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This is a terribly common problem with threatened languages. The vast, vast majority of Scots speakers also have native English. And for the vast, vast majorit

by soneil 6y ago

This is a terribly common problem with threatened languages. The vast, vast majority of Scots speakers also have native English. And for the vast, vast majority of topics, the English wiki article is going to be much more informative. Of course this becomes circular and self-reinforcing. The really terrifying thought is of someone trying to preserve these languages - or in the future, studying dead languages - and finding this as the most accessible corpus. Imagine if the Rosetta Stone was merely an artists impression of dead languages.

wink 6y ago
I don't know Scots and how it is "officially" defined but when I look at the Bavarian Wikipedia https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn (and I know this is a dialect and not a proper language, despite actual grammatical differences) I can't stand it. I'm a native speaker but the regional differences between the several parts of Bavaria and Austria just make the phonetic spelling totally weird. Different parts use completely different vocals in the same word, so I'm not even sure why this would be in the same language wikipedia.
- umanwizard 6y ago
  > this is a dialect and not a proper language This is a scientifically meaningless claim. There's no real distinction between a "dialect" and a "language".
  - danans 6y ago
    There is an old linguistics joke: Q: What is the difference between a language and a dialect? A: A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
    - wink 6y ago
      Well ok, but you're both strengthening my point and not weakening it. I do think though that languages usually are somehow formalized and that's where you can say "it's written like this even though dialect speakers pronounce it differently", whereas the language wikipedia I quoted has some "somewhat accepted by some percentage" version of how it's pronounced which doesn't even apply to 50% of the people speaking it.

by soneil 6y ago

wink 6y ago

I don't know Scots and how it is "officially" defined but when I look at the Bavarian Wikipedia https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn https://bar.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoamseitn (and I know this is a dialect and not a proper language, despite actual grammatical differences) I can't stand it. I'm a native speaker but the regional differences between the several parts of Bavaria and Austria just make the phonetic spelling totally weird. Different parts use completely different vocals in the same word, so I'm not even sure why this would be in the same language wikipedia.

umanwizard 6y ago
> this is a dialect and not a proper language This is a scientifically meaningless claim. There's no real distinction between a "dialect" and a "language".
- danans 6y ago
  There is an old linguistics joke: Q: What is the difference between a language and a dialect? A: A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.
  - wink 6y ago
    Well ok, but you're both strengthening my point and not weakening it. I do think though that languages usually are somehow formalized and that's where you can say "it's written like this even though dialect speakers pronounce it differently", whereas the language wikipedia I quoted has some "somewhat accepted by some percentage" version of how it's pronounced which doesn't even apply to 50% of the people speaking it.