[m-i-l]

> Scotland and Ireland are intimately linked by a common language (Gaelic)

Just on parts of the west coast of Scotland - much of mainland Scotland spoke the Scots language, with the (now dead) Norn language spoken in the northern areas (with Norse heritage), and other languages in the border areas. The promotion of Scottish Gaelic as a "national language" is very much modern-day myth-building.

[netcan]

Scots is an English dialect, descended from Northumbrian English.

The dialect is arguably alive in some locales, including some places northern Ireland.

To me, the dividing line is code switch. There are rural pubs and such where people will noticeably switch to standard English when speaking to non-locals.

Ulster Scots, it is sometimes called.

Hard to draw distinct lines, especially since the "standard" English near Scots speaking locales is not very standard. Glasgow, Newry and whatnot have pretty quirky "standard" English.

That said, an average person from Newry won't code switch. If you can't understand the accent, they'll just speak loader, slower and more directly at your forehead.

To me that makes it "not a dialect."

[arethuza]

I'm originally from a small fishing village in north-east Scotland and used to speak a very broad dialect called Doric (loons, quines etc.) I'm pretty sure this is fairly different from the "Ulster Scots" you mention.

What was interesting is that people from a farming background had a very different accent to folks from the coastal fringe - even though they might only be living a couple of kms away!

[m-i-l]

I'm originally from Shetland, but moved to the Scottish Borders when I was young, and do remember people had a very hard time understanding my Shetland dialect (which I had to lose pretty quickly to communicate locally).

And to the original point, neither Shetland nor the Scottish Borders have ever had any Gaelic influence at any point in their history, and recent attempts to claim otherwise tend not to go down too well with the locals.

[com]

I had understood that there was some kind of Brythonic language attested in the Scottish Borders.

Cumbric? At least until the victory of Anglo-Saxon languages there three or four centuries after the Roman withdrawal.

So yeah, not quite (modern) Scots Gaelic but part of the same family of languages. And not at all recently, but potentially hundreds and hundreds of years of language contact in domestic and community use in some parts, as early Scots was first forming out of a continuum of Northumbrian English dialects.

[netcan]

The problem is the extremely sparse written record.

It's basically "pre-history" in terms of academic discipline, until the high medieval. There just aren't historical/written sources.

What is known comes from third party accounts and relates more to current political happenings than language, history and whatnot.

A Saxon scribe describing the politics of Scotland with 3 sentences of Latin doesn't tell you much about Scottish peasantry.

Even into the early modern, it's pretty hard to know what's happening with spoken dialects.

We know Romans used "Scot" referring to Gaelic speakers, the language spoken throughout Ireland.

We know that 1000 years later Constantine, the product of Pict-Scot marriage declares a united kingdom of Scotland. We know that proto-english, danish, Gaelic and (presumably) Pictish were spoken. What writing exists is usually in Latin.

That said... who knows. The academic "best guess" is not necessarily a good guess.

So yes... Pictish might be closely related to Welsh. It might have been a totally unrelated language. It might not be a language at all.

Also there's a lot of baggage. Ideas from shaky 18th century sociology might be crucial to modern identity.

The idea of Scotland as a uniform "Gaelic kingdom" is a highly political one today.

[netcan]

That's a very interesting point.

We tend to think genealogically about these things. I said "Scots is descended from northumbrian" and that Ulster Scots is spoken in NI. But irl... dialects are porous. They don't really "descend."

In any case, I believe that most of the language influence is from the borderlands and the glasgow area. That said, 400 years is a long time... especially considering how young English is.

[arethuza]

An interesting example is "weans" vs "bairns" for children... first time I heard the former I had no idea what people were talking about. "Weans" seems to be a shortened form of "wee ains" and "bairns" is from Old English:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bairn

[amenhotep]

She's turned the weans against you mate aye?

[ahazred8ta]

"Dialeck? Why, we ain't got no dialeck, but if'n ya go daown th' road 'bout tin mile..."

[tomxor]

> Scots is an English dialect, descended from Northumbrian English.

Not being familiar with that term I looked it up [0] and was surprised by how familiar much of the vocabulary sounds to me, and i'm from south west England... I recognize a number of these words from my childhood (although not so much these days), and many others feel more like an natural accent transformation of a standard english word (although I suppose that might not be the etymology). Admittedly a good chunk of them are completely alien to "standard english" and whether you recognize them or not is more to do with exposure.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northumbrian_dialect#Vocabular...

[globular-toast]

I don't recognise most of them, just a few. Banter is now heard in the south. My mum says mollycoddle (perhaps it's widely known like banter?) Interestingly, when I lived in Suffolk in the early 2000s people said chud for chewing gum. I found that one funny and thought it was just some slang the kids made up.

[kjellsbells]

deeks - "look" as in "Gie’s a deeks / Gimme a look" caught my eye.

In East London my parents' generation sometimes said "gissa dekko" aka "give us a dekko" aka "give us a look" - but the dekko there came from Hindi, "dekho" (देखो) meaning a casual look or a look-see.

[ahazred8ta]

When my elderly neighbor came down from Quebec as a young factory worker, her roommate asked her "Wudjagunnadoodamarra?", and it took quite a while to get her to say "What are you going to do tomorrow?" We got "shell out" from belts of wampum, and woodchuck from Algonquin indian 'wuchak'.

[loveangus]

Yeah, Ulster Scots is still somewhat common in the most isolated and rural areas of Northern Ireland, almost exclusively spoken by farmers - who aren't, unsurprisingly, frequent users of the internet.

This is how some US teenager, who didn't speak a lick of the dialect, ended up being the lead contributor to the Scots Wikipedia:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-...

According to my father, who's an Ulsterman, back in the 70s and 80s you would still find job advertisements written in Scots, as supposedly it was a legal requirement to write in both English and Scots - similar to Quebec with English and French. Although most of the time these postings would be complete gibberish as no one who lived in Belfast understood Scots at all.

[nmeofthestate]

It depends how far back you go. Gaelic was spoken across the country, not just on the west coast. Nowadays it's been more or less eradicated, except from the Western Isles (where it's not that widely spoken - English is the main spoken language). And it's increasingly become a political football so you see untrue statements made about its history.

[Affric]

Do you have a source for Gaelic being spoken in places like Berwickshire?

My understanding from School of was that it went straight from the Brythonic to the Germanic.

[olddustytrail]

No, Scottish Gaelic was the main language at the time of Scotland emerging as a nation and for a couple of centuries afterwards.

The demotion of the Scottish Gaelic language is ignorant assertion. Stop listening to it and educate yourself.

[Affric]

Gaelic on signs in the eastern borders and Midlothian are my favourite .

[bloqs]

This is entirely factually incorrect I'm afraid, Scots is essentially accented English

[smcl]

Dinna ken fit yir spickin aboot

[Qwertious]

Languages having discrete barriers is a more-or-less modern concept. If you go back in time, basically every town will have a slightly different accent then their neighbor, but if you travel through enough towns eventually you'll find the language completely unintelligible. Like a spatial ship-of-theseus.

[olddustytrail]

This is entirely factually incorrect I'm afraid, English is essentially accented Scots.

[arethuza]

Far are ye fae?