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I'm Scottish. There is a resurgence of Scots in the cities (I'm in Glasgow) but it's a bit hipster. Even most central belt (Glasgow or Edinburgh) Scots think it
by binbag 8y ago
I'm Scottish. There is a resurgence of Scots in the cities (I'm in Glasgow) but it's a bit hipster. Even most central belt (Glasgow or Edinburgh) Scots think it's a little bit of a joke language. So this is article is interesting even for us.
History has done a good and subtle job of ensuring Scots is thought of as a dialect of the poor - a lesser form of English.
The interesting thing here is the fact that Scots is clearly Germanic - the resemblance is uncanny.
In the cities they have started putting Gaelic place names underneath the English place names on railway station signs etc. Maybe it would have been more appropriate to put Scots versions there, since Gaelic was (and still is) the language of the North and not the lowland cities?
- netcan 8y ago"History has done a good and subtle job of ensuring Scots is thought of as a dialect of the poor - a lesser form of English." Related processes happened all over western europe. Before radio & conscription, regional english dialects ranged from thick to "can't be understood one county over." There was a conscious effort to unify the language under the official dialect, king's english. Something similar was happening in Flanders, Netherlands right up until recently... Dialects were discouraged in schools and speaking in dialect became associated with a lack of schooling.
- binbag 8y agoAnd kids in Glasgow schools were thwacked across the head if they spoke in Scots.
- m-i-l 8y agoPutting Gaelic on the recently introduced Borders Railway signs did strike me as a slightly odd decision given lowland Scotland has zero historical connection with the Gaelic language. It almost comes across as a form of cultural imperialism.
- binbag 8y agoYes, absolutely.