How is the Scottish language regarded among the Scots?

[poiuytrewq0987]

Do Scots consider their language to be an important part of their life or do the lot of them just don't care and speak English instead?

[Murphy]

Very few really care about Scottish Gaelic, we are taught Standard English in schools and most speak Scots or Scottish English. All anyone really knows is that it sounds different from what they speak down south, and that's just grand.

[poiuytrewq0987]

Very few really care about Scottish Gaelic, we are taught Standard English in schools and most speak Scots or Scottish English. All anyone really knows is that it sounds different from what they speak down south, and that's just grand.

So I assume if the trends continue, the Scots will just end up Anglicized. Is there any cause in Scotland that seeks to preserve its Celtic heritage or is it doomed?

[Murphy]

So I assume if the trends continue, the Scots will just end up Anglicized. Is there any cause in Scotland that seeks to preserve its Celtic heritage or is it doomed?

Scots is already Anglicised in many parts of the country and it has been so for generations. The Scots I speak is an Anglicised Scots influenced by Hiberno-English.

There are people who wish to preserve the Celtic aspect of Scottish history, including the language, but if they follow the current Irish model then yes, it's all doomed.

[Beorn]

The Scottish are just Anglo-Saxons in denial.

Scottish Gaelic as a mythical rather than historic language of Scotland. (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/showthread.php?t=6339)

[Paleo]

Do Scots consider their language to be an important part of their life or do the lot of them just don't care and speak English instead?

Their are two language's traditionally spoken in Scotland; Gaelic of Celtic origin in highlands, Islands and small pockets of the lowlands. And Scots, of Scandinavian origin in the rest of the lowlands. Scots is technically a language on its own, but is considered slang.

I personally think both should be preserved as a piece of our cultural and traditional identity. Scots is my mother tongue I speak it all the time, and enjoy doing so. However, I think people should learn to speak clear english just for practical purposes.


Originally Posted by Brennus
The Scottish are just Anglo-Saxons in denial.

Although culturally influenced buy Germanic people's though trade and their kingdoms; DNA testing has shown the traditional population of Scots (and other Britons, including the english) has remain constant for over 12,000 years. We are firmly indigenous regardless of what daft AntiFa twats say.

Good book by Arthor Kemp: Part 1.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zYTenXkNoeU

Part 2.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OpSkbNY7YPk&feature=related

[Wyn]

And Scots, of Scandinavian origin


Scots is not of Scandinavian origin, but Old English/Anglic.

[Osweo]

Their are two language's traditionally spoken in Scotland; Gaelic of Celtic origin in highlands, Islands and small pockets of the lowlands. And Scots, of Scandinavian origin in the rest of the lowlands.
NONONONONONONOOOOOOO! :nono: :p

There were about five languages at play in the most fundamental period of the formation of the modern Scottish identity.

See my map for a rough idea;
http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9789/scotlangs.png
Before the Romans left Britain, up to the fourth century or so, the whole thing would have been red - British/Welsh/Pictish. There were local differences in dialect, but nothing too major.

Then the Angles/Saxons/English (yellow) and the Irish/Scots/Gaels (green) swarmed in, and pushed the Britons into the Clyde valley and the northeast. The Northeast experienced some Gaelic penetration, but many parts will have gone very rapidly over to English. The southwest retained its Welsh speech until well into the mediaeval period, much of it never having known Gaelic.

Last of all, the Norse came along (blue).

So, there were areas of Scotland that never spoke Gaelic, and others that went straight from Welsh to English speaking. In the North, the Norse turned Gaelic and Pictish speaking areas Norse, which continued in the far north until very recently, while in the west they all began to speak Gaelic and still do.

It's terrible that Norn and Welsh have so slipped out of public consciousness in Scotland. :(


Scots is technically a language on its own, but is considered slang.
Unfortunately, this linguistic question has been clouded by politics, as in many other parts of the world.
They joke that a dialect becomes a 'language' as soon as it has its own army and navy... :p But if intelligibility and descent are your considerations, Scots is a part of the wider English family.


Scots is not of Scandinavian origin, but Old English/Anglic.
Well,,,, mostly.
But I'd also say that there isn't ONE 'Scots', but several, and some have more Scandinavian in than others. But yes, ultimately, the Old Northumbrian English is the most direct ancestor.

[Paleo]

Scots is not of Scandinavian origin, but Old English/Anglic.

Thanks for the correction.

[Paleo]

There were about five languages at play in the most fundamental period of the formation of the modern Scottish identity.

I was referring to traditional languages that still exist. As the question I was answering implied. I thought that would be obvious.



there were areas of Scotland that never spoke Gaelic, and others that went straight from Welsh to English speaking. In the North, the Norse turned Gaelic and Pictish speaking areas Norse, which continued in the far north until very recently, while in the west they all began to speak Gaelic and still do.

Never denied this.


It's terrible that Norn and Welsh have so slipped out of public consciousness in Scotland. :(

Their is still some striking similarities between Scots and Scandinavia language's. As we would expect.


Unfortunately, this linguistic question has been clouded by politics, as in many other parts of the world.
They joke that a dialect becomes a 'language' as soon as it has its own army and navy... :p

I have no doubt that politics (especially in the UK) can divert the truth. However its seems blatantly obvious to me that Scots is a language. From around 1450 onward it was widely considered to be a language (Inglis) . Despite its common origin with Old English.

Some word's are easy to pick up, But to you non-speaker's its a struggle, and even for Scots who are not accustomed to reading in the dialect.


The Twa Corbies

In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
A wit thare ligs a new slain knicht;
An naebody kens that he ligs thare,
But his hawk, his hoond an leddy fair.

His hoond is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fesh the wild-foul hame,
His leddy's taen anither mate,
Sae we mey mak oor denner sweet.

Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
An A'll pyke oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
we'll theik oor nest whan it growes bare.

Mony ane for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whaur he is gane;
Ower his white banes, whan thay are bare,
The wind sall blaw for ivermair.

[Graham]

That's a good map Osweo ^^^ My county West Lothian, was known as Linlithgowshire untill 1922. Gaelic, Cumbric and English Language have been spoken here at some some stage, going by the place names and dates here.

http://www.cyberscotia.com/west-lothian-place-names/

Scots has kind of merged into Scottish English nowadays. But if I tried proper Scots and spoke it, the Non scottish people here wouldnae understand me. :P




Very few really care about Scottish Gaelic, we are taught Standard English in schools and most speak Scots or Scottish English. All anyone really knows is that it sounds different from what they speak down south, and that's just grand.
hehe aye :D

Gaelic hasnae been treat well at all by Governments in the past. Nae yin lives in the highlands either. Every yin left for Scottish Lowlands or Canada for some reason or another.

[Osweo]

I was referring to traditional languages that still exist. As the question I was answering implied. I thought that would be obvious.
Sure, but it was a great excuse to post my map. :rotfl:

Their is still some striking similarities between Scots and Scandinavia language's. As we would expect.
Sure, but no more than in many other English dialects, my own included.

I have no doubt that politics (especially in the UK) can divert the truth. However its seems blatantly obvious to me that Scots is a language. From around 1450 onward it was widely considered to be a language (Inglis) .
Hehe! They even called it English! When you talk of 'Scots' and refer to the old leid usit fae purposes o State and Law, you speake of thon qwilke war spoken in Edinburgh, furst and foremayst. Some bugger up round Aberdeen or Dumfries would have found it as strange as would Yorkshire or Devon English. It's still one linguistic world. An excellent example of this is in your own post;

The Twa Corbies

In ahint yon auld fail dyke,
A wit thare ligs a new slain knicht;
An naebody kens that he ligs thare,
But his hawk, his hoond an leddy fair.

His hoond is tae the huntin gane,
His hawk tae fesh the wild-foul hame,
His leddy's taen anither mate,
Sae we mey mak oor denner sweet.

Ye'll sit on his white hause-bane,
An A'll pyke oot his bonny blue een;
Wi ae lock o his gowden hair
we'll theik oor nest whan it growes bare.

Mony ane for him maks mane,
But nane sall ken whaur he is gane;
Ower his white banes, whan thay are bare,
The wind sall blaw for ivermair.

This song, and many others like it, were sung on both sides of the border. The version I know best has words foreign to you AND 'standard' English. See;

There were three rauens[2] sat on a tree,
downe a downe, hay downe, hay downe,[3]
There were three rauens sat on a tree,
with a downe,
There were three rauens sat on a tree,
They were as blacke as they might be.
With a downe, derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe.

The one of them said to his mate,
Where shall we our breakfast take?
Downe in yonder greene field,
There lies a Knight slain under his shield,

His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
So well they can their Master keepe,
His Hawkes they flie so eagerly,
There's no fowle dare him come nie[4]

Downe there comes a fallow Doe,
As great with yong as she might goe,
She lift up his bloudy head,
And kist his wounds that were so red,

She got him up upon her backe,
And carried him to earthen lake,[5]
She buried him before the prime,[6]
She was dead her self ere euen-song time.

God send euery gentleman,
Such haukes, such hounds, and such a Leman.[7]

= Leman is an obsolete word in all modern forms of English. Means 'lover', 'sweetheart', from Old English leofman.

There's an article on it all here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Ravens


Some word's are easy to pick up, But to you non-speaker's its a struggle, and even for Scots who are not accustomed to reading in the dialect.
Eee Lad, a wun't be sae shuwer if'n a wer thee! Tha fergets 'at 'er's muwer kinds o Inglish in t'world than whaa them Lundeners speeak... ;) Me own grandad's frae Newcastle, fer a start off, an some sorts o tawk a've eard up that way ave far more in common wi Scotch than 'Book English'. A bet Weegie's muwer like Lanky than Doric too. Wha fowks tawk laak ere on't net, in typing, in't necessarily whaa thi sounds laak in real life, deawn't ferget.

That's a good map Osweo ^^^ My county West Lothian, was known as Linlithgowshire untill 1922.
Cheers, Mate! :cheers: But never mind your 'untils'!! :rage It's up to locals to decide what a place is called, and they can do that just by keeping the name in their regular speech!

Gaelic, Cumbric and English Language have been spoken here at some some stage, going by the place names and dates here.

http://www.cyberscotia.com/west-lothian-place-names/
Ah, nice one!

A was just about tae say, you should have a look at Watson's chapter in this book;
W.J. Watson, History of the Celtic Placenames of Scotland, 1926
(reprinted 1993 by BIRLINN, Edinburgh, ISBN 1 874744 06 8).
http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/institutes/sassi/spns/watsloth.htm#Linlithgow

... but I click on the link and find it's now 'Forbidden
You don't have permission to access /institutes/sassi/spns/watsloth.htm on this server.'

:eek:

But thank God somebody thought to put it elsewhere;
http://www.spns.org.uk/watsloth.html


Scots has kind of merged into Scottish English nowadays.
SO...

Once upon a time, there was an English, in the Kingdom of Northumbria, from the Kingdom of Fife to Manchester and Hull.

Then the Gaelic Kings from Argyle conquered the northern chunk. People carried on speaking as they had always done...

Later the Gaelic elite themselves started speaking more and more English, until it shunted Gaelic aside.

After the Union, the London standard began to be seen as the 'correct' form by the upper class. This influence trickled down into all layers. Divergent traits gradually gave way under centralising influence.

We've gone from unity to diversity and back to unity again. Where and when is the separate language? ;)



But if I tried proper Scots and spoke it, the Non scottish people here wouldnae understand me. :P
Give o'er! Piece o piss, a reckon!


Gaelic hasnae been treat well at all by Governments in the past. Nae yin lives in the highlands either. Every yin left for Scottish Lowlands or Canada for some reason or another.

Would you believe, last time I was on Skye, I walked down to the furthest southern tip of the Sleat Peninsula, and came to a lonely house with no decent road to it, better accessible by the boat at the jetty below it... Me and my mates started picking and eating the blackberries, and some woman came out to moan at us, in dead posh Suthern English! Even I was pissed off at that! (The kids of such incomers often learn Gaelic though.)

[Peasant]

, dead posh Suthern English!

A plague to our northern lands.:mad: Also seconding the blatant crossover with Geordie accents and those of the Scottish.

[Murphy]

Scots has kind of merged into Scottish English nowadays. But if I tried proper Scots and spoke it, the Non scottish people here wouldnae understand me. :P

If you tried it I would hit you. If you mean to speak a more non-Anglicised Scots :P. It's horrible to speak it any other way. Why do you think I despise eastern Scots :D?

[Wyn]

A plague to our northern lands.:mad:

Works both ways. Plenty of northerners down south, too.


If you tried it I would hit you. If you mean to speak a more non-Anglicised Scots

Is there such a thing now? The young Scots I hear on television these days sound as if they're trying to sound like Englanders.

[Nglund]

http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/9789/scotlangs.png
Before the Romans left Britain, up to the fourth century or so, the whole thing would have been red - British/Welsh/Pictish. There were local differences in dialect, but nothing too major.

Are you sure there weren't any big differences between Bythonic and Pictish?:confused:
I remember Bede referring to Pictish as being distinct from Welsh and Gaelic.
Nobody really knows what Pictish was, there are some hints of Bythonic and P-Celtic dialect in place names, inscriptions and so on; it might have been some kind or related/sister language, some even suggest Pictish wasn't even Celtic...

[Comte Arnau]

As I see it, Scots and English are branches of the same Anglic group and both would be considered different languages by everybody if Scotland had remained independent. Just see what people think now about Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Galician and Portuguese...

[Osweo]

Are you sure there weren't any big differences between Bythonic and Pictish?:confused:
Qualifications have to be made; Linguistically, and in the immediately prehistoric period; no. Ethnically, well, that's a different kettle of fish entirely. They were considered, and considered themselves to be, distinct from the Strathclyde Welsh. Whether this is as a result of greater non-Celtic substrate, or simply lack of Romanisation, is a debatable matter.


I remember Bede referring to Pictish as being distinct from Welsh and Gaelic.
Nobody really knows what Pictish was, there are some hints of Bythonic and P-Celtic dialect in place names, inscriptions and so on; it might have been some kind or related/sister language, some even suggest Pictish wasn't even Celtic...
Pictish toponymy is solidly Brythonic. What may have happened a few hundred years before the historic period is another matter. It obviously makes sense to look for pre-Celtic survivals in the most farflung parts of the island. But there's not much definite of this in the surviving names and place-names.

[poiuytrewq0987]

As I see it, Scots and English are branches of the same Anglic group and both would be considered different languages by everybody if Scotland had remained independent. Just see what people think now about Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Galician and Portuguese...

Except the fact Scotland is a country of its own right, has its own language that is not in the same language group as English.

[Graham]

As I see it, Scots and English are branches of the same Anglic group and both would be considered different languages by everybody if Scotland had remained independent. Just see what people think now about Czech and Slovak, Bulgarian and Macedonian, Galician and Portuguese...
Yeah I would say so, It's kind of like the difference's between scottish Gaelic, Irish and Manx Gaelic.

[Osweo]

Except the fact Scotland is a country of its own right,
Yes

has its own language that is not in the same language group as English.
If you'd read what has been written above, you'll find that Gaelic is NOT the chief heritage of more than half modern Scotsmen.

Yeah I would say so, It's kind of like the difference's between scottish Gaelic, Irish and Manx Gaelic.
These things are hard to quantify, but I've had a bit of a go at both surviving Gaelics, and the difference is greater between them than between the varieties of English spoken on this island.

Scots, Manx and Irish Gaelic were separated by serious incursions of Vikings, state boundaries, and the sea itself. Scottish and 'English' varieties of English have been in constant contact and cross-polination, however.

[hereward]

Gaelic hasnae been treat well at all by Governments in the past. Nae yin lives in the highlands either. Every yin left for Scottish Lowlands or Canada for some reason or another.

Though a small nation, one must not forget the size of Scottish input with regards to New Zealand. As far the Isles are concerned, my research suggests the Scotts have contributed more to the stock there regarding proportions!

[Treffie]

Whatever people think of it, I think it's an amazing sounding language :thumb001:

yJadJs7oPm8

[Turkophagos]

Whatever people think of it, I think it's an amazing sounding language :thumb001:

yJadJs7oPm8



Sounds like a Dutch-Israeli mix to me (wtf!).

[Peasant]

It sounds like the audio has been reversed when the bloke is talking.

[Osweo]

Sounds like Gaelic. :....


Oddly enough, though, Ossett sounds eerily similar to me, at least when the women speak it...

[Murphy]

It's obvious Gaelic. For a start, it's covering Scottish news.. secondly it's intelligible so it's obvious not Irish :D!

Manx Gaelic is quite distinctive as well. It's very.. flat, to my ears.

[Comte Arnau]

Whatever people think of it, I think it's an amazing sounding language :thumb001:

yJadJs7oPm8

I only understood the Diluain and Dimàirt because we call those days Dilluns and Dimarts, pretty close! :D

Btw Treffie, how much do you understand them?

[Murphy]

Btw Treffie, how much do you understand them?

I'll answer for him: not a word :D! Bidh e air a nàrachadh. Better asking Os ;).

[Treffie]

I only understood the Diluain and Dimàirt because we call those days Dilluns and Dimarts, pretty close! :D

Btw Treffie, how much do you understand them?

same as you, Diluain and Dimàirt, which we call Dydd Llun and Dydd Mawrth ;)

[Jack B]

Whatever people think of it, I think it's an amazing sounding language :thumb001:

Indeed, I wonder if non speakers can notice the similarity with Irish? would be interesting, here's a similar weather report in Irish.

xsBv1ukVp9U