5 ms·

Teen Has Filled the Scots Wikipedia with Thousands of Fake Translations

26 points by sanqui 6y ago

rbanffy 6y ago
This is absolutely hilarious.
mmhsieh 6y ago
oot the hoose w'him!
majewsky 6y ago
Previous discussion (39 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851
im3w1l 6y ago
If the teen behind it was well meaning, then teaching him proper Scots might be worthwhile.
- LandR 6y ago
  > proper Scots I don't think there is such a thing? Scottish people speak English, some use more slang than others, but it's English. This Scottish wikipedia reads like utter nonsense.
  - ska 6y ago
    Tosh, as they say. Scots speak multiple languages and multiple dialects. The Scots language you incorrectly dismiss comes from a linguistic divergence in the 1500s, and has distinct regional dialects (e.g. Doric, with many Danish loan words etc.) Which is separate from Scots Gaelic....
    - senorsmile 6y ago
      Correct. Scottish English is a dialect of english, while the Scots Language is a germanic language that is different enough to have low mutual intelligibility (which means it's a different language and not a dialect... although this distinction doesn't have really clear criteria in Linguistics currently).
  - AndrewDucker 6y ago
    Part of the reason this was spotted is that Scots grammar is not the same as English grammar. Interesting article here on the actual history https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/scots-language https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/scots-language
LandR 6y ago
I tried to read this page https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns, and really struggled. Is it just meant to be regular wikipedia pages but written in some awful slang?
- agency 6y ago
  No, it is not just “some awful slang” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language
- detaro 6y ago
  Why do you expect to be able to read a page in a language/dialect you apparently don't speak? And then take that as a sign that it's not a real thing?!
  - LandR 6y ago
    Well, I'm Scottish, I've been Scottish all my life! Lived in Scotland all my life.. That page is mostly nonsense.
    - detaro 6y ago
      And I'm German and lived here most my life, that doesn't magically mean I speak all the dialects/languages that exist here.
      - soneil 6y ago
        Scots is usually fairly intelligible, at least to the Scottish. Essentially, Scots branches off from middle english in a slightly different direction. But vernacular Scottish - the language you'd expect to hear day to day on the streets - is modern English with borrowings (both in content and grammar) from Scots. And the scale of these borrowings goes a long way to define how "thick" we perceive the various accents as. So this leaves Scots with a few interesting traits. It can be easily mistaken for "just slang", because huge amounts of Scottish slang are near-direct borrowings. And this goes both ways, where the more slang you've been exposed to, the more you can pick out in Scots without actually knowing it. This leaves it being nowhere near as "foreign" as Gaelic, for example. (It also helps that Robert Burns was dragged out annually at school, leaving Scots as least as recognisable as Shakespearean English.) I'm not arguing that the Scottish "just know" Scots by default, or even that half of those who claim to know it, actually do. But there is a lot more exposure to it, or at least parts of it, than many people realise. It does turn out to be surprisingly recognisable (although I will admit, very jarring to see it written).
pixelbath 6y ago
This was posted by another HN reader to the other thread, but I feel it's more relevant on this more sensationalist article. >Honestly, I don't mind if you revert all of my edits, delete my articles, and ban me from the wiki for good. I've already found out that my "contributions" have angered countless people, and to me that's all the devastation I can be given, after years of my thinking I was doing good (and yes, obsessively editing). I was only a 12-year-old kid when I started, and sometimes when you start something young, you can't see that the habit you've developed is unhealthy and unhelpful as you get older. I don't care about defending myself, I only want to stop being harassed on my social medias (and to stop my other friends who have nothing to do with the wiki from being harassed as well). Whether peace can be achieved by scowiki being kept like it is or extensively reformed to wipe my influence from it makes no difference to me now that I know that I've done no good anyway. I can imagine it's quite a punch to the gut to find out an activity you were doing for _years_ was literally the wrong thing, and major news outlets are piling on.
- daveslash 6y ago
  Agreed, thank you for posting. I'd also like to add: I wish this article had been title had used the word "Incorrect" instead of "Fake". I generally attribute things called "Fake" as having had some sort of intentional incorrectness. "Fake" doesn't always imply _malicious_ intent (think "fake houses" for nuclear testing), but it does imply knowing intent. This kid was well intentioned, tried his best, and got it wrong. To me, that's "incorrect", not "fake". [Edit: Spelling]
- jancsika 6y ago
  > I can imagine it's quite a punch to the gut to find out an activity you were doing for _years_ was literally the wrong thing, and major news outlets are piling on. Other than the news outlets, what you are describing is something most people in the arts go through at a similar age. The quality of previous work may not be as literally wrong as it is here, but it can feel just as wrong at the time. The difference is that artists have some semblance of friends and loved ones helping to extend trust to mentors who help guide the artist through that despondency at any stage in their development. For this kid, however, we've replaced mentorship with unregulated digital slot machines of psychological torture that we call social media. That is the gut punch.
sp332 6y ago
The user is https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser:AmaryllisGardener https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser:AmaryllisGardener Since the edits are public I'm not going to consider this doxxing. I'm not going to link any other identities to the username.

26 points by sanqui 6y ago

rbanffy 6y ago

This is absolutely hilarious.

mmhsieh 6y ago

oot the hoose w'him!

majewsky 6y ago

Previous discussion (39 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851

im3w1l 6y ago

If the teen behind it was well meaning, then teaching him proper Scots might be worthwhile.

LandR 6y ago
> proper Scots I don't think there is such a thing? Scottish people speak English, some use more slang than others, but it's English. This Scottish wikipedia reads like utter nonsense.
- ska 6y ago
  Tosh, as they say. Scots speak multiple languages and multiple dialects. The Scots language you incorrectly dismiss comes from a linguistic divergence in the 1500s, and has distinct regional dialects (e.g. Doric, with many Danish loan words etc.) Which is separate from Scots Gaelic....
  - senorsmile 6y ago
    Correct. Scottish English is a dialect of english, while the Scots Language is a germanic language that is different enough to have low mutual intelligibility (which means it's a different language and not a dialect... although this distinction doesn't have really clear criteria in Linguistics currently).
- AndrewDucker 6y ago
  Part of the reason this was spotted is that Scots grammar is not the same as English grammar. Interesting article here on the actual history https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/scots-language https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/scots-language

LandR 6y ago

I tried to read this page https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Burns, and really struggled. Is it just meant to be regular wikipedia pages but written in some awful slang?

agency 6y ago
No, it is not just “some awful slang” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language
detaro 6y ago
Why do you expect to be able to read a page in a language/dialect you apparently don't speak? And then take that as a sign that it's not a real thing?!
- LandR 6y ago
  Well, I'm Scottish, I've been Scottish all my life! Lived in Scotland all my life.. That page is mostly nonsense.
  - detaro 6y ago
    And I'm German and lived here most my life, that doesn't magically mean I speak all the dialects/languages that exist here.
    - soneil 6y ago
      Scots is usually fairly intelligible, at least to the Scottish. Essentially, Scots branches off from middle english in a slightly different direction. But vernacular Scottish - the language you'd expect to hear day to day on the streets - is modern English with borrowings (both in content and grammar) from Scots. And the scale of these borrowings goes a long way to define how "thick" we perceive the various accents as. So this leaves Scots with a few interesting traits. It can be easily mistaken for "just slang", because huge amounts of Scottish slang are near-direct borrowings. And this goes both ways, where the more slang you've been exposed to, the more you can pick out in Scots without actually knowing it. This leaves it being nowhere near as "foreign" as Gaelic, for example. (It also helps that Robert Burns was dragged out annually at school, leaving Scots as least as recognisable as Shakespearean English.) I'm not arguing that the Scottish "just know" Scots by default, or even that half of those who claim to know it, actually do. But there is a lot more exposure to it, or at least parts of it, than many people realise. It does turn out to be surprisingly recognisable (although I will admit, very jarring to see it written).

pixelbath 6y ago

This was posted by another HN reader to the other thread, but I feel it's more relevant on this more sensationalist article. >Honestly, I don't mind if you revert all of my edits, delete my articles, and ban me from the wiki for good. I've already found out that my "contributions" have angered countless people, and to me that's all the devastation I can be given, after years of my thinking I was doing good (and yes, obsessively editing). I was only a 12-year-old kid when I started, and sometimes when you start something young, you can't see that the habit you've developed is unhealthy and unhelpful as you get older. I don't care about defending myself, I only want to stop being harassed on my social medias (and to stop my other friends who have nothing to do with the wiki from being harassed as well). Whether peace can be achieved by scowiki being kept like it is or extensively reformed to wipe my influence from it makes no difference to me now that I know that I've done no good anyway. I can imagine it's quite a punch to the gut to find out an activity you were doing for _years_ was literally the wrong thing, and major news outlets are piling on.

daveslash 6y ago
Agreed, thank you for posting. I'd also like to add: I wish this article had been title had used the word "Incorrect" instead of "Fake". I generally attribute things called "Fake" as having had some sort of intentional incorrectness. "Fake" doesn't always imply _malicious_ intent (think "fake houses" for nuclear testing), but it does imply knowing intent. This kid was well intentioned, tried his best, and got it wrong. To me, that's "incorrect", not "fake". [Edit: Spelling]
jancsika 6y ago
> I can imagine it's quite a punch to the gut to find out an activity you were doing for _years_ was literally the wrong thing, and major news outlets are piling on. Other than the news outlets, what you are describing is something most people in the arts go through at a similar age. The quality of previous work may not be as literally wrong as it is here, but it can feel just as wrong at the time. The difference is that artists have some semblance of friends and loved ones helping to extend trust to mentors who help guide the artist through that despondency at any stage in their development. For this kid, however, we've replaced mentorship with unregulated digital slot machines of psychological torture that we call social media. That is the gut punch.

sp332 6y ago

The user is https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser:AmaryllisGardener https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser:AmaryllisGardener Since the edits are public I'm not going to consider this doxxing. I'm not going to link any other identities to the username.