@@DescriptivistDialect If you want I can tell you about some more specific slang in the UK, certain areas have completely different slangs and accents, I myself have a Cullen (ISH) accent Also dinnae come to Scotland to bide cause it's shite, it's awaise call 🥶 Anyways mate, wish ya the best and you should look more into Scotland and it's dialects Also glaswegens, or weegies as we call them here, they don't speak propper "Scots" they never have, more places like Dundee, Cullen, Portsoy and places near that area speak more original Scottish Also if you'd like I can give you a hand with your video editing and sound issues to avoid echos etc Also if you'd like to contact me please ask or alternatively tell me how to contact you Either way, wish ya thae best mate Love your vid btw!
Thanks for this. I think Scots is to English what Plattdeutsch is to standard German. It’s different enough to be classified as a separate sister language, yet it is held back because it lacks the prestige of being the language of a state, and so people drop it in favour of the more popular standard form. Lots of official standard languages in Europe have fewer and shallower differences than these pairings.
Yeah Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, or Spanish and Portuguese, or Czech and Slovak among many examples are more similar to one another than some english “dialects”
Not sure of your own situation, but as an English person who speaks German and is interested in languages... The Plattdeutsch / Scots comparison is actually one of the best comparisons I've heard
It's important to mention, just as with Gaidhlig, children would be punished/beaten in schools for speaking Scots. That's part of why Modern Scots is often seen as dialectical and/or incorrect English. We have many, many words that are used Scotland-wide, but not south of the border.
It wasn't helped when people like David Hume hated it and thought it a barbaric tongue. Things are changing. When at University a decade ago, it was an Eastern European tutor who brought the language to my attention. When he showed us cards with famous film quotes but in Scots. We all laughed at them. But he looked troubled and asked why we were laughing at our own language. That was a proper penny drop moment for everyone. Scots is now encouraged (in context) to be used for essays. This is good. Scots, Gaelic and Modern English should have equal place in our country.
As someone from Aberdeenshire i was not expecting you to use Doric as the example. Glad to see you showcasing my dialect to others outside of Scotland 🏴❤️
To say Scots is a dialect of English is to say Spanish is a dialect of Latin. There are actually more similarities between Spanish and Italian than Scots and English. Of the loan words, words that have been picked up and used regularly by a neighbouring language, there are as many Scots words used in English as English words used in Scots (this doesn’t apply to shared words) Growing up in the western central belt of Scotland, I was told as a kid to ‘talk properly’ when any Scots words were used. My Ma held on to that outdated belief that using Scots words was ‘slang’ and I grew up knowing little of Gaelic, Doric or the hundreds of Scot’s dialects formed from that wonderful language. Thankfully there is a hard push to get Scots and Gaelic recognised and used in this country and I’m one hundred prrcebt behind it and I find it strange people will use Slàinte Mhath or Alva Gu Bràth yet deride the languages from which they come. Our language is a spoken one and there needs to be more money and effort put in to unifying Scot’s, promoting it, promoting Gaelic, supporting Doric and so on and as a nation put that pride we so often use into something that not only deserves it, but needs it Anyone still wanting to quip on Scots being a language, even UNESCO recognise it So, sons and daughters of Scotland, fecht fir yer leid Alba gu bràth 🏴
>>>To say Scots is a dialect of English is to say Spanish is a dialect of Latin Did you mean: To say Spanish is a dialect of Portugese is to say English is a dialect of Anglo-Saxon? Spanish is derived from Latin dialect, and it seems that parts of English have been influenced by Latin dialect as well and Scots is not derived from English while it looks like that both English and Scots started from some Anglo-Saxon dialect that was close enough to English and proximity to English users is the reason why it has not developed with more significant differences. Scots also has some Norn and German influnces - like bairn, which is shared with Low German. I would disagree heavily on the video where languages and dialects are equated - generally language should contain some grammar differences to be perceived as language - only vocabulary differences and ways how words are spoken would not be sufficient to be other than dialect. So, probably English and Scots have mainly dialectal differences(and extreme cases compard to rest of English dialects), as grammar seems to be the same, so they would be dialects to each other. One of the issues with the classifications of languages, is that they are represented as branches of trees, while in reality they can be represented as badly woven rugs, as languages can easily adapt words of other languages. The tree representation can be justified if you take away all the dialects and all the dead languages, but as soon as you are taking into account all that is now dead, but preserved in live language, that is not a tree anymore, but a chaotic mess, where roots are more important than branches.
@@JoCosGame I am a Scot and study linguistics in my spare time so I do fully understand where Scots has come from. I was only referencing the point of contention that Scots is a dialect of English, which is absolute nonsense. Scots is derived from Olde English, which Modern English is also derived. The languages both came from the same language arm as Friedman which, though incredibly rare, still survives in some areas. It’s similar to such a degree that Olde English speakers, Frisian speakers and Scots speakers can communicate far easier than those languages can with Modern English, Modern German and Modern Dutch
@@ewfse364u35jh No, though my analogy wasn’t entirely accurate and should been compared with Italian. The modern misconception is that Scots is an English dialect, which it is not, in the same way Spanish is not an Italian dialect but both came from the same, to a degree, Latin routes. Grammatically, English and German use similar language structures, not because one they are dialects of one another but because they’ve come from the same route language. It’s a mistake to assume that similarity in structure in the modern era means languages are dialects of one another because, as pointed out, as many Scots loan words exist in English as English loan words exist in Scots and as Scots is more similar to Olde English, then it could be easily argued English is a dialect of Scots Much of the Germanic words that exist in Scots are not immediately taken from the older Saxon languages but from a slightly more modern occurrence: the Norse invasion of Scotland. As the insular Brittonic Celtic language of the Picts is gone and we know little about it beyond a few place names and Syntax, it’s always going to be difficult to tie down which words came from where, especially when mixed with the Goidelic Gaelic, Anglo, Saxon, Norse and Franco languages which have shaped our tongue but that doesn’t mean you recognise a few words from a language you’re more familiar with and lump it in as a dialect
@@GioMarron I think you need to choose your analogies more clearly. Italian just like Spanish have not stood still and have developed in last 1000 years and added more additions, so that Spanish have preserved similarities to classic Latin, where Italian have lost them already. Scots is developed on the basis of Anglian dialect - just like English. The differences are not that many, because Scots is not unique - there are also plenty of English dialects. However, it does not help that modern Scottish people ar Speaking Scottish English - which has some influences from Scots, but that is clearly a developement of English language. In my native background if I have to compare Scots differences to English would be seen as mild dialect - mainly because Scots has been in neighbourhood of English and influences from other languages were comparatively very weak. >>>Much of the Germanic words that exist in Scots are not immediately taken from the older Saxon languages but from a slightly more modern occurrence: the Norse invasion of Scotland. Actually no. Most of the words that are in Scottish language are taken from Anglian and the main difference with English is that there are more Norse words in Scottish, than in English. However, Scottish language over last 1000 years had a lot of contacts with other languages, including Germans, who also have left their impact on Scottish with Hanseatic League and Protestant connections to German Protestant lands, so that Norse words have been phased out in droves and been replaced with more modern versions and what was true 1000 years ago definitelly is not so nowadays. >>>As the insular Brittonic Celtic language of the Picts is gone and we know little about it beyond a few place names and Syntax, it’s always going to be difficult to tie down which words came from where, especially when mixed with the Goidelic Gaelic, Anglo, Saxon, Norse and Franco languages which have shaped our tongue but that doesn’t mean you recognise a few words from a language you’re more familiar with and lump it in as a dialect This is the worst gate keeping example that is adding to myth creation in linguistics and history research. There are no mysteries about origins of words that can be found in other languages. The mystery is only about those words that are found only in one language.
@@GioMarron Look, there are some problems in your view on Scots language, as you seem to be looking on them from the POV where modern Scots languages are preserved in Scotland only and those places just happens to have assimilated Norse speakers, which are now part of Scots language, so AT BEST - they are transitional dialects to Norse and they are the only ones with those Norse influences ytou are mentioning, because their langauge development initially dod not include Anglian, but Norse. However, you have excluded very significant part of what made Scots language not so long ago, where Scots language was mainly Borderlands language(all the Highlands used Gaelic and were not exposed to Scots language and if they have Norse influences, then they are coming from Norse influences on Gaelic), which nowadays is dispersed into Americas, where it has become part of American English(in Apalachia and mostly other Southerners) language, and Scots languages in Northern Ireland, where these former people of Borderlands are confused what they are nowadays. So, absolutelly limited view on Scots language if you are considering only Scots of Scotland only.
Gin I speak wi the tungs o men an angels, but hae nae luve i ma hairt, I am no nane better nor dunnerin bress or a ringin cymbal. ...Gin I skail aa ma guids an graith in awmous, an gin I gie up my bodie tae be brunt in aiss - gin I een dae that, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am name the better o it. (1 Corininthians, 13.) From "The New Testament in Scots translated from Greek by William Laughton Lorimer Penguin Books 1985. This New Testament translation came out to great acclaim, and considered to be "the most considerable accomplishment in Scots prose to have been written in hundreds of years." (Peter Levi in The Spectator.) . It is definitely a language...check it out! However, in 2020 we have a continuum in Scotland - from a Scots which is still a language, to a a variety of English spoken with Scots sounds, and peppered in varying degrees with Scots words and expressions. Check out too "Scots language Radio" on the internet.
As a Frisian speaker from the Netherlands, we deal with a lot of similar problems. Although Frisian does have more recognition, partly because of active efforts by Frisians, it is definately subordinate to Dutch when it comes to comunication even between people who both speak Frisian.
I'm a native Doric speaker and where I live....people definitely speak Doric more than English but we all consume English language media, so many of us will add a lot more English words than perhaps our grandparents did. I see it more as a language as it feels very different to me...I can feel my brain work differently when speaking English compared with Doric, but that may also be a dialect difference. I don't really think it matters too much if it's considered a dialect or a language...whatever it is, it's my heritage and it evolved it its own way at the same time as modern English did.
Scots is definitely it's own language. The real question is really: are people speaking Scots or are they speaking English and mixing in a large number of Scots words? As someone from Glasgow I know for sure I use a fair number of Scots words but I also know at least 80% of the words I use are English. Yet at the same time I still feel like I'm speaking a second language when I travel to other countries and have to speak "English" . I'm not exactly fluent in Spanish but I feel just the same way speaking Spanish in Peru as I feel speaking English to basically anyone who isn't Scottish lol. I feel like a slow and dumbed down version of myself.
I totally agree. I'm English but of Scottish descent and have a lot of Scots relatives so I'm used to hearing Scottish spoken, and it's definitely not "English with a funny accent" because they use language in a different way to the English, as well as words that don't translate directly into English. I'd say they are two separate languages that have enough in common for a speaker of one to understand the other, similar to Breton and Welsh.
So interesting because I’m from Montrose, and I grew up in a Scots speaking household- my grandparents spoke broad Scots and so did my dad, while my mum was originally from Glasgow with a Glaswegian father and Irish mother so she was more Scottish English, my sister and I naturally speak Scottish English and can throw in a few Scots words and phrases and of course we can understand Scots and even Doric. My personal view is sadly the younger generations are speaking less and less Scots and I think this is because of several reasons. Partly because it was so discouraged even up until the 90s and partly because of other outside influences and media. There are some projects and programmes to keep the language alive but not enough in my opinion. Thanks for doing this video as it is raising awareness for Scots ☺️🙏
I'm native Doric. Years ago and I was speaking to my late mother on the phone. Ended the call and the other guy in the office asked me why I'd been speaking Norwegian. (He was Norwegian) Agree - Voice recognition doesn't work.
I'm fae Scotland. Several things to note: - Scots is not ONE language / dialect. It's a group of related forms, some of which are as different from each other as they are from English. There are also close counterparts in northern English dialects. This means having an official Scots form that translators used would be as likely to misrepresent actual Scots speakers as the English language currently does. - Native Scots speakers rarely see Scots written down and it's spelling is not standardised, so reading it is often still difficult, even for words you use regularly. Imagine an English speaker who doesn't pronounce the t in 'butter' seeing the word written phonetically as 'buer' - they're probably going to struggle to recognise it. - That Doric "poem" at the start isn't a poem. It's a silly weather forecast from an old comedy sketch, and it's full of placenames, which is slightly unfair. - At 31:57 your man used the word "Scotch" to refer to the language. Dinnae dee tha!
Sum fowk uise 'Scotch' fer leid an fowk an sich. Scotch is uised thadey in Ulster< fer tha leid an Fowk.. Gaun'ae gae speir intil it.. Tha 'Boord o Ulster-Scotch' is tha Gov't Agency< in Ulster-Scotch
You guys are awesome. I'm Scottish and live in Scotland near Glasgow. I have also lived in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and the kingdom of Fife. I think you are right, Scots is certainly distinct enough to be seen as a different language from English. I think where most of the disagreement on this comes from is the fact that the majority of Scots now speak a mixture of the two, which is more or less (due to geography mainly, but maybe also a bit due to social position [eek, controversial] also) highly skewed towards English. I suspect most Scottish people are ignorant of the roots of the Scots language, and don't really care... The talk how they talk, changing register when the audience other Scottish people, or other English speakers without even noticing it themselves. Since the skew is so heavy towards English I think it is actually hard for most Scottish people to understand pure Scots, but I'd think it is a damn sight easier for them than other English speakers.
I admit I am guilty of speaking and understanding not only a dialect within the british Islands but find myself forced to impersonate a 'My Cocaine' Cokney London voice to use an automated voice recognition telephone system.
As a Scottish person, I immediately recognised and can understand most of what is said here lol. If you want a language even worse than Doric, try Shetlandic. That's the only place in the country I genuinely had trouble understanding even my own kin. It's like a combination of Doric (from the North + Aberdeen) and Norwegian (from the vikings that lived in Shetland/Orkney). I was able to understand it pretty well after living there a couple weeks, but at first i'm like "WTF are they even saying, and I'm a Scot myself, lol". Weirdly if you go somewhere like Inverness in the North, with the exception of a few slang words, they actually speak better English than most English people do. The dialects most definitely vary on region between the best sounding English you ever heard and a language you can barely understand, or anything in between.
there is no debate Scots is recognised by the Council of Europe's Charter as a language, it is recognised internationally and In the 2011 Scottish Census, 1.5 million people identified as Scots speakers
As a spikker ae the Leid.. it most definately is a language. The problem is people in Scotland dont even realise themselves it's a seperate language, as weve all been taught from school "speak properly" and Scots has always been looked down upon as the way "the lower classes" talk. Our country may have not been colonised but our language and culture was.
An its needin stannarts fer schuils an hei prestige uiss. Look.. you just can't have 'broad/braid' scots survive if it isn't taught and there are no presciptive standards , grammar, core lexicon etc. If you cannot have a "Scots medium School" or a full 'Scots language newsbroadcast' then this is just not 'gaun'ae' work ...
There's a lot of interesting information out there about how Gaelic and Scots have been suppressed throughout our history. Sad thing is, very few of us are aware of it.
Well done for making this video. I say this as a Scot. Six of my seven grandchildren speak English day-to-day, Scots in the school playground (as I did) and also speak Gaelic fluently. Tri-lingual in the one country!
Here for Ali, I live outside Glasgow now and that slowing down when talking to outsiders is tiring. It's a relief when you get to talk to friends in your own way, Not that I don't want to express, more I just feel a sense of relief when I don't have to concentrate to be clear
Play these people a Fifer speaking, they'll call that a seperate language lol. Thank you so much for showing this. This is awesome as someone who grew in Scotland
@@markwilkie3677 I was a very sheltered highlander before I moved for Uni. There was a whole fucking lot of Fifers at QMU (I assume cause of the connection they have to Fife College). On top of that My girlfriend's a fifer and I struggle to understand her family sometimes
This is amazing and the preservation of languages should always be prioritized. Each language holds markers and treasures of history into the anthropology of those speakers history!
This is a really high quality video, well done guys! I also love seeing Americans speak intelligently on a topic like this, media focuses too much on education problems in the US and making fun of people, so it's super refreshing to hear ordinary views from ordinary people! :D
If you watch the animated film 'Brave' There is a scene in the main hall where one character speaks Doric and all the other Scots just shrug their shoulders as they cant understand it.
there are traditional northern english dialects just as, if not more unintelligible to standard english speakers than "scots" is. they never get called a language, because they weren't spoken in a different country. the question of whether scots is a language is solely a political question - not a linguistic one. this is why the range of the scots language begins at the scottish border, when their neighbours a few miles south in england who spoke an identical dialect apparently spoke an entirely different language, lol
the difference between dialect and language in general is political. linguists often won’t distinguish between the two because it’s largely sociopolitical, like various arabic “dialects” which aren’t mutually intelligible still being classed as dialects while serbian and croatian are counted as their own languages. as sociolinguist max weinreich quipped “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”
Yes. And historically those speaking Northern English dialecs have always been discouraged from doing so in a formal setting. We've always been told it's "common" and "not proper English".
The thing is, it is always sociology that build our classification of what is two dialects of one language of two separate languages. There is literally no objectif standard that separate dialect and language. The reason Moroccan Arabic and Lebanese Arabic are seen as one language is because of sociology. The reason Spanish and Portuguese are seen as separate languages is because of sociology. It is completely legitimate for the Scots language. Like this litteraly what happen in human history again and again.
A family friend was responsible for developing the dictionaries of the older and the more modern Scots tongue. They extend to 23 volumes. There is no question that Scots before the Act of Union was a separate language - in the same sense that Spanish and Italian are separate languages, or Norwegian/Swedish/Danish. But nowadays we mostly speak English with distinctive accents and some dialect terms - whatever people claim in the Census, real Scots is pretty much dead. Though within my lifetime I met old farming folks in the North East who spoke true Doric, and even as a Scot they were extremely difficult to understand. Another issue is that like many small languages, Scots was never standardised and there were very wide regional variations - so what version would be used in any revival? Revivalist poets like MacDiarmid have tended to take an eclectic approach, picking and choosing whatever took their fancy. My favourite Scots word is "grumphie", meaning pig. Perfect!
My favourite is probably puddock (frog). Written Scots doesn't really work these days, but it's easy to confuse an English person using wholly English words. I'm away to do the messages.
Scots is based on old Northumbrian English with some Norse, Finnish and French words in it, It was even said that during the first World War that Germans could understand Scots prisoners of War because of how close it was to German.
I’ve noticed that Apple doesn’t even give equal respect to the Scottish *accent*. You can set Siri to speak in American, “British” (English), Irish, Australian, Indian, and South African accents…. but not Scottish (or numerous others).
As an East Coast Scot, I really enjoyed this. It reminded me of when I was younger and a group of us Doric speakers went to Greece on holiday. Nobody could work out where we were from... Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, we got the lot. I'm quite dark for a Scot, so that messed things up even more!
I’m glad that TH-cam has decided to show me both of your fascinating videos within hours of you posting them. Thank you for yet another engaging and well produced video, which I find particularly interesting given my Scottish surname (but American English accent). I look forward to your future work.
I'm a 47 year old Scot from Fife.My generation still speak Scots day to day,but due to the advance of the Internet a lot of the younger generation (including my 2 teenage boys)are highly influenced by the US,saying zee instead of zed,etc.Also urban London influences a lot of youth through the UK, especially in England, as that's where a large proportion of 'influencers' are based.I've never actually thought of the fact that many road signs,ambulances,police cars,etc have signs in English and gaelic, but not Scots. Remember they spent millions on it though.Some Scots will be lost to time by the time my generation dies out.Pretty sad really.
I rarely leave a comment but - as a Scot, and as a linguist - the level of detail and you went into on this video and the respect you gave the subject was genuinely touching. It's uncommon for people to have an interest in Scots without being Scottish themselves. I will add a few things. I would consider both Scots and English as my native languages. English was acquired in classrooms and through media, but Scots is the language I was surrounded by in my mother's side of the family and in my working-class community. It's for this reason that many Scottish kids with learning difficulties are told that they struggle to write and speaking 'properly', when in reality they are struggling to produce the different codes and grammar of English. On that point, it's important for educators to know that this is may be a language aquisition issue, and not a literacy issue. Contemporary Scots (not old poetry, as the language has changed a lot - it's as difficult to read or listen to as Shakespeare to an English speaker) may be easier for them to produce. As with a lot of British issues, class is usually a major factor on whether someone is a Scots speaker or not. Middle-class friends of mine understand Scots but would cringe if they were to try speaking it, as it just wasn't natural for them to hear it or speak it at home. I also noted that your two guests from Scotland have 'a migration background', just going from their names (I do as well, that's not a dog whistle), and that may partially explain why they don't identify as Scots speakers: or perceive it as something archaic (spoken by older generations), as its less likely that their parents would speak Scots with each other. I would say that I picked up Scots more from my other relatives and from hanging out with other kids that had two Scottish parents, as my parents (Scottish/Trinidadian) would speak in English to each other. If two Scots-speaking Scots are together, it usually makes sense to cut the pretense and just speak whichever way is most comfortable. Some thoughts are best expressed in Scots and others are best expressed in English. My wife notes that when I'm emotional, or speaking about things connected to Scotland, I have a tendency to slip into Scots (this happens even if we are in the middle of speaking in German)
As a kid growing up in England I never understood any Scots, visiting my Grandma up in Aberdeenshire she might as well have been speaking another language, turns out she always was. Learned a lot more Doric since though. Youse are gang places, videos are affa guid quality, keep it up! Appreciate youse spikkin up fae Scots.
I think the majority of people in Scotland only know how to incorporate Scots into their English, but only a few can speak it as a standalone language. It's like there's a spectrum with standard Scottish English on one side and Scots on the other. It’s similar to being able to speak English and Spanglish, but not being fluent in Spanish on its own
You are describing a phenomenon known as a dialect continuum, and that’s exactly right for English and Scots. Though Spanglish is a whole other thing(s), that doesn’t really form a spectrum
I speak Scots, I am typing in English, I can and often do have to separate these languages because of travel, people understand English, they rarely understand Scots.
@@TheJpf79 An monie aktwal Scots fowk at's born an grawed an rared in Scotlan wudnae ken hou tae pit it doon in writin tho thay micht taak it ilkadey in sum wye er anither.
i was brought up with doric from the broch its def a language in those areas but its fading due too the schooling system kids here sorta have started speaking with English with voices & without English parents
From an english point of view, I think Old English is a separate language to English, and Scots is a different language to the "English" spoken in Scotland. You have to consider that the 19th centuary language of other areas of Northern England (eg Northumberland and Geordie) would not be understood by a Londoner, but would be partly understood by a scotsman.
My father spoke almost entirely in Scots at home, but he never wrote in it. He grew up in Hawick in the Scottish Borders, a town that's just isolated enough to have it's own Scots dialect. It wasn't until I started picking up Oor Wullie and Broons books as a kid that I realised folk would write in Scots, but that was Dundonian, so I'd get words my dad never used like "Crivvens" "Braw" "Flehg", and it's all cartoonish until you move to Dundee hear people using those words (at least older folk). I also had family in Manchester, they could barely understand a word I said when I went to visit them (and I don't think my accent is particularly strong), so it's difficult for me to say Scots is simply a dialect of English, it definitely has aspects of being it's own language, having dialects within itself and such.
I lived in the North East of Scotland for 5 years for uni. At the very beginning of first year, in freshers week, there were some Americans who really struggled at first- which led to a few instances where an American would ask me (an English guy with a fairly "BBC" accent), what a Scottish person had just said. And I found it really funny just repeating the sentence because it just sounded like clear English to me. But then I realised in the UK we are more used to accents changing - Americans don't grow up with TV from the UK- so it's not surprising. In the end all the American students would adapt and get used to it.
I found.. day one in the heart of Glesga.. without much exposure at all to modern day Scottish culture/language.. that I picked up Scots (dialect) and accent very innately. I attribute most of it from Appalachian/Southern U.S. dialect as well as being exposed to a wide variety of english accents. Part of it could also be having a more 'musical' ear for cadence/ intonation etc.
When my dad was in school, they would be corporaly punished for speaking any Scots or Gaelic, smacked with a belt. Nearly all media in the UK is from England or America and has been for decades. Even English becomes more and more homogeneous as we communicate internationally. Scots is understandably marginalised as a language. Shame really
I remember in primary school one of my teachers (who was English, living in scotland) told us all off for speaking with Scottish accents. the audacity???
I think you're getting mixed up with Scots and slang specifically Glasweigan West of Scotland slang. Scots is what Rabbie Burns poems are in. Nobody speaks like that in Scotland any more. Is your dad from the 18th century? I'd love to meet somebody that speaks it living in Glasgow all my life I've never heard anybody start talking like "it's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht ye timorous beastie" heard plenty of ned patter or Rab C Nesbitt ramblings though
@@cutekanjii Not Glasgow, no. Sure, he spoke English of course, but he threw in a lot more true Scots words and phrases than I do. But the point is that they were physically punishing children for this even in my dad's day. They were doing this for years and years before that, back when people really did speak more Scots. English came to be the way we speak not just through necessity and natural change, but also through force
I understood it. I am from Norfolk UK so it sounds very different to what I am used to, but still most definitely English. I have also listened to shipping reports before so that possibly helped. As for the Harry Potter bit, some of those words are used over a large amount of England itself. My girlfriend is from Lincoln, she uses nebbin constantly. It would be interesting to see the geographical spread of words.
As a counter point to languages not being understood by software, I can see it being used to work around surveillance. There was an Irish sci-fi story where two people mixed Irish and French to avoid Big Brother, but we kind of see that today with 'unalive', 'grape' etc being used to circumvent the algorithm punishing people from talking about certain topics.
In Primary School in the 1970's Scotland I got sent to elocution lessons to teach me proper English. Years later I understood why this happened. Colonialism...
We must mimic the colonial culture if you want to get by . 9/10 Top Academics Academics in Scots education are English with the jobs advertised down south .
I think the problem some Scots speakers would have is we don't see it written we've been forced to use only english. So the Harry Potter bit would be harder to read. I speak Scots and it took me a sec for my brain to catch up because its so rare I've had to read it. I grew up mostly in Edinburgh but a wee time in Kirkcaldy. I'd say Scots is stronger in Kirkcaldy, but that could be just the family I have there.
Thanks guys great video. As a Scot our native languages need as much support as they can get. Unfortunately the uk government has spent centuries denigrating and trying to destroy these languages to the point that my grandparents and parents generation has internalised a kot os shame and self hatred when it comes to using their natural tongue.
ulster scots IS recognized as the variety traditionally spoken in Ulster. If you're Irish you should know that 'crack' was only gaelicized and borrowed in the 1970's as 'craic'.. The "Crack" was always northern english and Scots< Ulster-Scots. Wee< Wean< Scots.
This is fantastic, can't believe this is only your second video. The quality is incredible, and so is your passion for language diversity. I'm English and lived in Edinburgh for a few years, and got to travel all over Scotland for work. Scots is a beautiful language and it was always such a delight to meet people speaking it. Really glad to see it being recognised as the other Germanic language of these islands as far away as Texas!
Really enjoyed this video, thanks for making and sharing (the echo on the zoom call was difficult to listen to, but I’m not moaning, making these vids if difficult). I really resonated with the story about understanding someone till they talk to a friend from their neighbourhood…my friend from about 20miles outside Edinburgh was completely understandable to me (from Sheffield, England) until she met a fellow Livingstone person…then I lost her completely as she slipped into her natural tongue. I do love that we have so many accents, but would agree that Scotts is a different language not just a dialect of English.
From the Harry Potter exerpt: Muckle = (related to Scandinavian meget/mycket/mye/mykje, "a lot" ?) Keekin = glancing (related to Scandinavian kikking, "glancing") Heill = whole (related to Scandinavian hel/heil, "whole"; survives in English as "heal") Its fun how Scots preserves Germanic words otherwise lost in English. Pronunciation also lends some credence to the idea of the North Sea Germanic linguistic zone, given how similar it sounds to some Scandinavian (and particularly dialects of Norwegian). Shame that it's in relative disuse.
Yes, muckle is also related to the English much, but we seem to have lost its counterpart mickle except in some place names. Then of course there is the N. Germanic bairn for child, cognate with Scandinavian barn.
Technically not.. the 'broad' (Braid) traditional form is uncommon but over 1.5 million people claim to use it in Scotland and just under 200,000 in Northern Ireland.
Great video, thank you for this. But the two lads from Glasgow and Montrose were obviously suffering from the Scottish colonial cringe, denying their own language. And they claimed that Scots isnt spoken in everyday life which is totally incorrect - as the montrose fellow should weil ken! Doric is spoken regularly in daily life, at home and at work, and on social media by very many young Scots. The Open University now has two Scots language courses on their free Openlearn site and they have a thriving research group, which I hope to join someday, on Scots language. It is disgusting the number of Scots who deny their own language and in doing so, their own culture, history and identity. That's what colonisations does, as the Peoples in South America found when colonised by the Spanish, and people in African countries when colonised by French.
I think it's fair to say that most people in the north east speak a mixture of Scottish English and Scots. You notice the inclusion of a lot of Scots vocabulary though in my experience this is getting less and less with each generation. Certainly my grandparents used far more Scots vocabulary than my kids. I love to hear people who use Scots a lot in everyday life.
Any chance you could link the courses mentioned above for the OpenLearn Scots languages courses? Would love to go through them but having trouble finding them on the website. Many thanks!
I live in Aberdeen since 2013. I am Hungarian not Scottish. I found this video infinitely interesting. I just had a funny experience with the local accent / language. My mate from Edinburgh came over for a week and he struggled to understand some of the local lads talking. He is Scottish. I somehow got adjusted to the local dialect so much even as a Hungarian that I had no problem at all. I love your video. Excellent job.
I am Scottish and often read Scots poetry at events, but I didn't initially recognise this. I did pick out Scots words eventually, but it sounds like it's being spoken by someone not Scottish. I thought I detected an English or US accent in there somehow. Also the rhythm seems wrong.
21:10 I'm sorry but there *are* no parts of the country that "never spoke Gaelic", that's just a bad faith argument made by uneducated people out of anti-Gaelic sentiment. The Gaels assimilated the Picts in Scotland well before any Anglo-Saxons ever arrived in what we today call Scotland; that's why there's Gaelic placenames everywhere from the Borders to the North Coast. There *are* parts of the country where Gaelic went extinct sooner than in other parts (namely the Borders, the Lowlands, and the Northeast), but that's not really an argument against having Gaelic signage there.
Exactly. Gaelic was also the language of the courts and the elite. It existed long before Scots did because the Scots/Gaels were here well before the Saxons were. Even in England, the P Celtic (Brythonic) Celtic languages existed before the Saxons arrived.
I live in Fife, Scotland. I'm in my 40s. When I was at school, we were continually told that speaking Scots was "slang", and we were actively discouraged from using our native tongue. We are indeed a dying breed. The younger members of my family have very anglicised dialects. I would say that there are many places in Scotland that have an even thicker accent than Glaswegians. I understand and still use a lot of the words in the examples you provided. I lived in the United States for a time. I had to speak *very slowly* the entire time I was there!
It's a tricky issue, because the problem with Scots is that it never had the state backing to become properly standardised in the same way English was. That's why we've ended up today with regional dialects that are barely intelligible to even our relatively close neighbours (as demonstrated in this video). So from an educational standpoint it only really makes sense to teach the use of a standardised language that will be understood wherever you go in the English speaking world rather than one that might not even be understood a few hours' drive away.
This is such a beautiful video for me, you guys take great respect in the "languages" or "dialects" you learn. I am a complete weegie and I have resonated so much with this video. I do a lot of solo travelling and do struggle to tone my "accent" down. It's refreshing to see someone recognising that it's not just an accent but it's a language I speak on a daily basis. Hope you can come to Glasgow and experience this ❤️❤️
Be honest tho you don't even really speak Scots in Glasgow, that's a dialect not a language. Scots is spoken more in the north east, not so much in the central belt. Central belt (even weegies) just speak with slang and dialect. In the case of weegies most of which is unique only to them, not the Scots language. You basically speak English but with a very heavy accent. Most weegies could barely understand true Scots spoken in the NE or Islands. Even the video shows a guy fae Glasgow who can't even understand the Scots dialect.
Scottish weather forecast :) Fun - glad to be in early on this channel. One of the detective novelists has his protagonist dealing in Doric. Lament for the makars is in mediaeval Scots but when you see it written down you can read it as easily as Middle English. (Actually, it's macaronic because it includes Latin in Timor mortis conturbat me :) ) Shetland language [Norn] died out more or less in the late 18th -19th century about the same time as Wexford English in Ireland. Also - remember the CIA world factbook - the UK - slightly smaller than Oregon :) Scots and Irish Gaelic are mutually intelligible with some difficulty despite being separate for a thousand years or so. Radio Foyle in Northern Ireland and one of the Scottish Gaelic stations exchanged programmes and could be mutually understood after a couple of weeks.
If ye dinny ken then ye dinny ken , ken ? And today is bogin and dreich with 4 ft of snaw. Keep yer bairns in or ye may end up batterd by your quine ye ken ? Not a truer word has been utterd
Truly excellent, well researched and qualitative video ftom you, laddies. Scots is most defitnely a language and when u was at Uni a decade or so ago. It was really being pushed and brought back into recognition and use. I speak Glaswegian, a load dialect. That's very closely related to Scots - most English people struggle to grasp what we are saying, whilst oddly Germans can pick up what we are saying. Doric may as well be a foreign language to me. Whilst it's only from a few hundred miles away from me. It really is a different culture. Anyway, brilliant stuff from an American channel. I'm extremely impressed. 'Lang may yer lum reek', laddies.
As a Norwegian, I’d definitely say that Scots is more related to English than what it is to Norwegian. However, I feel like a lot of words and phrases are similar to Norwegian. I can use Norwegian as a cheat code to understand sometimes.
Scots has a lot of influence from Old Norse due to historical factors. Northern english dialects also have words derived from Old norse due to the Vikings influence or the Danelaw. Scots also has influence from the Vikings or the Danelaw. If I remember right, Norway used to own some parts of Scotland up in the Insular regions and people living there used to speak a Scandinavian language called Norn, so if you ever hear any of the Insular Scots dialects (e.g. shetlandic) you'll likely notice the Norse influence is stronger there.
The poem really gives it away if you're familiar with the area. I wouldn't have been able to guess based on the accent, but going off the fact it's listing off locations in Aberdeenshire, I'm going to go ahead and say this is about the Doric dialect. Edit: Nice! Doric is in fact the regional variation of Scots that Kynoch used as an Aberdonian.
The issue is that Scots as commonly spoken in Scotland and Ulster isn't the "standard Scots" There's an effective dialect continuum (or more) between Scots and English that makes many Scots dialects difficult to claim as "Not English Dialects".
This isn't really a good example of naturally spoken Scots (Doric in fact, a dialect of Scots from Aberdeenshire). It's a humorous poem about a weather forecast, and many of the words chosen for the rhymes are in fact just place names from Aberdeenshire. Translation: It'll be quite cold around Birkhall, and at Mintlaw Station, just starvation. It will feel almost freezing at Bieldside, and you will not see Dyce for ice. It'll be quite rough at The Broch (Frazerburgh), very rough indeed at Peterheid (Peterhead), there will be occasional showers at Aberlour, it'll be really wet at Kingseat, and at Auchenblae it will pour (rain) all day. Also I have to say I was very disappointed with the interview which involved two people who claimed *not* to be Scots speakers. I mean really???!! Yes, there are people in Scotland who don't speak Scots, but there are also plenty of Scots speakers who do. Such a wasted opportunity!
My thoughts exactly.. and these fellas already have done their undergrad(?).. If anything the two Scots they interviewed who didn't realize/recognize Scots words (scottish language) until presented in written form as "Scots"> this pointed out the difference in the popular use/conception of Scots and between synthetic/broad/literary scots and 'Scottish language" (SSE with Scotticisms etc).
Not the best example because it includes so many placenames with which most English speakers will be completely unfamiliar. Some areas of Aberdeen here; Tullos, Torry, Mastrick, Altens, Tillydrone, Tyrebagger sound foreign anyway.
My grandma came from wales, supposedly I heard welsh is still spoken, but I don't know it. My dad's family come from germany in baden-württemberg so I learnt a little.
Welsh is on a slow decline, but it's still kicking - it's a big socio-political topic in Wales. It has a few hundred thousand speakers and a lot of money and energy goes into trying to reverse the decline - there's a scene of Welsh-language books, radio, TV, memes and tons of material specifically for people learning Welsh as an adult. You will find places where Welsh is the default language in the community, but they're few and far between, so IMO the main challenge is getting the English monoglots invested in Welsh's preservation and expansion.
I think it's important to note the why of Scots being recognised as a distinct language from English, which is to say it's mainly politics as happens so often. During the Middle Scots period, when Scots really became distinct from other descendants of Northern Middle English as spoken in Northern England, it was referred to as a form of English by its speakers by in large. The shift towards it being referred to as a distinct language is largely a modern phenomenon, linguists specialising in Britain's traditional dialects like Joseph Wright considered Scots just another traditional dialect rather than a separate language, not that it isn't highly distinct from Standard English out of London, but that there's nothing about Scots that makes it particularly more distinct in any special from Standard English than other traditional dialects spoken throughout England. It's rather due to Scotland's status historically as a separate country. Additionally there's the fact that unlike Northern English dialects, Scots has a literary history, as a prestige language no less during the Middle Scots period, which stretches fairly unbroken back all the way to the Middle English period, whereas Northern English dialects largely only start to develop a strong literary history starting in the 19th century. This isn't to say that Scots shouldn't be protected, it absolutely should and fairly disgusting how little attention it's given, but its status as a distinct language from Standard English over say Yorkshire dialect (which I speak and support as part of Yorkshire Dialect Society), is debatable. As a final note as I'm sure you guys will be interested considering your interest in dialects, here's an example of West Riding Yorkshire dialect from the Huddersfield area, with subtitles in the comments: th-cam.com/video/Hl3VKzkLFSs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=b_eQPJ7CoFKpjQMP
Well you're fairly on point other than that you miss "It's rather due to Scotland's status historically as a separate country."< that when you say that you forget that for quite a few centuries Scots became the 'Prestige' dialect whereas in other parts of England the regional varieties had a different relationship. The very reason why we can still define a "Scots" language in Ulster< from the 1600's onward is because Scots itself has dialects
@@AAA-fh5kd the fact we can talk about "Scots" having dialects is because several dialects were grouped together under that name, which lo and behold corresponds almost exactly to the traditional varieties within Scotland (which encompasses Ulster since it's essentially a form of Central Scots). A similar thing could be argued for Northumbrian which is either defined as Northumberland dialect specifically or a range of traditional dialects in the Northeast including Geordie, Mackem, Durham etc... it's arbitrary. The term Yorkshire dialect is similar, as is implies rather unified group when in reality there's a huge split between the dialect of the West Riding on the one hand and the North and East Ridings on the other.
@@Fenditokesdialect Absolutely.. I call treat them all as "language varieties" or 'languages' however, the 'broadness' of modern ulster or central belt 'mixture' varieties of Scots as well as "Northumbrian" or "Yorkshire dialect" must have some sort of sensibly agreed upon features, if one were to 'develop' these 'varieties' into 'prestige'* languages. Scots, despite being used far more widely than say Scottish Gaelic, is not presented in popular media or any prescriptive 'norm' which could/reinforce aspects of the language losing/lost to English attrition.
Wasn't sure what to expect when I clicked on this but it is very well researched and put together. Bravo gentlemen. As a lowlander Scot who grew up in the south of Scotland in (Robert) Burns country, the only real Scots language we would here would mostly be in old poetry. There are however still a few words that are still used in everyday life as well. I have to say I was both surprised and impressed that the majority of Austin locals that you interviewed were able to pick out that it might be a Scottish dialect. I found that when I travelled in both the US and Australia the majority of people would at first assume I was Irish. I should also say that I struggled to understand the Scots poem you played at the start but the later written harry potter transcript after a few reads I would be able to understand.
With the Glaswegian guy reading the Scots Harry Potter, I feel you're missing the differences between spoken and written languages. Scots is more phonetically written than English while English has gone through a few vowel shifts since spelling was standardised. If the guy heard that extract from Harry Potter, he'd understand it. I'm English and when I read it out loud I got a lot more of it than when I tried to read it.
When you put up the sample text I paused the video and read it aloud to male sense of it. I found myself drifting into a North East English accent, maybe something close to Geordie. I recognised "muckle" from the phrase "Many a mickle makes a muckle", which maybe my nan (grandmother) taught me. I still had to look up what it meant.
If you go far back enough English speakers today wouldn't recognise the English language. The Scots in this video reminds me of older English than today with variations.
Quite frankly, just looking at the first 5 mins, I can understand Dutch better as a native Afrikaans speaker than I can understand Scots as a (basically native) English speaker. Of course, I have spent some time learning Dutch and watching Dutch videos meaning that I'm more familiar with it, which might introduce a bit of bias. But it seems to me that there are more words which are quite different between English and Scots than Dutch vs Afrikaans, where the differences manifest largely in grammar and pronunciation rather than vocabulary. Of course, I am sure that there can be a similar level of difference in sound, but I've been exposed to (relatively tame) Scottish English quite a bit, whereas I've not been exposed to Afrikaans with a Dutch accent ever (if you ignore a Dutch guy I spoke to 3~4 months ago), which could exaggerate the perceived phonetic differences, and I am more familiar with the grammatical differences between Dutch and Afrikaans since I've both tried to learn Dutch once and read plenty of Wikipedia articles on the grammar of both languages, neither of which I've done with Scots, so I have no idea how much the grammar diverges from English. So since I consider Afrikaans to be a distinct language to Dutch and not a dialect, I would certainly consider Scots its own language.
Scots diverged from English during the Middle Ages and so caries a lot of holdovers from a much older form of English, not to mention that the old rule-of-thumb in spelling, "sound it out", is literally how Olde/Early Middle English was written before it was standardized, which has resulted in some awfully strange spelling due to the local accent.
Just for fun, I wanna do a quick comparison: Scots: He wis a muckle, beefy-boukit man wi a stumpie wee craigie, although he did hae a grey muckle mowser. English: He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Afrikaans (own translation): Hy was 'n groot, gespierde man met skaars 'n nek, alhoewel hy 'n baie groot snorbaard gehad het. Dutch (Google Translate): Hij was een grote, gespierde man met nauwelijks een nek, hoewel hij wel een grote snor had. And now if I convert both into a more phonetic Afrikaans spelling (for afr that basically just means replacing "'n" with "i"), since Afrikaans underwent a spelling reform Dutch missed out on: Afr: Hy was i groot, gespierde man met skaars i nek, alhoewel hy i baie groot snorbaard gehad het. Ndl: Hy was in grote, gespierde man met noueliks in nek, hoewel hy wel in grote snor had. From an Afr. perspective, the Dutch can be a bit challenging to understand, mostly because the vowels are pronounced a bit differently, but that difference in pronunciation is relatively easily picked up on. Other than that the largest differences are: 1) afr. /ə/ vs ndl. /ən/, which can be _might_ be confused with afr. /ən/ "in", but is pretty easy to get from context 2) groot vs grote, where Dutch still has the prenominal inflection on the adjective "groot" whereas Afr. has lost it, but it is understood with no problem as it is still present on most other adjectives (such as in "gespier(d)-e") 3) nauwelijks vs skaars: the Dutch word "schaars" only appears to have the adjectival meaning of "scarce" but not the adverbial meaning of "scarcely" (as in the afr. word), but while the in afr. the word "nouliks" has a slightly different meaning to Dutch "nauwelijks", it can be roughly picked up from context 4) alhoewel vs hoewel, the "al" (although) is basically added to the Afrikaans because it "feels" better, and I could've used hoewel in my translation with no problems, and Dutch appears to be the same, based on the word of an online dictionary. From an Afrikaans perspective, these two words are basically equivalent, except for the pronunciation differences between the two languages (afr. /ɦuˈvɛl/ vs ndl. /ɦuˈʋɛl/, though in my accent it's realised closer to [ɦuˈvæl] since æ is an allaphone of ɛ before /k, x, l, r/) 5) In the Dutch there's an added "wel", which basically comes down to a choice of style, I personally wouldn't put it in an Afrikaans translation because it sounds a bit awkward so close to "alhoewel", but it's a completely valid translation and 100% grammatical 6) Google translate seems to have left of a word for "very"; The Afrikaans word "baie" comes from Malay "baiang", iirc, and a Dutch speaker wouldn't understand it without prior knowledge. The Dutch word I'm the most familiar with is "erg", which in Afr. sounds a bit odd (since it's mostly just used to mean awful or terrible and to for "very" anymore, but for some reason I've always found the Dutch usage quite intuitive, if a little odd). Wiktionary also supplies "heel" (which is once again odd for Afrikaans, but is relatively easily understood from it's meaning as "whole") and "zeer", which would probably be the word most difficult for Afrikaans speakers to recognise as meaning very; I'm pretty sure I pretty ignored it when used like this when first learning Dutch, but after some exposure the you can get the meaning relatively easily 7) snor vs snorbaard; the Dutch is apparently a clipping of "snorbaard", but I have no idea if snorbaard is still in wide usage; regardless, I can't imagine that "mustachebeard" is very difficult to understand. As for Afrikaans, both "snor" and "snorbaard" are widely used to mean mustache, so the Dutch is easily understood 8) gehad het vs had. This might be a bit difficult for Dutch speakers to understand, funnily enough, but easy for Afrikaans. The Afrikaans is just ge- (past tense prefix) + had (preterite, so basically past, of hê "have") + het (present tense of hê, used as auxiliary in past tense constructions), while the Dutch is just had (past). A Dutch person would probably get the gist of "gehad" since it is identical to the past participle of "hebben" (have), but they might struggle with "het" since it is the same as their neuter definite article (as an Afrikaans speaker it was difficult to get used to reading "het" as "the" rather than "have". ("Ik zie _het_ meisje"? What do you mean you see "have" girl??) So maybe I'm just a lot more knowledgeable about Dutch than Scots, maybe I just chose a bad sentence as a basis for comparison. But from this sentence alone, it certainly seems that Dutch and Afrikaans are closer together in terms of vocab than English and Scots. I mean, I don't know of a close English equivalent to the following Scots words, though perhaps a speaker of a Scottish dialect might: muckle, craigie, muckle Additionally, grey appears to not mean the same as in English (unless the translators just added that description in, presumably based off've what we later learn of the character's appearance), I can only assume "-boukit" is parallel to "-built", "stumpie" I can guess, but wouldn't use that way in English, and "mowser" only loosely resembles "mustache" (and conjures up the mental image of one of those *massive* olden-time mustaches, now that I know - or at least guess that - it means mustache) IDK, from a mutual intelligibility standpoint it seems to me that Scots must be its own language too if I want to consider Afrikaans to be its own language, but maybe a speaker of Scottish English might have a much easier time understanding Scots than I do.
@@RuanPysoft Try comparing Scots to Middle English, then for an added challenge compare Modern English to Olde English Key: Yogh: Ȝ ȝ = 'y' Æsc: Æ æ = 'ӑ' Þorn: Þ þ = 'th' Eð: Ð ð = voiced (soft) 'th' Ƿynn: Ƿ ƿ = 'w' Ċen: Ċ ċ = 'ch' (must be preceded or followed by 'E' or 'I') Some simple comparisons: Green - Grene Blue - Blaƿ Yellow - Ȝeolo Red - Reod Orange - Ȝeoluread Brown - Brun Black - Blæc White - Hƿít Such a great many colors "Swelc an great maniȝhíƿean"
Just want to point out that parts of Scotland never speaking Gaelic is a prevalent myth, as Gaelic was spoken in practically all of modern Scotland for a couple centuries, which is why so many places even in the Lowlands have names of Gaelic origin. Obviously the short timeframe means that the myth does have some truth to it, but many Scots especially recently have identified with it as a national language. I don't think that should take anything away from Scots though, I believe that both languages to some extent get treated unfairly. One thing I'm surprised you didn't bring up in your video is the Scottish Languages Bill, which seeks to improve the official status of both Gaelic and Scots and is currently being discussed in Scottish Parliament.
I'm not sure that you're right in saying that all Scots once spoke Gaelic. In the Strathclyde area, they definitely spoke Brythonic (old Welsh) until as late as the 13th century, but Gaelic is a different thing again. I'm happy for you to prove me wrong though.
@@n8nate You're thinking of Cumbric, which began its decline when Srathclyde lost its independence in the 11th century. The short period of peak Gaelic I referred to was the period between the decline of Pictish and Cumbric and the rise of English and Scots.
@@cringeyetfree I'm only going in what I've read and heard. I don't understand how Cumbric (still speakers found in the 18th Century) could change to Scottish Gaelic and then to Scots and English. I'd argue that the peoples of Strathclyde stayed speaking P-Brythonic and were a separate speaking people. As far later as the C6th we have writing in Old/Hen Welsh from the tip of Cumbria - so just over the border from S.E. Scotland. These people were Scottish (of course in the modern sense), but more closely related to the Welsh, Cornish and Breton than to Ireland, the Picts and the Scots.
@@cringeyetfree that's a massively different language that is so vastly difficult as compared to Cumbric/Old Welsh to just pops up for a very small time? It makes no sense whatsoever. How would Brythonic be wiped out completely in the ’Hen Olgledd' then be replaced by Gaelic for a very short time, then be replaced by English? There are many lowland places in Scotland that are clearly of Old Welsh/Brythonic roots, yet not Gaelic. Your point makes no sense. They went from Brythonic to Scots , to English in the S.W. The literature shows us so.
Guy with the sunglasses means well and may not realise, but he kind of proved Scots should be regarded as a language. The audio comparisons were both with Scottish accents yet he only understood the latter translation in English, not just difficulty understanding an accent.
This was interesting. I live in Fife from a rural fishing community in the East neuk. I'm almost 50, and my grandparents' generation spoke old Scots I know myself and my neebors or friends still use a lot of the phrases but it's gone pretty much with our kids. They all speak with that homogeneous Scottish English accent. It's still common in my generation to say things like "gaun ben the hoose" go on through to the next room. "Ken" instead of know is common it's just how folk speak. But it's dying out and looked on as common by some people.
Doric is a branch of Scots. The modern Scots language differs from Middle Scots. It's like arguing that modern English is the same language as middle English. Doric is a modern language.
@@jukeboxjunkie1000 Eythur wai, naebdy toks lit that anymer.. Doric and Scots is a mix of English and Norse..? English is a mix of French and German..? Am no Listerine, but the septics huv basturdised an awredy mongrol language tae the point thuv goat made up wurds lit 'Normalcy' AND I LOVE IT!! Languages evolve and I cannae understand the young team anymer..
Modern English is "Middle English" - a creole of Old English and (mostly) French, whereas Scots stayed close to Old English. As such, there is no way Scots can be labelled a "dialect of English" but it would not be unreasonable to describe (modern) English as a "dialect of Scots". (Many don't realise that French was widely spoken in southern Britain long before "1066").
There was a good bit of French influence Scots also Not from Norman French of course, later French. Many words in Scots are influenced by French , through the auld alliance, where there were there was intermarriage between Scottish and French nobility and generations of scots growing up in France being bilingual. I think it was used at the court at one point. A lot of place names and surnames are of French origin. Even mine is.
@@Belisarius536 French was also common in the Church and monasteries. Contrary to common assumptions, the French influence in (middle and modern) English isn't from Norman either - it predates it. Southern England was well on the way to developing its own Romance language - a unique dialect of Frankish and Latin. Presumably it stopped because it merged with Old English. Roughly 55% of modern "English" vocabulary is French. Of course, both England and Scotland were strongly interwoven with (different parts of modern) France for many centuries.
Great video, especially considering that you guys are American. Im Scottish myself and yeah i can tell that the Glaswegian guy is trying to sound more English to be understandable. I used to work in a hotel and restaurant and had to do the same to be more understandable for tourists. My accent is somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. I could understand most of the Scots examples minus a couple of words. Its just so interwoven into our everyday language
I've lived in the Northeast all my life. And I've grown up around doric speakers. Neither of my parents are from the northeast so I was raised speaking scottish standard English. I think a lot of the people who claim to speak doric are actually on a linguistic spectrum between doric and English. And they code switch depending on who they're speaking to. I think "pure doric" if such a thing exists could 100% be considered its own language. However the vast majority of self proportion doric speakers use a hybrid of English and doric words. I think this gets to the heart of why it's so hard to categorise forms of Scots as their own separate languages. Because English and Scots are so linguistically similar, they borrow from eachother and its easy to blend the two. My conclusion is that it's wrong to say Scots is its own language. A more appropriate statement would be that Scots and English are dialects of old English.
Interesting you mentioned switching dialects depending on who they're speaking to. It's the same up in shetland where I'm from. People tend to relax a bit and speak with their native (or, more native) tongue if they live elsewhere and return to shetland. My mum does this, and it's honestly kinda cool to see. Partially because of how it's seen as a less "sophisticated" tongue, and (probably more likely) because people find it hard to understand, lol.
The decision not to give a closely related language its language status is a political, not a linguistic one. My Swiss German is considered a dialect of High German. Good luck finding a Standard German only speaker who understands it. Yet, Serbian and Croatioan are considered different languges, so are Hindi and Urdu. "A sprakh is a dialect mit an armey un flot."
In my opinion, Scots is both a dialect of English as well as a language unto its own. Let's think of it this way; Modern English is English, Olde English is still English, in fact the original English, but the two are so far separated that they are considered two distinct languages, English and Anglo-Saxon. Scots is far more similar to Middle English, which itself is mildly understandable to the modern listener, but is distanced enough to be considered separate. Like the gentleman said about European Spanish and Italian, they are quite similar, but not the same.
Scots IS a language because it was the langauge of Court/King (Gov't) for some centuries after the Scottish wars of Independence. Scots didn't 'cease to be' a language because of the political changes.. it just survived on without an official standard and outside of formal education (Late 1800's). Scots lives on in the form it does but is a continuation of that original 'Scottis'< which became it's own 'language' 700 years back.
That's absolutely not true. You'd find that without colonialism would have no English at all in those places around the world that speak English with an accent/dialect/closely related. language.
@@n8nate Do you even understand what colonisation is? What is English identity? Bells and sticks while dancing around a wooden phallic poll Morris Dancer?
scots speakers can codeswitch between standard english and "scots". this is a sure sign that it's a dialect of the same language, whether you claim "colonisation" or not
Ok, so the poem was written by Douglas Kynoch. What is the name of the poem?
@@WillsM85 The title of the poem is Wither Forecast and it can be found here: th-cam.com/video/RCqRd5eS_gM/w-d-xo.html
@@DescriptivistDialect
If you want I can tell you about some more specific slang in the UK, certain areas have completely different slangs and accents, I myself have a Cullen (ISH) accent
Also dinnae come to Scotland to bide cause it's shite, it's awaise call 🥶
Anyways mate, wish ya the best and you should look more into Scotland and it's dialects
Also glaswegens, or weegies as we call them here, they don't speak propper "Scots" they never have, more places like Dundee, Cullen, Portsoy and places near that area speak more original Scottish
Also if you'd like I can give you a hand with your video editing and sound issues to avoid echos etc
Also if you'd like to contact me please ask or alternatively tell me how to contact you
Either way, wish ya thae best mate
Love your vid btw!
Thanks for this. I think Scots is to English what Plattdeutsch is to standard German. It’s different enough to be classified as a separate sister language, yet it is held back because it lacks the prestige of being the language of a state, and so people drop it in favour of the more popular standard form.
Lots of official standard languages in Europe have fewer and shallower differences than these pairings.
Yeah Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, or Spanish and Portuguese, or Czech and Slovak among many examples are more similar to one another than some english “dialects”
I think part of the difficulty is that there is a continuum between Scots and Scottish Standard English.
Kind of, though the Low German - German split is a lot earlier.
Scots and English are both arguably dialects of low German.
Not sure of your own situation, but as an English person who speaks German and is interested in languages... The Plattdeutsch / Scots comparison is actually one of the best comparisons I've heard
@@meestanaef1109 That's a bit of a special case, but yeah it's the same principle.
It's important to mention, just as with Gaidhlig, children would be punished/beaten in schools for speaking Scots. That's part of why Modern Scots is often seen as dialectical and/or incorrect English. We have many, many words that are used Scotland-wide, but not south of the border.
It's because Scots was just seen as 'incorrect English'. Throughout England the same treatment was handed out to those who spoke regional dialects.
It wasn't helped when people like David Hume hated it and thought it a barbaric tongue. Things are changing. When at University a decade ago, it was an Eastern European tutor who brought the language to my attention. When he showed us cards with famous film quotes but in Scots. We all laughed at them. But he looked troubled and asked why we were laughing at our own language. That was a proper penny drop moment for everyone.
Scots is now encouraged (in context) to be used for essays. This is good. Scots, Gaelic and Modern English should have equal place in our country.
As someone from Aberdeenshire i was not expecting you to use Doric as the example. Glad to see you showcasing my dialect to others outside of Scotland 🏴❤️
To say Scots is a dialect of English is to say Spanish is a dialect of Latin. There are actually more similarities between Spanish and Italian than Scots and English. Of the loan words, words that have been picked up and used regularly by a neighbouring language, there are as many Scots words used in English as English words used in Scots (this doesn’t apply to shared words)
Growing up in the western central belt of Scotland, I was told as a kid to ‘talk properly’ when any Scots words were used. My Ma held on to that outdated belief that using Scots words was ‘slang’ and I grew up knowing little of Gaelic, Doric or the hundreds of Scot’s dialects formed from that wonderful language.
Thankfully there is a hard push to get Scots and Gaelic recognised and used in this country and I’m one hundred prrcebt behind it and I find it strange people will use Slàinte Mhath or Alva Gu Bràth yet deride the languages from which they come.
Our language is a spoken one and there needs to be more money and effort put in to unifying Scot’s, promoting it, promoting Gaelic, supporting Doric and so on and as a nation put that pride we so often use into something that not only deserves it, but needs it
Anyone still wanting to quip on Scots being a language, even UNESCO recognise it
So, sons and daughters of Scotland, fecht fir yer leid
Alba gu bràth 🏴
>>>To say Scots is a dialect of English is to say Spanish is a dialect of Latin
Did you mean: To say Spanish is a dialect of Portugese is to say English is a dialect of Anglo-Saxon?
Spanish is derived from Latin dialect, and it seems that parts of English have been influenced by Latin dialect as well and Scots is not derived from English while it looks like that both English and Scots started from some Anglo-Saxon dialect that was close enough to English and proximity to English users is the reason why it has not developed with more significant differences. Scots also has some Norn and German influnces - like bairn, which is shared with Low German.
I would disagree heavily on the video where languages and dialects are equated - generally language should contain some grammar differences to be perceived as language - only vocabulary differences and ways how words are spoken would not be sufficient to be other than dialect. So, probably English and Scots have mainly dialectal differences(and extreme cases compard to rest of English dialects), as grammar seems to be the same, so they would be dialects to each other.
One of the issues with the classifications of languages, is that they are represented as branches of trees, while in reality they can be represented as badly woven rugs, as languages can easily adapt words of other languages. The tree representation can be justified if you take away all the dialects and all the dead languages, but as soon as you are taking into account all that is now dead, but preserved in live language, that is not a tree anymore, but a chaotic mess, where roots are more important than branches.
@@JoCosGame I am a Scot and study linguistics in my spare time so I do fully understand where Scots has come from.
I was only referencing the point of contention that Scots is a dialect of English, which is absolute nonsense.
Scots is derived from Olde English, which Modern English is also derived. The languages both came from the same language arm as Friedman which, though incredibly rare, still survives in some areas. It’s similar to such a degree that Olde English speakers, Frisian speakers and Scots speakers can communicate far easier than those languages can with Modern English, Modern German and Modern Dutch
@@ewfse364u35jh No, though my analogy wasn’t entirely accurate and should been compared with Italian.
The modern misconception is that Scots is an English dialect, which it is not, in the same way Spanish is not an Italian dialect but both came from the same, to a degree, Latin routes.
Grammatically, English and German use similar language structures, not because one they are dialects of one another but because they’ve come from the same route language. It’s a mistake to assume that similarity in structure in the modern era means languages are dialects of one another because, as pointed out, as many Scots loan words exist in English as English loan words exist in Scots and as Scots is more similar to Olde English, then it could be easily argued English is a dialect of Scots
Much of the Germanic words that exist in Scots are not immediately taken from the older Saxon languages but from a slightly more modern occurrence: the Norse invasion of Scotland. As the insular Brittonic Celtic language of the Picts is gone and we know little about it beyond a few place names and Syntax, it’s always going to be difficult to tie down which words came from where, especially when mixed with the Goidelic Gaelic, Anglo, Saxon, Norse and Franco languages which have shaped our tongue but that doesn’t mean you recognise a few words from a language you’re more familiar with and lump it in as a dialect
@@GioMarron I think you need to choose your analogies more clearly. Italian just like Spanish have not stood still and have developed in last 1000 years and added more additions, so that Spanish have preserved similarities to classic Latin, where Italian have lost them already.
Scots is developed on the basis of Anglian dialect - just like English. The differences are not that many, because Scots is not unique - there are also plenty of English dialects. However, it does not help that modern Scottish people ar Speaking Scottish English - which has some influences from Scots, but that is clearly a developement of English language.
In my native background if I have to compare Scots differences to English would be seen as mild dialect - mainly because Scots has been in neighbourhood of English and influences from other languages were comparatively very weak.
>>>Much of the Germanic words that exist in Scots are not immediately taken from the older Saxon languages but from a slightly more modern occurrence: the Norse invasion of Scotland.
Actually no. Most of the words that are in Scottish language are taken from Anglian and the main difference with English is that there are more Norse words in Scottish, than in English. However, Scottish language over last 1000 years had a lot of contacts with other languages, including Germans, who also have left their impact on Scottish with Hanseatic League and Protestant connections to German Protestant lands, so that Norse words have been phased out in droves and been replaced with more modern versions and what was true 1000 years ago definitelly is not so nowadays.
>>>As the insular Brittonic Celtic language of the Picts is gone and we know little about it beyond a few place names and Syntax, it’s always going to be difficult to tie down which words came from where, especially when mixed with the Goidelic Gaelic, Anglo, Saxon, Norse and Franco languages which have shaped our tongue but that doesn’t mean you recognise a few words from a language you’re more familiar with and lump it in as a dialect
This is the worst gate keeping example that is adding to myth creation in linguistics and history research. There are no mysteries about origins of words that can be found in other languages. The mystery is only about those words that are found only in one language.
@@GioMarron Look, there are some problems in your view on Scots language, as you seem to be looking on them from the POV where modern Scots languages are preserved in Scotland only and those places just happens to have assimilated Norse speakers, which are now part of Scots language, so AT BEST - they are transitional dialects to Norse and they are the only ones with those Norse influences ytou are mentioning, because their langauge development initially dod not include Anglian, but Norse. However, you have excluded very significant part of what made Scots language not so long ago, where Scots language was mainly Borderlands language(all the Highlands used Gaelic and were not exposed to Scots language and if they have Norse influences, then they are coming from Norse influences on Gaelic), which nowadays is dispersed into Americas, where it has become part of American English(in Apalachia and mostly other Southerners) language, and Scots languages in Northern Ireland, where these former people of Borderlands are confused what they are nowadays. So, absolutelly limited view on Scots language if you are considering only Scots of Scotland only.
Gin I speak wi the tungs o men an angels, but hae nae luve i ma hairt, I am no nane better nor dunnerin bress or a ringin cymbal. ...Gin I skail aa ma guids an graith in awmous, an gin I gie up my bodie tae be brunt in aiss - gin I een dae that, but hae nae luve i my hairt, I am name the better o it. (1 Corininthians, 13.)
From "The New Testament in Scots translated from Greek by William Laughton Lorimer Penguin Books 1985.
This New Testament translation came out to great acclaim, and considered to be "the most considerable accomplishment in Scots prose to have been written in hundreds of years." (Peter Levi in The Spectator.) . It is definitely a language...check it out! However, in 2020 we have a continuum in Scotland - from a Scots which is still a language, to a a variety of English spoken with Scots sounds, and peppered in varying degrees with Scots words and expressions. Check out too "Scots language Radio" on the internet.
Scots is a recognised language. it's not up for debate 😂
As a Frisian speaker from the Netherlands, we deal with a lot of similar problems. Although Frisian does have more recognition, partly because of active efforts by Frisians, it is definately subordinate to Dutch when it comes to comunication even between people who both speak Frisian.
I'm a native Doric speaker and where I live....people definitely speak Doric more than English but we all consume English language media, so many of us will add a lot more English words than perhaps our grandparents did. I see it more as a language as it feels very different to me...I can feel my brain work differently when speaking English compared with Doric, but that may also be a dialect difference. I don't really think it matters too much if it's considered a dialect or a language...whatever it is, it's my heritage and it evolved it its own way at the same time as modern English did.
Scots is definitely it's own language. The real question is really: are people speaking Scots or are they speaking English and mixing in a large number of Scots words?
As someone from Glasgow I know for sure I use a fair number of Scots words but I also know at least 80% of the words I use are English. Yet at the same time I still feel like I'm speaking a second language when I travel to other countries and have to speak "English" . I'm not exactly fluent in Spanish but I feel just the same way speaking Spanish in Peru as I feel speaking English to basically anyone who isn't Scottish lol. I feel like a slow and dumbed down version of myself.
I totally agree. I'm English but of Scottish descent and have a lot of Scots relatives so I'm used to hearing Scottish spoken, and it's definitely not "English with a funny accent" because they use language in a different way to the English, as well as words that don't translate directly into English.
I'd say they are two separate languages that have enough in common for a speaker of one to understand the other, similar to Breton and Welsh.
Scots is definitely a language.
So interesting because I’m from Montrose, and I grew up in a Scots speaking household- my grandparents spoke broad Scots and so did my dad, while my mum was originally from Glasgow with a Glaswegian father and Irish mother so she was more Scottish English, my sister and I naturally speak Scottish English and can throw in a few Scots words and phrases and of course we can understand Scots and even Doric. My personal view is sadly the younger generations are speaking less and less Scots and I think this is because of several reasons. Partly because it was so discouraged even up until the 90s and partly because of other outside influences and media. There are some projects and programmes to keep the language alive but not enough in my opinion. Thanks for doing this video as it is raising awareness for Scots ☺️🙏
I grew up in Johnshaven 😅
I'm native Doric.
Years ago and I was speaking to my late mother on the phone.
Ended the call and the other guy in the office asked me why I'd been speaking Norwegian. (He was Norwegian)
Agree - Voice recognition doesn't work.
I kent this immediately as I am an Aberdeenshire loon and that’s the doric dialect of the Scots language. I also went to high school in Mintlaw.
I'm fae Scotland. Several things to note:
- Scots is not ONE language / dialect. It's a group of related forms, some of which are as different from each other as they are from English. There are also close counterparts in northern English dialects. This means having an official Scots form that translators used would be as likely to misrepresent actual Scots speakers as the English language currently does.
- Native Scots speakers rarely see Scots written down and it's spelling is not standardised, so reading it is often still difficult, even for words you use regularly. Imagine an English speaker who doesn't pronounce the t in 'butter' seeing the word written phonetically as 'buer' - they're probably going to struggle to recognise it.
- That Doric "poem" at the start isn't a poem. It's a silly weather forecast from an old comedy sketch, and it's full of placenames, which is slightly unfair.
- At 31:57 your man used the word "Scotch" to refer to the language. Dinnae dee tha!
Sum fowk uise 'Scotch' fer leid an fowk an sich. Scotch is uised thadey in Ulster< fer tha leid an Fowk.. Gaun'ae gae speir intil it.. Tha 'Boord o Ulster-Scotch' is tha Gov't Agency< in Ulster-Scotch
You guys are awesome. I'm Scottish and live in Scotland near Glasgow. I have also lived in Edinburgh, Aberdeen and the kingdom of Fife. I think you are right, Scots is certainly distinct enough to be seen as a different language from English. I think where most of the disagreement on this comes from is the fact that the majority of Scots now speak a mixture of the two, which is more or less (due to geography mainly, but maybe also a bit due to social position [eek, controversial] also) highly skewed towards English. I suspect most Scottish people are ignorant of the roots of the Scots language, and don't really care... The talk how they talk, changing register when the audience other Scottish people, or other English speakers without even noticing it themselves. Since the skew is so heavy towards English I think it is actually hard for most Scottish people to understand pure Scots, but I'd think it is a damn sight easier for them than other English speakers.
I admit I am guilty of speaking and understanding not only a dialect within the british Islands but find myself forced to impersonate a 'My Cocaine' Cokney London voice to use an automated voice recognition telephone system.
As a Scottish person, I immediately recognised and can understand most of what is said here lol. If you want a language even worse than Doric, try Shetlandic. That's the only place in the country I genuinely had trouble understanding even my own kin. It's like a combination of Doric (from the North + Aberdeen) and Norwegian (from the vikings that lived in Shetland/Orkney). I was able to understand it pretty well after living there a couple weeks, but at first i'm like "WTF are they even saying, and I'm a Scot myself, lol".
Weirdly if you go somewhere like Inverness in the North, with the exception of a few slang words, they actually speak better English than most English people do. The dialects most definitely vary on region between the best sounding English you ever heard and a language you can barely understand, or anything in between.
there is no debate Scots is recognised by the Council of Europe's Charter as a language, it is recognised internationally and In the 2011 Scottish Census, 1.5 million people identified as Scots speakers
As a spikker ae the Leid.. it most definately is a language. The problem is people in Scotland dont even realise themselves it's a seperate language, as weve all been taught from school "speak properly" and Scots has always been looked down upon as the way "the lower classes" talk. Our country may have not been colonised but our language and culture was.
An its needin stannarts fer schuils an hei prestige uiss. Look.. you just can't have 'broad/braid' scots survive if it isn't taught and there are no presciptive standards , grammar, core lexicon etc. If you cannot have a "Scots medium School" or a full 'Scots language newsbroadcast' then this is just not 'gaun'ae' work ...
@@AAA-fh5kd you ken if there was a Scots broadcaster there'd be a puckle fowk girnin aboot it.
(Spell check is doing my nut in)
There's a lot of interesting information out there about how Gaelic and Scots have been suppressed throughout our history. Sad thing is, very few of us are aware of it.
I’m born and lived in (central) Scotland all my life and I didn’t understand a word 😢
@@KateLibby555samesies, where about are you from? It's weird because I understood the majority of it. Maybe it's an age thing
Well done for making this video. I say this as a Scot. Six of my seven grandchildren speak English day-to-day, Scots in the school playground (as I did) and also speak Gaelic fluently. Tri-lingual in the one country!
Here for Ali, I live outside Glasgow now and that slowing down when talking to outsiders is tiring. It's a relief when you get to talk to friends in your own way, Not that I don't want to express, more I just feel a sense of relief when I don't have to concentrate to be clear
Play these people a Fifer speaking, they'll call that a seperate language lol. Thank you so much for showing this. This is awesome as someone who grew in Scotland
I`m a Fifer and was thinking that myself.
@@markwilkie3677 I was a very sheltered highlander before I moved for Uni. There was a whole fucking lot of Fifers at QMU (I assume cause of the connection they have to Fife College). On top of that My girlfriend's a fifer and I struggle to understand her family sometimes
We're no that bad...
This is amazing and the preservation of languages should always be prioritized. Each language holds markers and treasures of history into the anthropology of those speakers history!
This is a really high quality video, well done guys! I also love seeing Americans speak intelligently on a topic like this, media focuses too much on education problems in the US and making fun of people, so it's super refreshing to hear ordinary views from ordinary people! :D
If you watch the animated film 'Brave' There is a scene in the main hall where one character speaks Doric and all the other Scots just shrug their shoulders as they cant understand it.
I found that funny aswell since I understood it perfectly fine, I'm from Aberdeenshire tho
there are traditional northern english dialects just as, if not more unintelligible to standard english speakers than "scots" is. they never get called a language, because they weren't spoken in a different country. the question of whether scots is a language is solely a political question - not a linguistic one.
this is why the range of the scots language begins at the scottish border, when their neighbours a few miles south in england who spoke an identical dialect apparently spoke an entirely different language, lol
the difference between dialect and language in general is political. linguists often won’t distinguish between the two because it’s largely sociopolitical, like various arabic “dialects” which aren’t mutually intelligible still being classed as dialects while serbian and croatian are counted as their own languages. as sociolinguist max weinreich quipped “a language is a dialect with an army and a navy”
Yes. And historically those speaking Northern English dialecs have always been discouraged from doing so in a formal setting. We've always been told it's "common" and "not proper English".
The thing is, it is always sociology that build our classification of what is two dialects of one language of two separate languages.
There is literally no objectif standard that separate dialect and language.
The reason Moroccan Arabic and Lebanese Arabic are seen as one language is because of sociology.
The reason Spanish and Portuguese are seen as separate languages is because of sociology.
It is completely legitimate for the Scots language.
Like this litteraly what happen in human history again and again.
Old linguists joke (first told to explain the relationship of Yiddish to German) - “A language is a dialect with an army and navy”.
@@davidpaterson2309 I actually laughed out loud at that one. Nice.
"Sounds like English but the accent is foreign as hell like Scottish" 😂😂😂
A family friend was responsible for developing the dictionaries of the older and the more modern Scots tongue. They extend to 23 volumes. There is no question that Scots before the Act of Union was a separate language - in the same sense that Spanish and Italian are separate languages, or Norwegian/Swedish/Danish.
But nowadays we mostly speak English with distinctive accents and some dialect terms - whatever people claim in the Census, real Scots is pretty much dead.
Though within my lifetime I met old farming folks in the North East who spoke true Doric, and even as a Scot they were extremely difficult to understand.
Another issue is that like many small languages, Scots was never standardised and there were very wide regional variations - so what version would be used in any revival? Revivalist poets like MacDiarmid have tended to take an eclectic approach, picking and choosing whatever took their fancy.
My favourite Scots word is "grumphie", meaning pig. Perfect!
My favourite is probably puddock (frog).
Written Scots doesn't really work these days, but it's easy to confuse an English person using wholly English words.
I'm away to do the messages.
Scots is based on old Northumbrian English with some Norse, Finnish and French words in it, It was even said that during the first World War that Germans could understand Scots prisoners of War because of how close it was to German.
I’ve noticed that Apple doesn’t even give equal respect to the Scottish *accent*. You can set Siri to speak in American, “British” (English), Irish, Australian, Indian, and South African accents…. but not Scottish (or numerous others).
There are MANY Scottish accents. Many.
As an East Coast Scot, I really enjoyed this. It reminded me of when I was younger and a group of us Doric speakers went to Greece on holiday. Nobody could work out where we were from... Dutch, Norwegian, Swedish, we got the lot. I'm quite dark for a Scot, so that messed things up even more!
I'm born and raised in Scotland and that Doric clip was just 🤯
I’m glad that TH-cam has decided to show me both of your fascinating videos within hours of you posting them. Thank you for yet another engaging and well produced video, which I find particularly interesting given my Scottish surname (but American English accent).
I look forward to your future work.
I'm a 47 year old Scot from Fife.My generation still speak Scots day to day,but due to the advance of the Internet a lot of the younger generation (including my 2 teenage boys)are highly influenced by the US,saying zee instead of zed,etc.Also urban London influences a lot of youth through the UK, especially in England, as that's where a large proportion of 'influencers' are based.I've never actually thought of the fact that many road signs,ambulances,police cars,etc have signs in English and gaelic, but not Scots. Remember they spent millions on it though.Some Scots will be lost to time by the time my generation dies out.Pretty sad really.
I rarely leave a comment but - as a Scot, and as a linguist - the level of detail and you went into on this video and the respect you gave the subject was genuinely touching. It's uncommon for people to have an interest in Scots without being Scottish themselves. I will add a few things.
I would consider both Scots and English as my native languages. English was acquired in classrooms and through media, but Scots is the language I was surrounded by in my mother's side of the family and in my working-class community.
It's for this reason that many Scottish kids with learning difficulties are told that they struggle to write and speaking 'properly', when in reality they are struggling to produce the different codes and grammar of English. On that point, it's important for educators to know that this is may be a language aquisition issue, and not a literacy issue. Contemporary Scots (not old poetry, as the language has changed a lot - it's as difficult to read or listen to as Shakespeare to an English speaker) may be easier for them to produce.
As with a lot of British issues, class is usually a major factor on whether someone is a Scots speaker or not. Middle-class friends of mine understand Scots but would cringe if they were to try speaking it, as it just wasn't natural for them to hear it or speak it at home.
I also noted that your two guests from Scotland have 'a migration background', just going from their names (I do as well, that's not a dog whistle), and that may partially explain why they don't identify as Scots speakers: or perceive it as something archaic (spoken by older generations), as its less likely that their parents would speak Scots with each other. I would say that I picked up Scots more from my other relatives and from hanging out with other kids that had two Scottish parents, as my parents (Scottish/Trinidadian) would speak in English to each other.
If two Scots-speaking Scots are together, it usually makes sense to cut the pretense and just speak whichever way is most comfortable. Some thoughts are best expressed in Scots and others are best expressed in English. My wife notes that when I'm emotional, or speaking about things connected to Scotland, I have a tendency to slip into Scots (this happens even if we are in the middle of speaking in German)
As a kid growing up in England I never understood any Scots, visiting my Grandma up in Aberdeenshire she might as well have been speaking another language, turns out she always was. Learned a lot more Doric since though.
Youse are gang places, videos are affa guid quality, keep it up! Appreciate youse spikkin up fae Scots.
I think the majority of people in Scotland only know how to incorporate Scots into their English, but only a few can speak it as a standalone language. It's like there's a spectrum with standard Scottish English on one side and Scots on the other. It’s similar to being able to speak English and Spanglish, but not being fluent in Spanish on its own
You are describing a phenomenon known as a dialect continuum, and that’s exactly right for English and Scots. Though Spanglish is a whole other thing(s), that doesn’t really form a spectrum
No one knows or can teach what "Braid" scots should be in 2024< there is no standard, nor prescriptive spelling system nor grammar etc..
I speak Scots, I am typing in English, I can and often do have to separate these languages because of travel, people understand English, they rarely understand Scots.
@@TheJpf79 An monie aktwal Scots fowk at's born an grawed an rared in Scotlan wudnae ken hou tae pit it doon in writin tho thay micht taak it ilkadey in sum wye er anither.
@@AAA-fh5kd Me tae, Ken how tae tak it but Nae wans er bn shown how tae pit it doon.
i was brought up with doric from the broch its def a language in those areas but its fading due too the schooling system kids here sorta have started speaking with English with voices & without English parents
From an english point of view, I think Old English is a separate language to English, and Scots is a different language to the "English" spoken in Scotland. You have to consider that the 19th centuary language of other areas of Northern England (eg Northumberland and Geordie) would not be understood by a Londoner, but would be partly understood by a scotsman.
My father spoke almost entirely in Scots at home, but he never wrote in it. He grew up in Hawick in the Scottish Borders, a town that's just isolated enough to have it's own Scots dialect. It wasn't until I started picking up Oor Wullie and Broons books as a kid that I realised folk would write in Scots, but that was Dundonian, so I'd get words my dad never used like "Crivvens" "Braw" "Flehg", and it's all cartoonish until you move to Dundee hear people using those words (at least older folk). I also had family in Manchester, they could barely understand a word I said when I went to visit them (and I don't think my accent is particularly strong), so it's difficult for me to say Scots is simply a dialect of English, it definitely has aspects of being it's own language, having dialects within itself and such.
I lived in the North East of Scotland for 5 years for uni. At the very beginning of first year, in freshers week, there were some Americans who really struggled at first- which led to a few instances where an American would ask me (an English guy with a fairly "BBC" accent), what a Scottish person had just said. And I found it really funny just repeating the sentence because it just sounded like clear English to me. But then I realised in the UK we are more used to accents changing - Americans don't grow up with TV from the UK- so it's not surprising. In the end all the American students would adapt and get used to it.
I found.. day one in the heart of Glesga.. without much exposure at all to modern day Scottish culture/language.. that I picked up Scots (dialect) and accent very innately. I attribute most of it from Appalachian/Southern U.S. dialect as well as being exposed to a wide variety of english accents. Part of it could also be having a more 'musical' ear for cadence/ intonation etc.
When my dad was in school, they would be corporaly punished for speaking any Scots or Gaelic, smacked with a belt. Nearly all media in the UK is from England or America and has been for decades. Even English becomes more and more homogeneous as we communicate internationally. Scots is understandably marginalised as a language. Shame really
I remember in primary school one of my teachers (who was English, living in scotland) told us all off for speaking with Scottish accents. the audacity???
I think you're getting mixed up with Scots and slang specifically Glasweigan West of Scotland slang. Scots is what Rabbie Burns poems are in. Nobody speaks like that in Scotland any more. Is your dad from the 18th century? I'd love to meet somebody that speaks it living in Glasgow all my life I've never heard anybody start talking like "it's a braw bricht moonlicht nicht the nicht ye timorous beastie" heard plenty of ned patter or Rab C Nesbitt ramblings though
@@cutekanjii Not Glasgow, no. Sure, he spoke English of course, but he threw in a lot more true Scots words and phrases than I do. But the point is that they were physically punishing children for this even in my dad's day. They were doing this for years and years before that, back when people really did speak more Scots. English came to be the way we speak not just through necessity and natural change, but also through force
I understood it. I am from Norfolk UK so it sounds very different to what I am used to, but still most definitely English.
I have also listened to shipping reports before so that possibly helped.
As for the Harry Potter bit, some of those words are used over a large amount of England itself.
My girlfriend is from Lincoln, she uses nebbin constantly.
It would be interesting to see the geographical spread of words.
The research & effort you guys put into these videos is commendable.
Really good stuff!
Keep up the great work 😊
We speak urban Scots in Glasgow and Edinburgh, but with different accents. That other boy is masquerading as Scottish
As a counter point to languages not being understood by software, I can see it being used to work around surveillance. There was an Irish sci-fi story where two people mixed Irish and French to avoid Big Brother, but we kind of see that today with 'unalive', 'grape' etc being used to circumvent the algorithm punishing people from talking about certain topics.
In Primary School in the 1970's Scotland I got sent to elocution lessons to teach me proper English. Years later I understood why this happened. Colonialism...
We must mimic the colonial culture if you want to get by . 9/10 Top Academics Academics in Scots education are English with the jobs advertised down south .
Cultural cleansing has been happening to our people for centuries. Sadly, the house jocks lap it up.
@@1Nationalist4we urny all like that mate
The gleswegain guy was probably a rampant unionist
Am fea glesga a understood most of it
Lived in Aberdeen as a teenager so knew it right away as Doric!
I think the problem some Scots speakers would have is we don't see it written we've been forced to use only english. So the Harry Potter bit would be harder to read. I speak Scots and it took me a sec for my brain to catch up because its so rare I've had to read it.
I grew up mostly in Edinburgh but a wee time in Kirkcaldy. I'd say Scots is stronger in Kirkcaldy, but that could be just the family I have there.
It would be cool to see this channel grow to a linguistic Vertitasium
Thanks guys great video. As a Scot our native languages need as much support as they can get. Unfortunately the uk government has spent centuries denigrating and trying to destroy these languages to the point that my grandparents and parents generation has internalised a kot os shame and self hatred when it comes to using their natural tongue.
I'm Irish and I think Scots should be recognised as it's own language. It seems as different to English as gaelic (Scots galic) and gealge (Irish)
ulster scots IS recognized as the variety traditionally spoken in Ulster. If you're Irish you should know that 'crack' was only gaelicized and borrowed in the 1970's as 'craic'.. The "Crack" was always northern english and Scots< Ulster-Scots.
Wee< Wean< Scots.
We do and don't really care what the English think
This is fantastic, can't believe this is only your second video. The quality is incredible, and so is your passion for language diversity. I'm English and lived in Edinburgh for a few years, and got to travel all over Scotland for work. Scots is a beautiful language and it was always such a delight to meet people speaking it. Really glad to see it being recognised as the other Germanic language of these islands as far away as Texas!
Really enjoyed this video, thanks for making and sharing (the echo on the zoom call was difficult to listen to, but I’m not moaning, making these vids if difficult). I really resonated with the story about understanding someone till they talk to a friend from their neighbourhood…my friend from about 20miles outside Edinburgh was completely understandable to me (from Sheffield, England) until she met a fellow Livingstone person…then I lost her completely as she slipped into her natural tongue.
I do love that we have so many accents, but would agree that Scotts is a different language not just a dialect of English.
Am awfay chuffed wi this video, Alba gu bràth!
From the Harry Potter exerpt:
Muckle = (related to Scandinavian meget/mycket/mye/mykje, "a lot" ?)
Keekin = glancing (related to Scandinavian kikking, "glancing")
Heill = whole (related to Scandinavian hel/heil, "whole"; survives in English as "heal")
Its fun how Scots preserves Germanic words otherwise lost in English. Pronunciation also lends some credence to the idea of the North Sea Germanic linguistic zone, given how similar it sounds to some Scandinavian (and particularly dialects of Norwegian). Shame that it's in relative disuse.
Yes, muckle is also related to the English much, but we seem to have lost its counterpart mickle except in some place names. Then of course there is the N. Germanic bairn for child, cognate with Scandinavian barn.
Technically not.. the 'broad' (Braid) traditional form is uncommon but over 1.5 million people claim to use it in Scotland and just under 200,000 in Northern Ireland.
@@alfresco8442 But 'wee' and 'wee yin' ...wean is specifically Scots derived rather than 'bairn' or 'lass' etc.
@@AAA-fh5kd Wee is from the Old English waege, which is related to weight.
Great video, thank you for this. But the two lads from Glasgow and Montrose were obviously suffering from the Scottish colonial cringe, denying their own language. And they claimed that Scots isnt spoken in everyday life which is totally incorrect - as the montrose fellow should weil ken! Doric is spoken regularly in daily life, at home and at work, and on social media by very many young Scots. The Open University now has two Scots language courses on their free Openlearn site and they have a thriving research group, which I hope to join someday, on Scots language. It is disgusting the number of Scots who deny their own language and in doing so, their own culture, history and identity. That's what colonisations does, as the Peoples in South America found when colonised by the Spanish, and people in African countries when colonised by French.
Aye!
I think it's fair to say that most people in the north east speak a mixture of Scottish English and Scots. You notice the inclusion of a lot of Scots vocabulary though in my experience this is getting less and less with each generation. Certainly my grandparents used far more Scots vocabulary than my kids. I love to hear people who use Scots a lot in everyday life.
Any chance you could link the courses mentioned above for the OpenLearn Scots languages courses? Would love to go through them but having trouble finding them on the website. Many thanks!
Spot on pal some proper house jockery on display in this video.
I live in Aberdeen since 2013. I am Hungarian not Scottish. I found this video infinitely interesting. I just had a funny experience with the local accent / language. My mate from Edinburgh came over for a week and he struggled to understand some of the local lads talking. He is Scottish. I somehow got adjusted to the local dialect so much even as a Hungarian that I had no problem at all.
I love your video. Excellent job.
aberdeen doesnt even speak it laods go to town isntead peterhead fraserbugh and more
Even as a Scot this took me most of the speech clip to realise it was Doric scots. It was very fast.
I am Scottish and often read Scots poetry at events, but I didn't initially recognise this. I did pick out Scots words eventually, but it sounds like it's being spoken by someone not Scottish. I thought I detected an English or US accent in there somehow. Also the rhythm seems wrong.
Lol I think its a parody of a doric news report. Im hearing Aberdeenshire names here
@@Housenka03 it isnt really a parody, its just hammed up as its part of a comedy sketch
I thought it was Scots with a bit of South African English.
is it AI or suhin?
That's the campest Scots I've ever heard: a piss-poor example. Well done to those who identified it.
Doric. Aberdeenshire and thereby. Lallan Scots is different. And, I think, both are languages.
21:10 I'm sorry but there *are* no parts of the country that "never spoke Gaelic", that's just a bad faith argument made by uneducated people out of anti-Gaelic sentiment. The Gaels assimilated the Picts in Scotland well before any Anglo-Saxons ever arrived in what we today call Scotland; that's why there's Gaelic placenames everywhere from the Borders to the North Coast. There *are* parts of the country where Gaelic went extinct sooner than in other parts (namely the Borders, the Lowlands, and the Northeast), but that's not really an argument against having Gaelic signage there.
Exactly. Gaelic was also the language of the courts and the elite. It existed long before Scots did because the Scots/Gaels were here well before the Saxons were. Even in England, the P Celtic (Brythonic) Celtic languages existed before the Saxons arrived.
well said! Gaelic was spoken right down to the borders at one point and the legacy can be seen in the gaelic placenames.
I live in Fife, Scotland. I'm in my 40s. When I was at school, we were continually told that speaking Scots was "slang", and we were actively discouraged from using our native tongue.
We are indeed a dying breed.
The younger members of my family have very anglicised dialects.
I would say that there are many places in Scotland that have an even thicker accent than Glaswegians.
I understand and still use a lot of the words in the examples you provided.
I lived in the United States for a time. I had to speak *very slowly* the entire time I was there!
Colonialism at work
It's a tricky issue, because the problem with Scots is that it never had the state backing to become properly standardised in the same way English was. That's why we've ended up today with regional dialects that are barely intelligible to even our relatively close neighbours (as demonstrated in this video). So from an educational standpoint it only really makes sense to teach the use of a standardised language that will be understood wherever you go in the English speaking world rather than one that might not even be understood a few hours' drive away.
This is such a beautiful video for me, you guys take great respect in the "languages" or "dialects" you learn. I am a complete weegie and I have resonated so much with this video. I do a lot of solo travelling and do struggle to tone my "accent" down. It's refreshing to see someone recognising that it's not just an accent but it's a language I speak on a daily basis. Hope you can come to Glasgow and experience this ❤️❤️
Be honest tho you don't even really speak Scots in Glasgow, that's a dialect not a language. Scots is spoken more in the north east, not so much in the central belt. Central belt (even weegies) just speak with slang and dialect. In the case of weegies most of which is unique only to them, not the Scots language. You basically speak English but with a very heavy accent. Most weegies could barely understand true Scots spoken in the NE or Islands. Even the video shows a guy fae Glasgow who can't even understand the Scots dialect.
Scottish weather forecast :) Fun - glad to be in early on this channel. One of the detective novelists has his protagonist dealing in Doric. Lament for the makars is in mediaeval Scots but when you see it written down you can read it as easily as Middle English. (Actually, it's macaronic because it includes Latin in Timor mortis conturbat me :) )
Shetland language [Norn] died out more or less in the late 18th -19th century about the same time as Wexford English in Ireland.
Also - remember the CIA world factbook - the UK - slightly smaller than Oregon :)
Scots and Irish Gaelic are mutually intelligible with some difficulty despite being separate for a thousand years or so. Radio Foyle in Northern Ireland and one of the Scottish Gaelic stations exchanged programmes and could be mutually understood after a couple of weeks.
If ye dinny ken then ye dinny ken , ken ? And today is bogin and dreich with 4 ft of snaw. Keep yer bairns in or ye may end up batterd by your quine ye ken ? Not a truer word has been utterd
Ach aye 😂
But dis ken ken that ye dinnae ken aboot kenning on aboot ken, ken?
@GBlair4811 aye a ken ken ye ken but i didnay ken that you ken ken ye ken ? I can't believe this is an actual sentence that will be understood 😆😆😆
This has rekindled my dwindling faith in Americans. I understood they were a people who lacked curiousity. Thank you so much.
Truly excellent, well researched and qualitative video ftom you, laddies. Scots is most defitnely a language and when u was at Uni a decade or so ago. It was really being pushed and brought back into recognition and use.
I speak Glaswegian, a load dialect. That's very closely related to Scots - most English people struggle to grasp what we are saying, whilst oddly Germans can pick up what we are saying.
Doric may as well be a foreign language to me. Whilst it's only from a few hundred miles away from me. It really is a different culture.
Anyway, brilliant stuff from an American channel. I'm extremely impressed.
'Lang may yer lum reek', laddies.
As a Norwegian, I’d definitely say that Scots is more related to English than what it is to Norwegian. However, I feel like a lot of words and phrases are similar to Norwegian. I can use Norwegian as a cheat code to understand sometimes.
Scots has a lot of influence from Old Norse due to historical factors. Northern english dialects also have words derived from Old norse due to the Vikings influence or the Danelaw. Scots also has influence from the Vikings or the Danelaw. If I remember right, Norway used to own some parts of Scotland up in the Insular regions and people living there used to speak a Scandinavian language called Norn, so if you ever hear any of the Insular Scots dialects (e.g. shetlandic) you'll likely notice the Norse influence is stronger there.
The poem really gives it away if you're familiar with the area. I wouldn't have been able to guess based on the accent, but going off the fact it's listing off locations in Aberdeenshire, I'm going to go ahead and say this is about the Doric dialect.
Edit: Nice! Doric is in fact the regional variation of Scots that Kynoch used as an Aberdonian.
The issue is that Scots as commonly spoken in Scotland and Ulster isn't the "standard Scots"
There's an effective dialect continuum (or more) between Scots and English that makes many Scots dialects difficult to claim as "Not English Dialects".
This isn't really a good example of naturally spoken Scots (Doric in fact, a dialect of Scots from Aberdeenshire). It's a humorous poem about a weather forecast, and many of the words chosen for the rhymes are in fact just place names from Aberdeenshire. Translation: It'll be quite cold around Birkhall, and at Mintlaw Station, just starvation. It will feel almost freezing at Bieldside, and you will not see Dyce for ice. It'll be quite rough at The Broch (Frazerburgh), very rough indeed at Peterheid (Peterhead), there will be occasional showers at Aberlour, it'll be really wet at Kingseat, and at Auchenblae it will pour (rain) all day. Also I have to say I was very disappointed with the interview which involved two people who claimed *not* to be Scots speakers. I mean really???!! Yes, there are people in Scotland who don't speak Scots, but there are also plenty of Scots speakers who do. Such a wasted opportunity!
My thoughts exactly.. and these fellas already have done their undergrad(?)..
If anything the two Scots they interviewed who didn't realize/recognize Scots words (scottish language) until presented in written form as "Scots"> this pointed out the difference in the popular use/conception of Scots and between synthetic/broad/literary scots and 'Scottish language" (SSE with Scotticisms etc).
Agreed!
Not the best example because it includes so many placenames with which most English speakers will be completely unfamiliar. Some areas of Aberdeen here; Tullos, Torry, Mastrick, Altens, Tillydrone, Tyrebagger sound foreign anyway.
The so called poem is a comedy sketch that was on northsound radio years ago
Yeah, it's a parody of the shipping forecast, I suspect.
@@l.belcher1687 it's a weather report using towns and villages in the local area
Doric dialect is beautiful it is different from modern English as we know it and is closer to Old English which is a different language
My grandma came from wales, supposedly I heard welsh is still spoken, but I don't know it. My dad's family come from germany in baden-württemberg so I learnt a little.
Welsh is on a slow decline, but it's still kicking - it's a big socio-political topic in Wales. It has a few hundred thousand speakers and a lot of money and energy goes into trying to reverse the decline - there's a scene of Welsh-language books, radio, TV, memes and tons of material specifically for people learning Welsh as an adult. You will find places where Welsh is the default language in the community, but they're few and far between, so IMO the main challenge is getting the English monoglots invested in Welsh's preservation and expansion.
I think it's important to note the why of Scots being recognised as a distinct language from English, which is to say it's mainly politics as happens so often.
During the Middle Scots period, when Scots really became distinct from other descendants of Northern Middle English as spoken in Northern England, it was referred to as a form of English by its speakers by in large. The shift towards it being referred to as a distinct language is largely a modern phenomenon, linguists specialising in Britain's traditional dialects like Joseph Wright considered Scots just another traditional dialect rather than a separate language, not that it isn't highly distinct from Standard English out of London, but that there's nothing about Scots that makes it particularly more distinct in any special from Standard English than other traditional dialects spoken throughout England.
It's rather due to Scotland's status historically as a separate country. Additionally there's the fact that unlike Northern English dialects, Scots has a literary history, as a prestige language no less during the Middle Scots period, which stretches fairly unbroken back all the way to the Middle English period, whereas Northern English dialects largely only start to develop a strong literary history starting in the 19th century.
This isn't to say that Scots shouldn't be protected, it absolutely should and fairly disgusting how little attention it's given, but its status as a distinct language from Standard English over say Yorkshire dialect (which I speak and support as part of Yorkshire Dialect Society), is debatable.
As a final note as I'm sure you guys will be interested considering your interest in dialects, here's an example of West Riding Yorkshire dialect from the Huddersfield area, with subtitles in the comments: th-cam.com/video/Hl3VKzkLFSs/w-d-xo.htmlsi=b_eQPJ7CoFKpjQMP
Well you're fairly on point other than that you miss "It's rather due to Scotland's status historically as a separate country."< that when you say that you forget that for quite a few centuries Scots became the 'Prestige' dialect whereas in other parts of England the regional varieties had a different relationship. The very reason why we can still define a "Scots" language in Ulster< from the 1600's onward is because Scots itself has dialects
The West-Riding dialect is clearly not Scots though they share some lexical features etc.
@@AAA-fh5kd the fact we can talk about "Scots" having dialects is because several dialects were grouped together under that name, which lo and behold corresponds almost exactly to the traditional varieties within Scotland (which encompasses Ulster since it's essentially a form of Central Scots). A similar thing could be argued for Northumbrian which is either defined as Northumberland dialect specifically or a range of traditional dialects in the Northeast including Geordie, Mackem, Durham etc... it's arbitrary.
The term Yorkshire dialect is similar, as is implies rather unified group when in reality there's a huge split between the dialect of the West Riding on the one hand and the North and East Ridings on the other.
@@Fenditokesdialect Absolutely.. I call treat them all as "language varieties" or 'languages' however, the 'broadness' of modern ulster or central belt 'mixture' varieties of Scots as well as "Northumbrian" or "Yorkshire dialect" must have some sort of sensibly agreed upon features, if one were to 'develop' these 'varieties' into 'prestige'* languages. Scots, despite being used far more widely than say Scottish Gaelic, is not presented in popular media or any prescriptive 'norm' which could/reinforce aspects of the language losing/lost to English attrition.
Wasn't sure what to expect when I clicked on this but it is very well researched and put together. Bravo gentlemen.
As a lowlander Scot who grew up in the south of Scotland in (Robert) Burns country, the only real Scots language we would here would mostly be in old poetry. There are however still a few words that are still used in everyday life as well.
I have to say I was both surprised and impressed that the majority of Austin locals that you interviewed were able to pick out that it might be a Scottish dialect. I found that when I travelled in both the US and Australia the majority of people would at first assume I was Irish.
I should also say that I struggled to understand the Scots poem you played at the start but the later written harry potter transcript after a few reads I would be able to understand.
American's trying to tell us that our language isn't real. lol
I'm Scottish and can also say it's not. It's just slang mostly spoken by people who can't speak English correctly.
You can call it what you want because there's no clear line between dialect and language
With the Glaswegian guy reading the Scots Harry Potter, I feel you're missing the differences between spoken and written languages. Scots is more phonetically written than English while English has gone through a few vowel shifts since spelling was standardised. If the guy heard that extract from Harry Potter, he'd understand it. I'm English and when I read it out loud I got a lot more of it than when I tried to read it.
When you put up the sample text I paused the video and read it aloud to male sense of it. I found myself drifting into a North East English accent, maybe something close to Geordie. I recognised "muckle" from the phrase "Many a mickle makes a muckle", which maybe my nan (grandmother) taught me. I still had to look up what it meant.
If you go far back enough English speakers today wouldn't recognise the English language. The Scots in this video reminds me of older English than today with variations.
Quite frankly, just looking at the first 5 mins, I can understand Dutch better as a native Afrikaans speaker than I can understand Scots as a (basically native) English speaker. Of course, I have spent some time learning Dutch and watching Dutch videos meaning that I'm more familiar with it, which might introduce a bit of bias.
But it seems to me that there are more words which are quite different between English and Scots than Dutch vs Afrikaans, where the differences manifest largely in grammar and pronunciation rather than vocabulary. Of course, I am sure that there can be a similar level of difference in sound, but I've been exposed to (relatively tame) Scottish English quite a bit, whereas I've not been exposed to Afrikaans with a Dutch accent ever (if you ignore a Dutch guy I spoke to 3~4 months ago), which could exaggerate the perceived phonetic differences, and I am more familiar with the grammatical differences between Dutch and Afrikaans since I've both tried to learn Dutch once and read plenty of Wikipedia articles on the grammar of both languages, neither of which I've done with Scots, so I have no idea how much the grammar diverges from English.
So since I consider Afrikaans to be a distinct language to Dutch and not a dialect, I would certainly consider Scots its own language.
Scots diverged from English during the Middle Ages and so caries a lot of holdovers from a much older form of English, not to mention that the old rule-of-thumb in spelling, "sound it out", is literally how Olde/Early Middle English was written before it was standardized, which has resulted in some awfully strange spelling due to the local accent.
Just for fun, I wanna do a quick comparison:
Scots: He wis a muckle, beefy-boukit man wi a stumpie wee craigie, although he did hae a grey muckle mowser.
English: He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache.
Afrikaans (own translation): Hy was 'n groot, gespierde man met skaars 'n nek, alhoewel hy 'n baie groot snorbaard gehad het.
Dutch (Google Translate): Hij was een grote, gespierde man met nauwelijks een nek, hoewel hij wel een grote snor had.
And now if I convert both into a more phonetic Afrikaans spelling (for afr that basically just means replacing "'n" with "i"), since Afrikaans underwent a spelling reform Dutch missed out on:
Afr: Hy was i groot, gespierde man met skaars i nek, alhoewel hy i baie groot snorbaard gehad het.
Ndl: Hy was in grote, gespierde man met noueliks in nek, hoewel hy wel in grote snor had.
From an Afr. perspective, the Dutch can be a bit challenging to understand, mostly because the vowels are pronounced a bit differently, but that difference in pronunciation is relatively easily picked up on.
Other than that the largest differences are:
1) afr. /ə/ vs ndl. /ən/, which can be _might_ be confused with afr. /ən/ "in", but is pretty easy to get from context
2) groot vs grote, where Dutch still has the prenominal inflection on the adjective "groot" whereas Afr. has lost it, but it is understood with no problem as it is still present on most other adjectives (such as in "gespier(d)-e")
3) nauwelijks vs skaars: the Dutch word "schaars" only appears to have the adjectival meaning of "scarce" but not the adverbial meaning of "scarcely" (as in the afr. word), but while the in afr. the word "nouliks" has a slightly different meaning to Dutch "nauwelijks", it can be roughly picked up from context
4) alhoewel vs hoewel, the "al" (although) is basically added to the Afrikaans because it "feels" better, and I could've used hoewel in my translation with no problems, and Dutch appears to be the same, based on the word of an online dictionary. From an Afrikaans perspective, these two words are basically equivalent, except for the pronunciation differences between the two languages (afr. /ɦuˈvɛl/ vs ndl. /ɦuˈʋɛl/, though in my accent it's realised closer to [ɦuˈvæl] since æ is an allaphone of ɛ before /k, x, l, r/)
5) In the Dutch there's an added "wel", which basically comes down to a choice of style, I personally wouldn't put it in an Afrikaans translation because it sounds a bit awkward so close to "alhoewel", but it's a completely valid translation and 100% grammatical
6) Google translate seems to have left of a word for "very"; The Afrikaans word "baie" comes from Malay "baiang", iirc, and a Dutch speaker wouldn't understand it without prior knowledge. The Dutch word I'm the most familiar with is "erg", which in Afr. sounds a bit odd (since it's mostly just used to mean awful or terrible and to for "very" anymore, but for some reason I've always found the Dutch usage quite intuitive, if a little odd). Wiktionary also supplies "heel" (which is once again odd for Afrikaans, but is relatively easily understood from it's meaning as "whole") and "zeer", which would probably be the word most difficult for Afrikaans speakers to recognise as meaning very; I'm pretty sure I pretty ignored it when used like this when first learning Dutch, but after some exposure the you can get the meaning relatively easily
7) snor vs snorbaard; the Dutch is apparently a clipping of "snorbaard", but I have no idea if snorbaard is still in wide usage; regardless, I can't imagine that "mustachebeard" is very difficult to understand. As for Afrikaans, both "snor" and "snorbaard" are widely used to mean mustache, so the Dutch is easily understood
8) gehad het vs had. This might be a bit difficult for Dutch speakers to understand, funnily enough, but easy for Afrikaans. The Afrikaans is just ge- (past tense prefix) + had (preterite, so basically past, of hê "have") + het (present tense of hê, used as auxiliary in past tense constructions), while the Dutch is just had (past). A Dutch person would probably get the gist of "gehad" since it is identical to the past participle of "hebben" (have), but they might struggle with "het" since it is the same as their neuter definite article (as an Afrikaans speaker it was difficult to get used to reading "het" as "the" rather than "have". ("Ik zie _het_ meisje"? What do you mean you see "have" girl??)
So maybe I'm just a lot more knowledgeable about Dutch than Scots, maybe I just chose a bad sentence as a basis for comparison. But from this sentence alone, it certainly seems that Dutch and Afrikaans are closer together in terms of vocab than English and Scots. I mean, I don't know of a close English equivalent to the following Scots words, though perhaps a speaker of a Scottish dialect might: muckle, craigie, muckle
Additionally, grey appears to not mean the same as in English (unless the translators just added that description in, presumably based off've what we later learn of the character's appearance), I can only assume "-boukit" is parallel to "-built", "stumpie" I can guess, but wouldn't use that way in English, and "mowser" only loosely resembles "mustache" (and conjures up the mental image of one of those *massive* olden-time mustaches, now that I know - or at least guess that - it means mustache)
IDK, from a mutual intelligibility standpoint it seems to me that Scots must be its own language too if I want to consider Afrikaans to be its own language, but maybe a speaker of Scottish English might have a much easier time understanding Scots than I do.
@@RuanPysoft Try comparing Scots to Middle English, then for an added challenge compare Modern English to Olde English
Key:
Yogh: Ȝ ȝ = 'y'
Æsc: Æ æ = 'ӑ'
Þorn: Þ þ = 'th'
Eð: Ð ð = voiced (soft) 'th'
Ƿynn: Ƿ ƿ = 'w'
Ċen: Ċ ċ = 'ch' (must be preceded or followed by 'E' or 'I')
Some simple comparisons:
Green - Grene
Blue - Blaƿ
Yellow - Ȝeolo
Red - Reod
Orange - Ȝeoluread
Brown - Brun
Black - Blæc
White - Hƿít
Such a great many colors
"Swelc an great maniȝhíƿean"
Just want to point out that parts of Scotland never speaking Gaelic is a prevalent myth, as Gaelic was spoken in practically all of modern Scotland for a couple centuries, which is why so many places even in the Lowlands have names of Gaelic origin. Obviously the short timeframe means that the myth does have some truth to it, but many Scots especially recently have identified with it as a national language. I don't think that should take anything away from Scots though, I believe that both languages to some extent get treated unfairly. One thing I'm surprised you didn't bring up in your video is the Scottish Languages Bill, which seeks to improve the official status of both Gaelic and Scots and is currently being discussed in Scottish Parliament.
I'm not sure that you're right in saying that all Scots once spoke Gaelic.
In the Strathclyde area, they definitely spoke Brythonic (old Welsh) until as late as the 13th century, but Gaelic is a different thing again.
I'm happy for you to prove me wrong though.
@@n8nate You're thinking of Cumbric, which began its decline when Srathclyde lost its independence in the 11th century. The short period of peak Gaelic I referred to was the period between the decline of Pictish and Cumbric and the rise of English and Scots.
@@cringeyetfree I'm only going in what I've read and heard. I don't understand how Cumbric (still speakers found in the 18th Century) could change to Scottish Gaelic and then to Scots and English.
I'd argue that the peoples of Strathclyde stayed speaking P-Brythonic and were a separate speaking people. As far later as the C6th we have writing in Old/Hen Welsh from the tip of Cumbria - so just over the border from S.E. Scotland.
These people were Scottish (of course in the modern sense), but more closely related to the Welsh, Cornish and Breton than to Ireland, the Picts and the Scots.
@@cringeyetfree that's a massively different language that is so vastly difficult as compared to Cumbric/Old Welsh to just pops up for a very small time?
It makes no sense whatsoever.
How would Brythonic be wiped out completely in the ’Hen Olgledd' then be replaced by Gaelic for a very short time, then be replaced by English?
There are many lowland places in Scotland that are clearly of Old Welsh/Brythonic roots, yet not Gaelic.
Your point makes no sense.
They went from Brythonic to Scots , to English in the S.W.
The literature shows us so.
@@n8nate they didn't say _all_ Scots spoke Gaelic once, only that it was once spoken across practically all of Scotland. Languages can overlap
Guy with the sunglasses means well and may not realise, but he kind of proved Scots should be regarded as a language. The audio comparisons were both with Scottish accents yet he only understood the latter translation in English, not just difficulty understanding an accent.
"A sprakh is a dialect mit an armey un flot.", unfortanately.
It might be a poem but it's just someone reading the weather report, naming places in Aberdeenshire and the according weather
as a scot i really appreciate this video, very well put together, interesting, thought provoking and insightful
This was interesting. I live in Fife from a rural fishing community in the East neuk. I'm almost 50, and my grandparents' generation spoke old Scots I know myself and my neebors or friends still use a lot of the phrases but it's gone pretty much with our kids. They all speak with that homogeneous Scottish English accent.
It's still common in my generation to say things like "gaun ben the hoose" go on through to the next room. "Ken" instead of know is common it's just how folk speak. But it's dying out and looked on as common by some people.
its not scots its doric which is older than modern english
Doric is a branch of Scots. The modern Scots language differs from Middle Scots.
It's like arguing that modern English is the same language as middle English. Doric is a modern language.
@@jukeboxjunkie1000 Eythur wai, naebdy toks lit that anymer.. Doric and Scots is a mix of English and Norse..? English is a mix of French and German..? Am no Listerine, but the septics huv basturdised an awredy mongrol language tae the point thuv goat made up wurds lit 'Normalcy' AND I LOVE IT!! Languages evolve and I cannae understand the young team anymer..
I'm a Doric speaking loon fae Keith.
Modern English is "Middle English" - a creole of Old English and (mostly) French, whereas Scots stayed close to Old English. As such, there is no way Scots can be labelled a "dialect of English" but it would not be unreasonable to describe (modern) English as a "dialect of Scots". (Many don't realise that French was widely spoken in southern Britain long before "1066").
There was a good bit of French influence Scots also Not from Norman French of course, later French. Many words in Scots are influenced by French , through the auld alliance, where there were there was intermarriage between Scottish and French nobility and generations of scots growing up in France being bilingual. I think it was used at the court at one point. A lot of place names and surnames are of French origin. Even mine is.
@@Belisarius536 French was also common in the Church and monasteries. Contrary to common assumptions, the French influence in (middle and modern) English isn't from Norman either - it predates it. Southern England was well on the way to developing its own Romance language - a unique dialect of Frankish and Latin. Presumably it stopped because it merged with Old English. Roughly 55% of modern "English" vocabulary is French. Of course, both England and Scotland were strongly interwoven with (different parts of modern) France for many centuries.
Great video, especially considering that you guys are American. Im Scottish myself and yeah i can tell that the Glaswegian guy is trying to sound more English to be understandable. I used to work in a hotel and restaurant and had to do the same to be more understandable for tourists. My accent is somewhere between Edinburgh and Glasgow. I could understand most of the Scots examples minus a couple of words. Its just so interwoven into our everyday language
I've lived in the Northeast all my life. And I've grown up around doric speakers. Neither of my parents are from the northeast so I was raised speaking scottish standard English.
I think a lot of the people who claim to speak doric are actually on a linguistic spectrum between doric and English. And they code switch depending on who they're speaking to.
I think "pure doric" if such a thing exists could 100% be considered its own language. However the vast majority of self proportion doric speakers use a hybrid of English and doric words.
I think this gets to the heart of why it's so hard to categorise forms of Scots as their own separate languages. Because English and Scots are so linguistically similar, they borrow from eachother and its easy to blend the two.
My conclusion is that it's wrong to say Scots is its own language. A more appropriate statement would be that Scots and English are dialects of old English.
Interesting you mentioned switching dialects depending on who they're speaking to. It's the same up in shetland where I'm from. People tend to relax a bit and speak with their native (or, more native) tongue if they live elsewhere and return to shetland. My mum does this, and it's honestly kinda cool to see. Partially because of how it's seen as a less "sophisticated" tongue, and (probably more likely) because people find it hard to understand, lol.
I was born and raised 60 miles from Aberdeen and Doric may as well be Urdu to me.
The decision not to give a closely related language its language status is a political, not a linguistic one.
My Swiss German is considered a dialect of High German. Good luck finding a Standard German only speaker who understands it. Yet, Serbian and Croatioan are considered different languges, so are Hindi and Urdu.
"A sprakh is a dialect mit an armey un flot."
In my opinion, Scots is both a dialect of English as well as a language unto its own. Let's think of it this way; Modern English is English, Olde English is still English, in fact the original English, but the two are so far separated that they are considered two distinct languages, English and Anglo-Saxon. Scots is far more similar to Middle English, which itself is mildly understandable to the modern listener, but is distanced enough to be considered separate. Like the gentleman said about European Spanish and Italian, they are quite similar, but not the same.
Scots IS a language because it was the langauge of Court/King (Gov't) for some centuries after the Scottish wars of Independence. Scots didn't 'cease to be' a language because of the political changes.. it just survived on without an official standard and outside of formal education (Late 1800's). Scots lives on in the form it does but is a continuation of that original 'Scottis'< which became it's own 'language' 700 years back.
Doric is a dialect, but of Scots and not English. I grew up with Doric in Deeside.
The destruction of a language is a destruction of identity. Colonisation.
That's absolutely not true. You'd find that without colonialism would have no English at all in those places around the world that speak English with an accent/dialect/closely related. language.
@@n8nate Do you even understand what colonisation is? What is English identity? Bells and sticks while dancing around a wooden phallic poll Morris Dancer?
You ruined it with the last word
Lay off it
scots speakers can codeswitch between standard english and "scots". this is a sure sign that it's a dialect of the same language, whether you claim "colonisation" or not
Am Scottish and sorry but I had to skip the Scotsmen part cos they were talkin pish
16:57 - aye mate, that’s called translation 😂