fair amount of Scottish Standard English.
You must not speak Spanish or Portuguese. I speak Spanish and yes a few words are similar in Portuguese but I can't understand any of it to communicate at all
@@richardprice6624 But where is your Spanish from? Because that determines why.
@@Faliat Mexico
13:25: It's interesting that in Scots English a "nappy" refers to a drink. Yet in modern British English, a "nappy" refers to what some would call a diaper or baby's waste cloth. Interesting how the meaning changed.
Nappy for a drink? Never heard of that wan before hen? a nappy is what goes on a wains bum😊
Scots in your examples seems to bear a lot of resemblances to the Yorkshire dialect, which makes sense in a historic context of them both being dialects of the Kingdom of Northumbria. Brilliant video!
Could you give examples?
This video reminds me on how the Russian and Ukrainian languages are related. They both have almost identical grammar and syntax with major differences in vocabulary and pronouncation
And the Belarusian Language too. But Russians are barely understand ukranians and belarusian people. Nevertheless I am belarusian and can speak with ukranians in my language and we'll totally understand each other. Even poles can understand the Belarusian Language. I like this fact so much.
katsyaruna ksl yes indeed
@@unknown_author русские плохо понимают? пхахха что ты несёшь
Fantastic video, thanks.
As an Ayrshire native though, we wouldn't say "bairns". More likely "weans" which is a contraction of "wee yins" ie "little ones". Bairns is more common in the east and north of Scotland. But both would be understood across all of Scotland.
In the Burns' poem. A "lang Scots mile" refers to the fact that at the time Scots miles were longer than English miles. In Ayr they still have a Scots mile marked out on the prom to show the difference, but for everyday use miles have been standardised to the English measurement now.
And to answer the final question, I think the attitude of Scots speakers about whether or not its a language is heavily influenced by having an anglo-centric media. It's difficult for speakers of mutually intelligible languages to understand that they are both equal in standing when one of the speakers of one of those languages assumes there's to be the "standard" and everything else to be a variation, accent, or colloquialism.
In my view it's a language. They may be mutually understandable up to a point, but that's heavily weighted towards Scots being able to understand all forms of spoken English, whilst many English would struggle to understand a conversation in 100% Scots as opposed to Scots English.
I also think that Scots themselves probably overstate themselves being able to speak Scots, and many of them saying they speak Scots are actually referring to Scots English and this leads to the large numbers saying they consider it a dialect rather than a language.
Would have been interesting to note that in Northern Ireland there are speakers of "Ulster Scots". A dialect of Scots itself, and closely related to the lalland Scots spoken in western parts of Galloway around Stranraer. It's not uncommon for someone to hear that Galloway accent and assume the speaker is Irish.
In my opinion, as a Scots Doric speaker, Scots is a language and Doric is a dialect of Scots.
The presentation is great "bit A wid say a've jist ae bane tae pick wi ye". or I only have one bone to pick with you.
When Burns wrote "gettin fou", I would say that fou means full not the French crazy. I remember my Parents, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents using fou to mean full. "Am fou o a cauld" meanin I'm full of a cold. Another instance would be "Nae mair fur me. Am fou up" in English, No more (food) for me. I'm full up. In Doric fou can also be used to mean how as in the greeting "Fou's yir doos" which is a greeting asking 'how are you' but is literally translated as 'How's your Doves' (pigeons). Thank you for taking the time to make these videos, I enjoy them immensely.
Enjoyable, thank you. I spent a lot of time with my grandparents in the East of Scotland who spoke a very strong Scots dialect which I can still speak today. I would say it's defiinitely a different language to modern standard English. Grammar and syntax are more or less identical to English but vocabulary and pronunciation are substantially different. The influence of English television and media has gradually killed of this way of speaking. I remember as a ten year old half a century ago speaking this way in the classroom and being reprimanded by the teacher.
Grammar is actually pretty different, and the actual word order can be different.
@@stonedape2406 Awa an bile yer heid!
@@billguyan9626 www.quora.com/What-is-the-difference-in-grammar-and-syntax-between-English-and-Scots. Also, I'm glad that you recognise scots as a language. As you say, it has faced a lot of prosecution and is gradually fading away. We must try and save it before it's too late.
"Beasties" IMO is an affectionate term for animals.
You haven't seen the things crawling around my ex wife's hoo-hah. There's nothing affectionate about them beasties.
@@CailenCambeul You could've shut up and spared us the image, but no.
@@faaznoushad1718 hahshaha
Cailen Cambeul What the hell
In dutch beestjes means little animals.
The tjes means that it is small. Just like in German when you put lein behind a word
Well, since you asked ... how long can a TH-cam post be?
I'm a speaker of Scots - two dialects, in fact - as well as being one of the few Scots speakers who have taught themselves to write it as a language.
I stress 'as a language' because whether something is perceived as a language or not depends largely on how it is treated. In Scotland, Scots is treated as dialect, therefore it is not perceived as a language. If it were treated as a language - with an orthography, recognised grammatical structure, etc - then it would be perceived as a language. There is a body of opinion which says it is a language but treats it as dialect (not 'a dialect' because there are a number of Scots dialects) but this is largely a means of getting kudos ('it's a language') for the process of treating it as dialect, thus ensuring that it never actually achieves the status of a language. In other words, official recognition as a language is a paper exercise to guard against it actually being used as a language. One of the characteristics of the Scottish mentality - which I call 'cannyscottery' - is that the independence movement in Scotland has hardly any interest in Scots as a language, in contrast to Catalonia, for example. There is also a large body of opinion in Scotland which values Scots not only for its dialect status, but also for its value to creative writers as an index of disreputablilty; and writers with these views are widely regarded as the doyens of Scots by educators. I cannot explain why this viewpoint has been accepted by so many Scots speakers and activists.
I have a website on these themes here:
sites.google.com/site/scotsthreip/
The introduction to the video is very good - as are the pronunciations - but the examples just illustrate the problem. For one thing, there are errors. Where did the idea that 'fou' comes from French 'fou' come from? It is the Scots cognate of English 'full' and is used to mean drunk just as 'full' is in the Scandinavian languages. Also - is there a glottal stop in 'gairden'? I hear 'dn' - i.e, d followed by n without an intervening vowel.
The examples, as I say, illustrate the problem - firstly the diglossic situation, and secondly the fact that there is no agreed way of writing Scots. This means that all of the examples given are on the diglossic continuum. For example, if the Ayrshire examples were really written as dialect - that is, to represent pronunciations to an English-speaking readership - the word 'shop' would normally be written 'shoap', as the reader in fact pronounces it. Conversely, if they were written as general Scots, 'night' would be spelt 'nicht', representing the velar fricative [x] which occurs in that word in traditional Scots dialects. 'Wurk' is a dialect spelling of an English form - the traditional Scots is 'wark' for the noun and 'work' or 'wirk' for the verb, though scarcely any Scots dialect preserves this distinction nowadays. 'Much' is another English form - the traditional Scots is 'muckle.' In fact, the examples are dialect, not only in that they are transcriptions of dialects - up to a point - but in that they are very much Anglicised dialect.
I should say before I go on that most of the things I have said above would be repudiated by the standard issue Scots pundits, who decry any attempt to define Scots as linguistic fascism - a criterion they do not extend to standard English, which is the native language of most of them anyway.
The Burns example shows similar problems. Burns not only wrote a mixture of Scots and English - in his time, there was no doubt that it was dialect - he also sometimes used English spellings intending them to be pronounced as Scots - for example 'heart' intending it to be pronounced 'hert'. This can be seen from his rhymes. Because modern Scots are unaware of this - because they have no education in Scots - hardly anyone pronounces his poems with this in mind. Curiously, your reader does the opposite - pronouncing 'warm' with its Scots pronunciation (with an 'a' sound) whereas the rhyme with 'storm' suggests that Burns intended the English pronunciation (with an 'o' sound) to be used. On the other hand, she pronounces 'water' and 'our' as if English, whereas Burns equally likely intended them to be pronounced with their Scots pronunciations 'watter' and 'oor.'
In other words, this video is not really a comparison of Scots and English, or even an examination of Scots. Rather, it is an example of the uncertainties and ambiguities created by the diglossic situation, in a country where the language is patronised at best, despised at worst, and valued for its disreputability by its best-known proponents. Because of this, what I have written above will be regarded as offensive by many Scots, both those who approve of Scots and those who don't.
Apparently, they can be longer than I though. :P
Most interesting and informative, Hinderlengjes.
saying that defining the language is linguistic fascism is just silly isn't it? As if it'd stop people speaking and spelling it however they pleased. I've never heard of university professors fielding armies to crush people that don't speak English correctly, and like the man says, English is a dialect that HAS an army
"I've never heard of university professors fielding armies to crush people that don't speak English correctly"
I should add, not in recent history, and the subjugation of the highland culture doesn't count because I'm just being silly, and all the light-hearted wind would be blown out of the sails of my jolly ship of mirth if I brung up actual ethnic cleansing in my daft analogies
Hinderlengjes I think you're rather wonderful. 😊
Hi guys, im from Ukraine, and Im really like Scots pronunciation! Its kinda diffrent from Engl, and (may I say this way) warmer and friendly to me =)
@Tim Webb Let me guess, you typically display the same condescending, parochial attitude and unearned superiority complex towards Scots that you've demonstrated here, and then incorrectly interpret the fact that most Scots do not suffer fools gladly as anglophobia.
The vast majority of Scots have no problem with English people, but you'll find that they have little time for fools of any nationality that are under the false impression that they are superior to Scottish people.
@Tim Webb U ok hun?
I'm American and Scottish sounds warmer and friendlier but also more loyal too. The English sound so cool. They sound like con artists. I lived in London for a year. And my dad said that I had an English accent when I returned. But I couldn't detect it. After a year of being home it was gone.
@Tim Webb shut up ya knob, (ya) means "you"
@@meenki347 Hate to the one to bring it up but class makes a massive difference to accent in England. To me any working class accent sounds much friendlier than the received pronunciation upper class accent that is usually what people think of as an English accent. The sheer variation in words used, slang, tone and pronunciation between say a Brummie and a Cockney accent, Scouse, Manc, rural places with a "Farmer accent", Yorkshire wherever really is pretty interesting. For example a town thats like 15 miles has a different accent. Any way I thought I'd best mention this since its part of the reason why I think Scots is a dialect of English just like Geordie IE "Am gan doon the shops ferra pack a fags" "Ahm gaun doon the shoap fir some snout" "I am going to the shop to purchase cigarettes"
Winner. Everything you do, Paul, is "strictly top shelf" !
Great clip! Again! You forgot Doric. This was my father's first language before he learnt English. Doric is spoken in the North East coast from Dundee maybe going up as far across as Elgin. (My father was born in Carnoustie). My mother who lives just south of Aberdeen can't understand all the fuss about "trying to save Gaelic" and put it in to local authority admin as it was never the language spoken in that area. As an anecdote 10% of all Aberdonians speak Polish! By the way the "fou" = drunk is much more likely from the Norse "full" directly meaning drunk.
Gaelic was spoken all across Scotland including in the North East. Just look to the place names demonstrate how far it spread, even Carnoustie is a Gaelic word! Gaelic died out faster/earlier in the North East due to the influence of the Scots language coming in. While it may feel wrong to promote Gaelic and not Scots (and it is, they should be promoted equally as both are native languages of Scotland) it is incorrect to say that Gaelic was never spoken in the NEast. A good visualisation of this can be found in these maps here: starkeycomics.com/2019/03/01/a-brief-history-of-british-and-irish-languages/?fbclid=IwAR3tu0ALgE1xBp5-DMeg0wYSl7PFePItVBrMe5ceTrQz9nNDnqY4o2UxaH0
Yes, as in 'And I sae wearie fu' o care' ? (Rabbie Burns)
As a Scots speaker, I have to say that I don't understand Doric when it's spoken, or that I really have to pay attention when it is.
Doric is classed as a dialect of Scots. As is Lallans and others. More proof that Scots is a language with its own distinct dialects. The reason it stands out so much now, is because it is the least changed. There's a very old book from maybe the early 1800s or earlier, where a guy travelled around Scotland and noted all the differences and similarities. At that time, the distinction between the Scots he heard in Ayrshire and that he heard in North East Scotland was the "wh" sound in Ayrshire tended to the "F" sound in Doric. I doubt there's an adult Scot alive who hasn't heard "fit like?"
Ah the Doric. Fit fit fits that fit?
Aye there’s a wee moose in ma hoose
There’s a moose loose aboot this hoose - used tae always sing that when a wee and I’m still wee !
traduction: Aye there's a small mouse in my house B)
@@TheSmithsIndeed In Norwegian: de er en mus løs i dette hus (quite similar :-) )
Aboot that
Canada
Just stop
i have more interest in this youtube channel than anything else in school
me too
Good-bye public schools; like the libraries full of fake news and attitudes.
Schools are getting corrupted by too many SJWs pushing their agendas on to other people's kids. Just use the internet.
OMG, this is so enlightening. I wish I knew this channel during my undergraduate days when I was studying Varieties of English.
I feel Scots is a historical form of standard English, that a region has inadvertently preserved. However, because of the evolution of English language over the years, Scots now appears distinct; so much that there is a debate about whether it is a stand-alone language or a dialect of English.
Like regions of England, there are historical forms different to the standard. Scotland isn't much different to England, in all honesty
As a scot from central scotland, this is cool. I will say 'bairn' also is what local born people from Falkirk are called. " better tae meddle wae the devil than the barins o'fawkirk" is the motto. Funfact, Falkirk is the english spelling of the towns name, "FawKirk" is the scots meaning speckled kirk which comes from the church in the center of the town which was made with sandstone that is mottled with black stone. Around from the 15th centuary.
I do believe scots is its own language. Dialect comes from the roads you travel and the people you meet. My own dialect switches from central scots which is essentially a mix of east and west dialects with some english dropped in. i believe we are adaptive in speaking as we had so many cultures to mix with and its polite to be able to understand each other.
Lauren's Corner So, "Kirk" means church? thats interesting considering the swedish and german words for church ("kyrka" and "Kürche" respectively). also its weird to think of the first parents who named their child "church"
The Danish word for church is "kirke" which is even closer. :)
wishuhadmyname The German word for church is "Kirche" (standard German / Hochdeutsch, that is).
I'm not sure , but it seems the Estonian word for church is " kirik " .
Im a bairn :) its so weird seeing someone actually say about falkirk as no body usually knows we exsist.. i have lived here my entire life yet i sound like a weegie i blame the family for that one
I am a scots speaker from near Glasgow and i think of Scots as a language because no one understand a word of what we are saying unless they are from here. if i talk to someone who only speaks standard english i need to make a consious effort to speak slowley and as english-esque as possible and in dot even have a very thick accent.
Twenty Øne Phandøms Good point!
Not to say it ain't a language but there are dialects of English in Ireland that are difficult to understand & they all live in the same city (Dublin).
A dialect means there are words used that speakers of other dialects don't understand. Yes, Scots sounds very different but I don't think it would take me any longer to understand than that of my ex-boss from Sri Lanka speaking English!
When I tell people that I went to Wigan (nr Manchester) to learn English, they usually shake their heads: even they have difficulty of understanding the accent/dialect. I got many people in Wigan to correct my pronunciation of the word carage and after finally mastering the local way of saying it, I moved to London and was taught to go back to my original pronunciation...
Ah but Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are very similar & those speakers can understand each other in much the same way as Scots and English speakers can yet they're considered separate languages.
Kev Anathra
politics divided sacandannavians and politics divided romance languages
as for english speakers and arab speakers they try to connect or keep their language as one so they don't get weakend in the long run
Glaswegian here!
Usually "Scots" tends to be used in a more informal environment since it is seen a bit of slang. So I when I am chatting with friends and family it's " aye, naw , fud,... etc" while in a formal environment such as work or at university standard English only.
I would consider Scots a language since it has dialects within itself. For example Glaswegians, Cunts from Edinburgh and Aberdonians have very different words for each other. In Glasgow we call kids Waens.
Is American a language or dialect?
Mark Quinton it's a disease. 😁
American English is formally called a register, by linguists. It is definitely not a separate language, though there is no agreed consensus on what makes a language. Croatian, Serbian, Bosnian and Montenegrin are functionally the same language, but with different nation status. Croatian and Serbian, though using a different alphabet, are about as different as East and West Coast American English - at best! This suggests that for a common tongue to be regarded as a separate language, the people of a certain nation or community have to regard it as such, claiming it officially as their state language. If there is a referendum and Americans vote to consider their tongue a separate language from that spoken in England and the Commonwealths then you might be able to say it is. Even then, I would be uncomfortable with that, though.
There are dialect variations within Dialects in German. With northern and southern dialect bunches deferring. Many of which were once incomprehensible to one another, yet still regarded as the same language. Having multiple dialects does not make Scots a separate language.
I personally feel it is a dialect grouping of English, as I like to think we have dialects that are hard to understand by mainstream speakers within our own culture, as other language spheres do. But that is not a fact. You can claim it as your own language, and it might technically count as such if you can rally enough of your brethren to that aim :)
The US doesn't have national referendums like other countries. State governments can but the only federal government positions that are democratically elected are house member and members of the senate. All other positions and rules of the federal government are not directly elected by the people. There is proper English which we use for university and official documents however common spoken english in the US has a lot of imported words from other non english languages and even various english dialects.
Which brings me to my next point, while american english has several dialects, no one considers it a separate language. JD argued that scotts is a language because it has dialects.
Paul is Canadian (like myself), but he speaks English in a very staccato accent. I imagine he does this to make his videos clearer and easier for non-English speakers to understand. I don't really think he would speak this way naturally.
No one told me this, before I came to study my masters in Glasgow. Most people I talk to speak in English, but once I go to bars or just happen to talk to people on the streets, subway etc., some people speak Scots, and I can't understand a word!! I just thought it was the 'Glaswegian accent', but now I know that is not the case. I honestly think it should be considered a separate language.
How so? It's very understandable to english. Italian and Spanish are different languages even tho they came from Latin. And it's not bc ppl spelt things different, it's bc they diverged sm fom Latin that Latin speakers couldn't understand them, and the dielect speakers couldn't understand Latin. That's not the case with Scots. Tho it's the only real dielect I've seen, and it's so cool
Scots is very much a central belt and a wee bit of a West Coast thing, the further north you go, the less you hear it. By the time you hit Inverness, most non-Scots mistake the locals for English, thankfully most Scots recognise it as one of their own accents.
It is also one of the most frustrating things about watching movies and shows based in Dundee or above, they tend to use Glaswegians for the roles because they 'sound' more Scottish, which is an offense to the rest of us!
Scots is absolutely a language, we were constantly scolded in schools for not using queens english, saying it's barbaric and a sign of being un-educated. We mostly write in queens english, but almost all Scots speak Scots.
We will more than likely see a resurgence in Scots over the coming years as the independence movement grows, and as more and more people realise that we aren't the same as the rest of the UK.
Scots is not different enough to be a language
小葉葉 you have clearly never been to scotland or read Scottish poetry. Scots is a language
@@stuspawton Yes, but it's not widely spoken, most people speak english with a scottish accent and some Scots words added in.
Stephen _ that doesn’t change the fact that Scots is a language. Unless you’re from Scotland you have no actual say in what the language of Scotland is. When we speak we don’t use queens English, we use Scots. When 90% of us type we use traditional English because it’s been beaten into us to do. I could write all of this in Scots and you wouldn’t be able to read half of it. Go look at Scottish Twitter, what they write in is Scots, it’s not a pisstake, that’s a real language. Oh and going on your logic, I take it you don’t think Gaelic is a real language, how about Manx, or Galic. How about Welsh? Or Cornish. These languages are spoken by fewer people than those that speak Scots so are they real languages or are you just trying to deny the Scottish people their language.
@@stuspawton I'm from Scotland, Inverness to be exact, I've seen Scots poems, written by Robbie Burns and whatnot. I'm in Glasgow right now, and a Glaswegian accent is not Scots, granted, it does use Scots words.
I never said Scots isn't a language, I'm just pointing out that it's not widely spoken in it's purest form.
It's interesting to see similarities between Scots and Northumbrian and Geordie dialects.
My favourite thing about the language is that it's so amazingly easy to get wrong because it has a rhythm to it. Plus, every second word SHOULD be an expletive. It's one of the reasons why when Americans and Canadians use the term "Shite", it hits Scottish ears wrong. The PROPER way of using the word:
- "Awae an dinnae talk shite"
- "Yer cars a heap ey shite, mate!"
- "Haud oan, ah cannae come tae the door, mah nickers ur it mah ankles an ah'm in the middle ay hivin a shite."
Just notifying that in Scots the word "C-nt" is quite an important staple of the language. That's both a term of endearment, a familial term and an insult. WONDERFUL language.
I love Scots. It's appropriate that poetry plays such a role in it's canon because it has some a wonderful, lyrical quality to it.
I've got Burns complete works. Tam 0'Shanter is one of my favourites. I wonder how many people know that Shanter is a place and exists to this day
"Brun ku and Mus" are Norwegian words, that's exactly how we say and write those words. I love Scots!
I think the Flemish ' koe' is also pronounced ' koo'.
They are not Norwegian words. They were just unaffected by the Great Vowel Shift, like the video clearly says. Those words are all from Old English.
Of course, they're all Germanic languages and diverged from Proto-Germanic. Some have diverged a lot more than others, particularly English, but they've all diverged (Icelandic being the one beautiful near exception) just in different ways due to different influences.
Think of 'Scots' as a more archaic form of English and a form of English slightly truer to its Germanic roots than modern standard English.
Amazing how much more similar Scots is to other Germanic languages than English. Some words, like mus and ku, as well as nacht and recht, are identical between Scots and other Germanic languages.
@Roughman Proto-Germanic didn't come from Norway. The Anglo-Saxons come from the area of the Old Saxons in northwestern Germany.
Very good video.
It is very interesting to recognize some words from Danish in the Scots dialect.
I just got back. And i have to say, Scots are the nicest friendliest people on this planet .
I was expecting to get treated like a tourist like in so many other countries but the people made me feel like i belonged there.
Shout out to Lucy that brought me to A'chrulaiste and saved me a 4 hour hike.
Shout out to the two guys with the sandwich stand just before Glencoe, you really gave some live saving advice . (And i liked your bacon sandwich.