# The Scots language



## Hugh (Aug 27, 2020)

It's always embarrassing and frustrating to find out just how anglo-centric my education (?!) and subsequent reading has been.  I had no idea that there was a Scots language...

_In the middle ages, Scots was one of the great literary languages of the British Isles. But 18th-century intellectuals, including David Hume, sought to remove “Scotticisms” from their writing and speech. It has enjoyed growing momentum in recent years, and one of the forums designed to promote it is Scots Wikipedia, the largest open-access corpus of the Scots language in the world._









						Shock an aw: US teenager wrote huge slice of Scots Wikipedia
					

Nineteen-year-old says he is ‘devastated’ after being accused of cultural vandalism




					www.theguardian.com


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## -K2- (Aug 27, 2020)

Though I'm not a contributor to Wikipedia, I have to go against the detractors. As said, if it's wrong or you don't like it, then fix it. It's only after the fact if I read it right that folks started generating their own sites (to combat the kid's effort). Essentially, letting the language go the way of Latin because no one else could move their...arse? Is that right? I don't know 

As it stands, I have my hands full butchering the English language. I don't have time to muddy any others.

K2


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## Hugh (Aug 27, 2020)

There seem some real positives:
_Michael Dempster, the director of the Scots Language Centre based in Perth, takes a more ameliorative approach and says he is now in conversation with the Wikimedia Foundation about the prospect of properly re-editing the teenager’s contributions.
*“We know that this kid has put in an incredible amount of work, and he has created an editable infrastructure. It’s a great resource but it needs people who are literate in Scots to edit it now. It has the potential to be a great online focus for the language in the future.”*
Dempster, a first-language Scots speaker himself, says that he is assessing how to put together a team of volunteers to undertake a mammoth re-editing task._


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## -K2- (Aug 27, 2020)

Good deal @Hugh ; hopefully they do it justice 




Spoiler: My personal issue with such things:



I will add this (regarding my Latin jab), here in the U.S. we have a tremendous number of languages (hundreds) which the original speakers of have simply passed down orally. Over time, the language changes due to mispronunciations and usage errors, wrong aspects intitialy reported as fact (when written) are repeated so many times that folks assume it's gospel and repeat it again...never researching deep enough to discover the error. In a nutshell, there is often so little left that can be learned, the language is essentially dead, just a collection of a few pointless words.

Of all of them, only one language I've been able to find is complete enough to be of any practical use, _Cheyenne Algonquian_. I've heard excuses such as, "we only speak it...pass it down (which means a disinterested student it ends with)...it's our private language, only to be spoken by tribal members," and other such nonsense which dooms every one of them to obscurity.

Introduction to Cheyenne: 
	

			Cheyenne Dictionary
		


An example translation page: 
	

			English - Cheyenne
		


So I say, if you treasure it, make an effort. Otherwise don't gripe when your past is forgotten...once gone, it will never be complete again until it vanishes completely.



K2


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## Foxbat (Aug 27, 2020)

As a Scot, I think this guy is guilty of nothing more than  clumsiness. If others consider it vandalism then perhaps they should have shown more interest in putting it right long before now. 

Many folk in Scotland see Gaelic rather than Scots as the definitive Scottish language. I don’t  agree with this view but if you ever visit Scotland, you’ll see that the word ‘police’ is written on the vehicles in two different languages....English and Gaelic (poileas).  

The simple truth is there have been many languages spoken here and Scots is just one of them. Others include Pictish, Norse,  old English and Norman French.

I don’t speak Scots per se but I suppose it’s a kind of Scots/English slang hybrid.  I wouldn’t say police or poileas. I’d say Polis. To pronounce, think polish (the nationality not the shoe shiner) but replace the sh with s.


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## Ursa major (Aug 27, 2020)

-K2- said:


> As said, if it's wrong or you don't like it, then fix it.


From the linked article (but with my bolding):





> In Wikipedia’s sometimes insular community, seniority matters a great deal. Purely by being an early, and prolific, editor of the Scots Wikipedia, *AmaryllisGardener gained administrator rights, and the power to undo vandalism of the site, occasionally using that to overrule others who tried to fix his errors.*


While it depends to some extent on what "occasionally" means, it cannot be right that someone who is inexpert in an area can remove the edits of those who _are_ expert, even if their only exprtise is that it's their own language (something that cannot be said of AmaryllisGardener with regard to the Scots language).


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## -K2- (Aug 27, 2020)

Ursa major said:


> From the linked article (but with my bolding):While it depends to some extent on what "occasionally" means, it cannot be right that someone who is inexpert in an area can remove the edits of those who _are_ expert, even if their only exprtise is that it's their own language (something that cannot be said of AmaryllisGardener with regard to the Scots language).



You had to make me read that whole thing again, didn't you?  That's a fair point, and to further it, it sounds like others had tried editing it _properly_ and he changed it back...or whatever...experts or not debatable (they don't elaborate on that). In any case, it reads to me like it languished. Though not the best way to get something done (controversy), at least now it's being recognized and addressed...by experts.

The argument that: "The revelation has led to some calling for the entire Scots Wikipedia to be deleted, arguing that its continued existence causes more harm than good. “It’s been suggested to me to nuke the whole thing and start over,” MJL said. Another proposal gaining support among Wikipedia’s broader community calls for every edit the user has made in the last seven years to be undone, even if that means deleting almost half of the encyclopaedia."

I find extreme. 10 to 1 says if that happened, you'd likely never see it expanded past a minimal point. Most people don't want to put in the work unless they're getting something out of it. Just my opinion.

But by all means get it right...Years ago i used to refer to wikipedia as 'the place where all incorrect knowledge is stored.' It was awful for years.

K2


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## Jo Zebedee (Aug 27, 2020)

Where I’m from, Ulster Scots is a big thing. Also @Abernovo knows a lot about Doric, the Aberdeenshire language. As to wiki, anyone using it as a source is having a laugh.


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## The Ace (Aug 27, 2020)

You have to remember that this is as much a political argument as anything else.

One criterion used to distinguish between a language and a dialect, is that native speakers of the language should understand about 70% of what they hear of a different dialect.  Native English speakers from the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were all exposed to prepared statements in Scots, and none scored above 30% (it's a problem in the UK, because everyone who speaks Scots also speaks English - most of us grow up speaking English in the classroom (or else !) and Scots everywhere else).

Another test is that dialects from neighbouring regions should largely be mutually intelligible - certainly not the case on either side of the border, even after 300 years of intermixing.

The problem is the political dimension - if Scots is a dialect (spoken in a region) then Scotland is little different from the rest of the UK.  If Scots is a language (spoken in a country) then Scotland is a nation, something on which opinion has become polarised over the last decade or so.


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## svalbard (Aug 27, 2020)

The Ace said:


> You have to remember that this is as much a political argument as anything else.
> 
> One criterion used to distinguish between a language and a dialect, is that native speakers of the language should understand about 70% of what they hear of a different dialect.  Native English speakers from the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand were all exposed to prepared statements in Scots, and none scored above 30% (it's a problem in the UK, because everyone who speaks Scots also speaks English - most of us grow up speaking English in the classroom (or else !) and Scots everywhere else).
> 
> ...



Very interesting points. My limited understanding was that Scots was spoken in the Lowlands and developed from a mix of Anglo-Saxon and Anglo-Norman and Gaelic was spoken in the Highlands with Norse and possibly Pictish elements.


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## Ursa major (Aug 28, 2020)

-K2- said:


> You had to make me read that whole thing again, didn't you?


Always glad to help....


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## Ambrose (Aug 28, 2020)

Aye.  Rremember the Doric, but keep a calm sough aboot it.


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## CTRandall (Aug 30, 2020)

There are other, certainly more reliable resources for Scots, notably the Dictionary of the Scots Language. 

And here's a thoughtful article by the poet Kathleen Jamie on her struggles with writing in Scots.

Just for fun, I'll also copy a quote from the article. It's an excerpt from the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13 v.4-8

Luve is pâtientfu; luve is couthie an kind; luve is nane jailous; nane sprosie; nane bowdent wi pride; nane mislaired; nae hame-drauchit, nane toustie. Luve keeps ne nickstick o the wrangs it drees; finnds nae pleisure i the ill wark o ithers; is ey liftit up whan truith dings líes; kens ey tae keep a caum souch; is ey sweired tae misdout;  ey howps the best; ey bides the warst.


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