The Scots Language

MissAdventure 😆

Callistemon21

^He required a visit to theatre to have a variety of coins removed from his rectum^ 😳
🤔 no comment 😁

When they phoned the hospital to see how he was, they were told there was "No change" presumably.

flappergirl

zakouma66

I think Gaelic is a totally different language, in the same way the that Welsh is?
Mostly spoken in the far North.

Bretton , Cornwall, Wales shared ethnicity perhaps?

Yes indeed. They are all Brythonic celts and their languages are mutually intelligible. That's why Cornish place names so often sound Welsh. I find it heart breaking that there are no native Cornish speakers left, I think the last one died in the 18th century although there are opportunities to learn it.

Cornish is being revived although I think some words have been lost.

Manx is another language which was declared extinct but I think there are attempts being made to revive it?

Thanks for posting those links Elegran. I'll watch them when I've finished my housework :-(. Interestingly, there were differences with Chaucer's English and the language in "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight", which was written using a North West/Midlands dialect of Middle English. The writer was probably a contemporary of Chaucer, but they clearly used different language forms. As you say, people have gravitated towards using the "King's/Queen's English", but there were a number of distinct dialects of Middle English in the Middle Ages. Scots was one of them. They all branched off and some died out completely.

paddyann54

Scots Gaelic is a different language to Scots .It was banned when the "union" was formed as was the wearing of tartan(plaid) and all manner of things Scottish.Thankfully people are again looking to their roots and loving what they find.

The use of Gaelic began to decline long before the union, from the 11th century onwards. Scots (which is derived from Middle English) was the official language for government and law from the 14th century. Not surprisingly, the Orkneys have the highest number of Norwegian-derived place names. Orcadians also have very strong DNA links with Norwegians.

Read a chunk of original Chaucer, then a bit of some of the writers in Scotland (the makars) at about the same time or in the next centuries. The connection is clear.
You can hear a reading of some Chaucer at www.youtube.com/watch?v=GihrWuysnrc

English later followed court fashion and the upper classes and those who wished to be upwardly mobile spoke "The King's English" as heard in posh circles (and as heard from the BBC, once radio brought the sound of received pronunciation to the masses in every corner of the land,) The Scots were further from the influence of the South-East, as were other outer regions of England and Wales.

Scots still use many words and constructions that would have been familiar to Chaucer, as well as being influenced by their trade with countries across the North Sea and links with Ireland.

A lot of the words which seem unfamiliar to people in the South-East are also still common in some regions. They are also still often thought to be the language of uneducated yokels far from the civilising effect of the Capital, too.

This video about the languages of Britain is good - lots of recorded examples. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODeYttUY4VI

(While searching Youtube for an example of the sound of Medieval Scottish and/or Middle English, I found this recording too that you might also like. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wc22W3bos64 "The sound of ancient languages"

zakouma66

I think Gaelic is a totally different language, in the same way the that Welsh is?
Mostly spoken in the far North.

Bretton , Cornwall, Wales shared ethnicity perhaps?

Yes indeed. They are all Brythonic celts and their languages are mutually intelligible. That's why Cornish place names so often sound Welsh. I find it heart breaking that there are no native Cornish speakers left, I think the last one died in the 18th century although there are opportunities to learn it.

He required a visit to theatre to have a variety of coins removed from his rectum 😳
🤔 no comment 😁

Grannynannywanny

^I've heard of the custom but not the word^.

We used to call it "crossing the baby's palm with silver ”

Callistemon21 I’d completely forgotten about the crossing the baby’s palm part of it till you mentioned. My neighbour used to make the sign of the cross on the baby’s hand with the coin before slipping it into the pram.

My poor Mum hated to see her doing it as she thought it unhygienic to be touching a little baby’s hand with money. She used to say later “you never know where that money has been before now”. My Mum was a nurse and during her years in the male surgical ward she saw the same man admitted on 3 occasions. He required a visit to theatre to have a variety of coins removed from his rectum 😳

So her hygiene concerns around cash weren’t entirely unfounded !

Apologies if I’ve lowered the tone of the thread 😆

It's ok!

I remember taking a 3 year old DS to A&E because the little boy next door told me DS had swallowed some pennies he found at their house.
No pennies showed up on the X Ray so I wondered if his little friend had swallowed them. His mum thought they'd pass through anyway if he had.

Minimoon I believe my Gc went to the same wee school as your GD did.My youngest GD has a very English accent yet she was the winner of the Scots reading and sung Ye Canny shove yer granny aff a bus at the Burns Supper .Wee were very proud of her she was the only 5 year old to perform on her own and she nailed it ....it was hilarious.Great wee school there were just 14 in er class.Now she's at high school in Helensburgh ,its not the same at all .

Callistemon21

*Elegran*, Charleygirl, and other nice posters, could you explain to me what I have said that annoyed Zakouma so much?

That was not a normal reaction to a simple question. There is something wrong with a poster who reacts like that.

What a vile post.

It was very rude and unecessary. As for something wrong, yes quite possibly.

Grandmabatty

Scots was a language before standard English was developed from old English. It is not a dialect of English. It is a separate language with roots in Norse, Germanic and french. There are obvious similarities to English and words have migrated. One that I find fascinating is the Icelandic word for a vacuum cleaner which is Stoorsooker. The Scots word for dust is stoor so you can see the kink. 😂 Scots usage generally in schools was belted out of children in the 30s to 70s or so. Schools had a strong link with the church and there was a demand for proper English to be spoken. Many children and then adults used Scots in the home and to describe how they felt but English for academic purposes. It's well described in Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. So there was a dichotomy created in the Scottish psyche: Scots for the heart and English for the head. Gradually there has been an upsurge in the use of scots as a language. It is accepted in certain sqa national five and higher English papers. It is taught in most primary schools albeit sometimes as a month's focus. Some secondary schools teach it too. There is a recognition that speaking the language you are born with enhanced other languages learned. I would say it's piecemeal across Scotland depending on where you are.

I always thought the beautiful gaelic language came from Ireland. Pleased to hear it is being taught again, I remember being told my friends children were being taken out of Welsh speaking language classes, wasn't compulsory, and thought what a shame. These languages need to survive. Our local dialect teacher spoke often about English being derived from Germanic language brought over by the invaders of our lands.

paddyann54

Scots Gaelic is a different language to Scots .It was banned when the "union" was formed as was the wearing of tartan(plaid) and all manner of things Scottish.Thankfully people are again looking to their roots and loving what they find.

Thanks for the info. I didn’t know that. She was from Scalpay. The sons were all fishermen until Margaret Thatcher destroyed their lives.

Grandmabatty

Scots was a language before standard English was developed from old English. It is not a dialect of English. It is a separate language with roots in Norse, Germanic and french. There are obvious similarities to English and words have migrated. One that I find fascinating is the Icelandic word for a vacuum cleaner which is Stoorsooker. The Scots word for dust is stoor so you can see the kink. 😂 Scots usage generally in schools was belted out of children in the 30s to 70s or so. Schools had a strong link with the church and there was a demand for proper English to be spoken. Many children and then adults used Scots in the home and to describe how they felt but English for academic purposes. It's well described in Sunset Song by Lewis Grassic Gibbon. So there was a dichotomy created in the Scottish psyche: Scots for the heart and English for the head. Gradually there has been an upsurge in the use of scots as a language. It is accepted in certain sqa national five and higher English papers. It is taught in most primary schools albeit sometimes as a month's focus. Some secondary schools teach it too. There is a recognition that speaking the language you are born with enhanced other languages learned. I would say it's piecemeal across Scotland depending on where you are.

Sorry, but Scots and English both have their roots in the Middle English spoken in Northumbria. Since they diverged, there have been many loan words into Scots from French, North Germanic and Gaelic.

Casdon

paddyann54

Scots Gaelic is a different language to Scots .It was banned when the "union" was formed as was the wearing of tartan(plaid) and all manner of things Scottish.Thankfully people are again looking to their roots and loving what they find.

Not quite true about plaid paddyann54, I remembered this article from when I did a bit of checking before I went to a wedding in Scotland where everybody wore their clan kilts (a lovely sight).
www.scotsman.com/whats-on/arts-and-entertainment/myth-buster-was-tartan-really-banned-after-culloden-597252

Not for the first time, paddyann54 jumps in with both Anglophobic feet, and gets the facts wrong: this time about a ban on the wearing of tartan and the speaking of Gaelic. Casdon has dealt with the tartan myth. As for Gaelic, it was certainly not specifically banned as a result of the 1707 Act of Union, but had been under pressure from English-speaking southern Scots for some time. For example, in 1616, James VI/I (a Scotsman) introduced a law requiring the establishment of at least one English-speaking school in every parish in Scotland. There was no specific ban on speaking Gaelic, but English was increasingly the language of the Law, commerce and influence.
I was brought up in a Gaelic-speaking community. When English was spoken, it was pretty much Standard English, and we often had great difficulty in understanding the glottal stops, strange expressions and mangled phraseology of our Lowland brethren. I still find it difficult to class 'Scots' as a distinct language; to me it is English with some Scots words, spoken with a Lowland accent.

I've heard of the custom but not the word.

We used to call it "crossing the baby's palm with silver ”

Callistemon21 I’d completely forgotten about the crossing the baby’s palm part of it till you mentioned. My neighbour used to make the sign of the cross on the baby’s hand with the coin before slipping it into the pram.

My poor Mum hated to see her doing it as she thought it unhygienic to be touching a little baby’s hand with money. She used to say later “you never know where that money has been before now”. My Mum was a nurse and during her years in the male surgical ward she saw the same man admitted on 3 occasions. He required a visit to theatre to have a variety of coins removed from his rectum 😳

So her hygiene concerns around cash weren’t entirely unfounded !

Apologies if I’ve lowered the tone of the thread 😆

Words migrate from one language to another. Some came TO English from Gaelic - galore is one (as in the title of that great film "Whisky Galore")

Not of!

Thanks Grandmabatty

I did think it was a valid question and another poster mentioned the same thing.
As does Robert Gordon University.

Callistemon that would make sense as it is predominantly spoken in the North East.

Languages and dialects are fascinating, aren't they.
It's such a pity that many almost died out but good that they're being revived.

I found a Doric dictionary online, written by Robert Gordon of Aberdeen University.

Gaelic!! Blooming predictive text!

Mostly people on this thread have been interested, informative and curious. I think Zakouma your post about Callistemon was disproportionate and unnecessary.
Garlic and Scots have different roots. There are some words in Gaelic which are clearly derived from English in the same way some words in russian are derived from other languages ie Football is exactly the same. Scots is probably spoken in some form by more people than Gaelic is, but tbh I'm guessing as I don't have statistics. Callistemon I would think that people who speak Doric say it is a separate language from Scots.

Thanks Aveline
I'm astonished.

I shall ask my Scottish friends about it.

Yes. What inspired such a nasty response? Quite uncalled for Zakouma