Scots Wikipaedia

[highlander_Daz]

Its long been said if we cant find someone to fight, we will fight each other .

dialect or language you decide. I have my views if you dont agree, my world wont stop spinning.

[thanmuwa]

Skauwt--

Just ignore the Trolls-In-Training and eventually they'll slink back to their wee little cave under the bridge...

As for me, I tend to give more weight to the opinion of those actually on the ground, then those merely looking at "maps".

Cheers, Mr. Chisholm, CHEERS!

Paisley (where I live) is in the Central Belt (or Central Lowlands), about 6 miles south-west from Glasgow City centre. Just in case you need that spelt out, it means I am "actually on the ground". How long did you claim you lived in Scotland? And you don't seem to have heard of Scotland's biggest town? Wierd

I disagreed with you when you made controversial comments. That makes me a troll? When I joined this board someone clearly forgot to send me a list of the people I am not allowed to disagree with. Could you include it in whatever response you make? Thanks.

And skauwt, when (if) you can present a single shred of convincing evidence that the Central Belt is not considered Lowlands, I will admit I am wrong and apologise. Until then I will maintain that you are misinforming people from a position of perceived authority on Scotland (being Scottish and living in Glasgow), intentionally or not.

[Phil]

Funny how these posts invariably descend into personal slanging matches just because of differing opinions. And opinions are what most of this post seems to consist of.
Scots as a language shares a common root, being descended from the Anglo-Saxon family of dialects introduced into the British Isles (although, of course,they weren't called that then) in the early 600's AD. It pervaded Scotland after the Normans quietly took over the place and replaced Gaelic to the east and south of the Highlands where it became the generally spoken language by the 1300's. There gradually developed two distinct dialects of this language, Scots and English which were linguistically similar but not identical. To say, therefore, that Scots is just English spoken with a Scottish accent has no basis in fact. To say they share a common root and then diverged over the last 1000+ years is the actual truth.
Perhaps what some contributors are really intending to say, however, is that Scots, as it exists today, is not a full-blown language in its own right any more. Many Scots nowadays have not grown up exposed to the language being spoken by parents, grandparents and their peers and have no knowledge of it as a result. I know there are many others who did have this upbringing but even here their Scots language principally consists of the words interspersed with modern English.
Sadly our modern society, influenced strongly by the media as it is, is becoming more and more linguistically "mid-atlantic" and less interested in the language of its forebears. While this is probably inevitable, it is a shame if words with such rich associations as "slarry", "slitter", "dichtie", "doitit", "glaur", "trauchle", "hurl", "breenge", "snell", "gomerel", "plowter" and so many others disappear through lack of use and disinterest.

[MacMillan of Rathdown]

Well said, Phil.

[RB51]

Being a relative neophyte in Scottish history, and knowing very little of the linguistic differences discussed here, this thread has been most informative. The occaisonal slides into inter-personal poking notwithstanding, I think I have a better grasp on some of the challenges of our shared history than before, and I thank ALL of you for helping me learn something today.

Laurie

[blackbeard]

I don't want to beat a dead horse so I'll just give a couple of links to anyone interested in the Scots Language.
http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/index.html

This is the Dictionary of the Scots Language. Of particular interest are the “SND Introduction” and the “History of Scots to 1700”, which includes a tree of the Indo-European languages.
-------------------------------
Also

http://www.scotsindependent.org/feat...s/complete.htm

and
http://www.scotsindependent.org/feat...ts/poetry1.htm

These have audio files of poetry spoken in Scots, including some by Robert Burns.

[The Thing]

According to Kevin Meyers in today's Irish Independent 23% of Irish school leavers are functionally illiterate. The forced feeding (and that's what it is) of the Irish language is considered to be a major factor in this failure of the educational system. Far better, it would seem to me, if those five weekly hours of Irish were replaced with teaching basic reading, writing, and math skills.

Students attending all-Irish schools are further disenfranchised by the fact that many of their text books are in English, whilst the lectures are delivered in Irish. That school leavers from Gaelic schools receive a lesser education is proved by the fact that they are given a 10% "bonus" on their leaving certificate scores for taking the examination in the Irish language in order to assist them in qualifing for placement in Irish universities.

Well since Ireland has the second highest amount of 3rd level graduates in Europe, I don't think our education system is doing too bad, as for the teaching of Irish, would you have us stop the teaching of English as it is also the national language of this country. Trying to preserve the culture and language of a people should be highly encourgaed by the national government. Take the Irish Whiskey industry for example from being the world's premier Whiskey to almost dying off, this was a massive part of Irish culture and the Irish Government almost managed to kill it off. I hope the language doesn't go the same way.

[Paul]

That's fun... but how many people actually speak Scots?

me! me!

[gilmore]

That's fun... but how many people actually speak Scots?

Not nearly enough