The Scots language - by an English polyglot

Curious about the Scots language - its history and what it's like? As an English polyglot, I wanted to experience learning a language closely related to English. I signed up for a three week course and was pleased to find my friend Richard Simcott was a classmate.

In this video, I take an informative and humourous look at the history of Scots and its relationship to English (they are sisters separated at birth but strongly influencing each other in later life). I then share my favourite bits of the pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar of Scots.

Fellow polyglot, Richard Simcott and I then get together to discuss our experiences of learning Scots, and, in Richard's case, Ladino, Frisian, Scandinavian languages and Bulgarian coming from Macedonian.

I hope this whets your interest in the Scots. If so, make sure to check out the following resources:

Free series of videos by Michael Dempster:

Dictionaries:

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Acknowledgements
Huge thanks to Michael Dempster for sharing his passion for his native language
Thanks to Richard Simcott for a most agreeable blether

Thanks also to Karen Grimmer and Michael Bird of Lowestoft for Aethelfrith's accent

[DaveHuxtableLanguages]

I am thrilled by the positive reaction this has got from Scots speakers and those promoting the language.

[thomasmonaghan]

As a Scot I thought this was a respectful celebration of Scots, it certainly didn't mock the language. There is still a lot of prejudice stopping people using Scots based on the ignorant viewpoint that it's slang English spoken by the uneducated. This video helps tackle that ignorance by showing that Scots is a result of our historic links with our neighbours.

I remember going to Denmark for the first time and being surprised by how much I could understand because I could speak English, Scots and a bit of German (although the words fart and slut were the funniest false friends!). That made me appreciate Scots more and defend its use when I hear people being mocked for speaking it. I've also stopped myself correcting my kids when they use Scots. Instead I help them see when they are speaking Scots and when they are speaking English to make it easy for them to switch between the two in different situations.

It's great to see the growing number of young Scots confidently using Scots on social media and to see my kids are being taugh Scots at school. I just hope BBC Scotland and STV commission more shows like Rebel Tongue to help breakdown the prejudice against the language.

And as for being English, there is nothing more heart warming than seeing my English friends and colleagues who choose to live in Scotland start using Scots words. It's a welcome sign that they are part of our community.

What I don't like is when people tell us we speak slang English and need to learn to speak properly. That is incredibly ignorant, condescending and frustrating.

[TalahmDubh]

Hi Dave, catching this late but as a native Scots speaker and Gaelic learner this is one of the few respectful and well-informed videos out there on Scots.

One thing I think you didn't perhaps mention is the relationship between the ability to code-switch and class/education. My family and friends in Ayrshire are all Scots speakers and it was my only language at home, when socialising, and at school. Of my friends from home I was the only one who went to university, and I am much more confident speaking Scottish English and have been exposed to English speakers from all over the world for much of my life. If you are from a working class background and live outside of the cities, particularly in towns and rural areas with very little inward migration you may NEVER hear English or even Scottish English apart from in the media. I have friends who really can't speak Scottish English, and feel very awkward in social situations with non-scots. They also can't really write in english, and suffered badly in exams as a result.

I would also note there are really big grammar differences (which I am not sure either of you quite got) but these are more pronounced in the west, where there is a strong influence from Irish and Scots, particularly in places like North Ayrshire and Glasgow itself.

One final point. As you both identified, you were struggling a bit to make the difference between speaking English with a Scottish accent and speaking Scots. What is VERY interesting is when you meet Scots speakers who are not Scottish and do not have a Scottish accent. You will meet, for example, many poles in Scotland who have been here many years mainly mixing with working class scots, who speak Scots but with a heavy polish accent! I have a French colleague who speaks heavily French-accented Scots, who doesn't really speak standard English particularly well as she got her first 'immersion' in Scotland.

Fantastic video I will share with others.

[eefjegoossen]

I'm a Dutch speaking Belgian with a masters degree in germanic languages (English and Swedish), and I'm so surprised at how many similarities there are between Scots and Dutch! I'd love to learn it someday.

[Raatonlaveur]

"Nobody's language is wrong."
I am thrilled to learn about Scots and other languages that people actually keep using around Great Britain, languages that survive! I'm from Montréal, and we have a similar issue with our own language (our kind of French) being washed away.
Alba gu bràth! Vive le Québec libre!

[snaggy]

I remember when my wife and I took a trip to Scotland, and I struck up a conversation with the woman sitting next to us on the bus. She spoke Scots, and I spoke Canadian English. I had a little difficulty talking with her at first. By the end of the bus ride we were having a full two-way conversation about our families. My wife was lost in the conversation, and she swore she couldn't understand either of us because my accent and grammar started to change. I figured it's because my mom's family was from Holland, speaking Dutch and West Frisian. My grandparents had rather poor English, so I learned how to pick out the important bits first, and kind of roll with it from there. I didn't learn Dutch, but I learned adaptation.

[gnomadD_]

I'm from Lagos Nigeria and lived in the East End of Glasgow for about a year in the early 00's when I was much younger and I'm pleased to report that Scots appears to be very much alive and is being spoken by many young Glaswegians, apparently as a first language. It took a few months to understand and communicate in what I'm now discovering was actually the Scot's language.

Words like greet for crying or messages for the shopping bring back some good memories 😊of when we would all go doon the toon for a few bevies wae ma pals. But we had tae make sure we didnae get too steamin so we wouldnae get any trouble fae tha polis.

And to anyone fae Glesga reading this comment, auch aye the noo mucker!

[callummcluskie]

I’m a native speaker of Scots and can definitely echo the sentiment that I was told that the way I spoke was ‘wrong’ and ‘incorrect’ all throughout school. I still get told it in all honesty. I didn’t even know that it was a language until a few years back and that I’m actually bilingual, was always told I just spoke slang and corrupted English. Its frankly amazing how the language has survived as long as it has considering the attempts to suppress and remove it from children’s vocabulary by supposed educators. Its not as much of a concerted ‘top down’ suppression the same way Gàidhlig was but still very much an effort there.

Btw you didn’t come off as taking the pish at all! It was a really respectful video on the language and I love that you actually took the time to learn it! I especially love at the end where you say that “no one’s language is wrong” - that really resonated with me. Whether it be Scots, AAVE, Jamaican Patois or any other language that has historically and currently been looked down upon as ‘incorrect’ etc, no one should be made to feel their native tongue is lesser than another’s

[qgdertyuiojh]

I love Richard Simcott's honesty about how he can lose a language after learning it. So he's not playing up his language skills or being arrogant. Good for him!

[lorih]

I'm from WV, but I lived in California for many years. Most of my co-workers thought my manner of speech was odd, but I worked with a Scots doctor who got a kick out of my dialect, because she said it was a mix of American English with Scots, British English and Welsh idioms and words. If we were having a snack we were "piecing". The car "didn't want to start" or door "didn't want to open". If we thought someone was a conman, we said, "He's right canny, he is." or "He'll blow wind up yer skirt". We "never buy a pig in a poke", though we do put our groceries and lunches in one (a bag, that is). Putting up fenceposts was "setting palings". If we were whining about something we were told to "stop your greetin'." We gave shops our custom and asked the proprietor to reckon up the bill. We also said "I reckon" for "I suppose that's right" or "I guess I can" and exclaimed, "Well, I reckon SO!" if we were emphatically agreeing with someone. If something was "a far piece away", we said it was "over yonder". She said some of my word pronunciations are close to Scots vowel sounds. Some patients remarked that they thought I was saying "bane" instead of "bone", for example. I'm not so surprised, as many of the coal miners who settled our state were from the mining regions of Britain, and until TV became more than just 3 channels for the news and diluted both the dialect and the accent we rarely heard people from outside our little hollers. I miss the older peoples' way of speaking. The young folks sound less like Appalachia and more like Hollywood.

[daithimcbuan]

In Norway they grow up watching not only Norwegian TV and films, but also Danish and Swedish. In addition, people speak their own dialects on TV, in films, on the news and in parliament. Dialects in Norway can be as different from each other as RP English and Scots. This makes it a lot easier for them to understand each other and their neighbours, as well as to speak their languages and dialects (though speaking another dialect is generally only done to take the mickey).

[shibolinemress]

As a German speaker I'm fascinated by how much Germanic pronunciation, conjugation and orthography Scots has preserved. For instance, I felt right at home with the "ü", the strong verbs and gutteral "ch" sounds that many native English speakers find challenging.

[vickypedias]

As a Bulgarian living in the UK I'm just sitting here enjoying these two banter about in Scots English and then all of the sudden one of them state, Yeah Macedonian my home language, which is also why I know Bulgarian, just blew my mind from surprise and delight. What an excellent channel and video, thanks so much!

[qcvirbk]

I know I'm only one voice among many but my experience is a mixed experience. Growing up in Ayrshire with a kind old neighbour who taught me Scots meant that in my head, I didn't consider it another language or dialect, just alternative words that some people knew and used, and the way you had to speak in Burns' poems. Growing up and learning the "correct" way to speak in school seemed a benign progression but as I grow and learn more, I realise it was unintended assimilation and destruction of a culture.

Watching this video gave me goosebumps, as it felt like I suddenly discovered I could speak half of a dying language. Some of the words seemed a bit too different, but most of it was second nature. I love to teach foreigners especially at uni "Scot's slang words", but now I feel more of a drive to preserve rather than "here's a quirky thing I know from my childhood". It's especially strange for me as being born in India, I already had that internal struggle with my mother tongue, Telugu but now I feel the same with Scots.

Sorry for the mini essay but thank you so much for reigniting that flame in me, it was wonderful to hear others speak the echoes of my childhood.

[grendel_nz]

This is wonderful as a Scots speaker and learner from 8yo.
Really wish I'd been taught this in my final year at primary school before going to High School where I was exposed to various dialects of Scots. It was confusing. The new words, rather than the grammar etc. Fife is a meeting point of about 4 different Scots dialects. It was very confusing to me!!

First Scots/English dictionary only came out when I was at University! Also, took me years to realise that we spoke English inside school, but we spoke Scots in the playground. My parents were not Scots speakers.

Your Scots was amazingly good. Not cringy. :)

[leucocephala]

So glad to have stumbled upon your channel! I was born and adopted in the Bahamas and raised by a Scottish man married to a Bahamian woman, and I have all sorts of different accents/dialects I code switch into. I've lived in the USA most of my life now as well, in the South and the Northeast and now in the Rocky Mountain West just to confuse things more.

The most difficult situation I've encountered has been when people in the USA find out I was raised in the Bahamas and then ask me about that dialect. I find that if I "do" the dialect they immediately get uncomfortable since they think it sounds Black, and as I'm visibly white I seem to be mocking Black speech, which I'm not - I spoke that way growing up, and I speak that way when I go home! I've been told by people who witness me out of the context that they're used to seeing me in, that with the different speech I seem to be a totally different personality as well. Do you think that a different accent or dialect changes the way you think or act?

[johnmaclean]

A great effort at speaking Scots by both yourself and your guest. There's a huge difference between someone who's put in the hours and effort to fully grasp Scots, and someone who trots out the old and tired one liners that usually include some stereotyping as well. I was born and initially raised in the north west highlands and the difference in spoken English there is massive compared to where I live now in the Central Belt. With Scots Gaelic as a first language to the generation above me, English was taught in a more rigid manner and that is evident as there's little to no deviation from what I'd term full English. On moving to the Central Belt at a young age my accent was seen by many as "posh" by my peers - I would eat breakfast, lunch, and dinner, whereas they'd have breakfast, denner, and tea. Going back to visit relatives in the Highlands and they all say how strange and hard to understand our accents were in the Central Belt. Lots of judgement and/or discrimination from both sides. The language / dialect argument will continue long after we're gone but I liked your description of the difference between the two.

[agdgdgwngo]

I'm not Scottish but the bit when you spoke Scots was amazing. I think we need to de-stigmatise the whole 'putting on an accent' thing. It's hard to properly speak say Spanish or French or German without putting on a bit of an accent. It'd be disrespectful given the history to expect any difference with Scots. It sounded brilliant, just like a Scots speaker except for the odd word.

[ChesterRGC]

These videos are so underrated, this man is a creative machine!

[Cobradabest]

I actually learned a lot about my own language as a native speaker, and the video as a whole was informative and entertaining! I didn't see your attempt at speaking it to be cringy at all and thought it was great to see an English person take an interest in it!