The Scots Language

[@RadioactivFly]

Wow.. interesting how sometimes it sounds like he's just speaking English with a Scottish accent and sometimes I can barely understand any of it.

[@ihsiin]

Not really, the point at which Scots 'branched off' was Early Modern English (roughly 16th/17th Century). As a Southern English speaker I can understand (though with difficulty) pretty much all of this video. Had it branched off during the Old English period it would be completely incomprehensible. Scots is a thoroughly post-Norman English tongue.

[@MacSalterson]

Middle English, to be precise.

[@michaelbrostek5008]

ajhare2 I naturally speak with a pretty heavy Appalachian accent, and I can understand everything. Makes sense, most people from Appalachia are descended from Scots-Irish that went up into the mountains and just stayed there.

[@plznerf9953]

Ian Pomfret there's two varieties of Middle English- Scots, and Modern English

[@cleokatra]

From the South also, very little I can't at least figure out

[@krim7]

Xidnaf sent me here. He was totally right that this experience with partial intelligibility is not something we, as English speakers, encounter much. This was a wonderful experience.

[@hiiamacat8605]

yeah it feels so weird

[@willmcpherson2]

Shetlandic is also very interesting to hear for English speakers kzbin.info/www/bejne/o2GoqKSreJuqeLc

[@SofiaBerruxSubs]

It is a dialect tho

[@ceucanis]

I kept having to stop because I couldn’t catch his meaning. I had such a bad headache after about 10 min. New found respect for those who have to speak to others in a different dialect more often then I.

[@nozrep]

agreed!

[@michyoung77]

This is so weird! I can understand 80% of he's saying, but there are times when I'm totally lost and have no idea what he's saying. Definitely a great example Xidnaf!

[@bloodaxe5028]

Can you figure out this sentence ? :- A'm weenen o coffen a brod.

[@oscarj0231]

Sardar jaiveer singh sidhu I would guess 'I am wheezing and coughing a lot'

[@rexultimatum2588]

Scots is not a Language. It is a mere dialect of English. Scots is a descendant of the Old English Language that was spoken in the Lowlands of Scotland. (p.s.) Scottish People don't, especially Lowlanders, like to hear and be told, that Scots is a dialect of Old English, as it only confronts them, that in truth the majority of Scottish People are ethnicially English Anglo-Saxon as was their ancestors that inhabited the Lowlands.... The overwhelming majority of Scottish People are not Celtic, like everyone seems to think and portray them as such.

[@bloodaxe5028]

Ozwaldo 264 hahaha :D . No, It means, I'm thinking of buying a table.

[@bloodaxe5028]

January January Old English don't exist anymore and thus Scots can be called a language since it's not very intelligible with modern English.

[@DJJablonsky]

So this is how spaniards feel when they hear someone talking in portugese

[@donaldtrumplover2254]

Idk to me it’s about 80% mutually intelligible so I feel like a better comparison would be someone speaking bad Italian to a Spanish speaker

[@thevis5465]

@@donaldtrumplover2254 Wtf? It's very simple for anyone with a brain to understand, it's at least 99% intelligible to English speakers. It's a fuckin dialect, you yank fuck.

[@donaldtrumplover2254]

@@thevis5465 lmao no there are a good amount of words that have barely any resemblance the common English version. In fact a good amount of linguists think it’s a separate language as it started to evolve away around 800 years ago.

[@thevis5465]

@@donaldtrumplover2254 I'm from Scotland, thats utter fucking bullshit.

[@baconstrip7762]

@@thevis5465 Obviously a Scottish person like yourself would think this is "99% intelligible". I understood about 70-80% of it.

[@WonderfulAkari]

It's like when you are tired but only half-paying attention.

[@zacklamotte6067]

I was tired while listening to this, so I understood it perfectly

[@EmdrGreg]

I came here from one of Xidnaf's videos. Absolutely wonderful. Some of it is so crystal clear in meaning, and some of it is so tantalizingly hidden. Even the stuff that's hard or impossible to understand I want to think of as: 'could you just say that again? I'm sure I can get it if...' Language is wonderful. Thank you, Doctor Horsbroch.

[@Edkins460]

+Greg Scott It really is a fascinating language, as a Scot myself I must say it's lamentable, that many people here view Scots as sort of, inferior to English, and a language suitable only for comedy and day-to-day speech.

[@EmdrGreg]

***** Agreed. I hope it is not indelicate to say this: Not long ago (in the grand scheme of things at least) English itself in an earlier form was considered inappropriate for use at court. What argument do speakers of English have to consider any British tongue to be inferior to any other? If this is offensive to anyone it is because of my complete ignorance and I will humbly take correction.

[@Edkins460]

No no, I completely agree.

[@timothyfreeman97]

+Greg Scott not long ago? How long ago? Please do elaborate the history of this. I find it most intriguing. What was the then tongue most appropriate for court? Was it old French? Or latin, perhaps? Do tell, my good sir.

[@EmdrGreg]

+Timothy Freeman Timothy, I'm no expert, but I do know that the language at court was French as late as the reign of James VI and I. I don't think that Latin was ever the court language, although many at court were fluent in it. It is said that Elizabeth I was particularly skillful at Latin translation. Way before James English was considered somewhat back-water, since it is, as you may know, a creolized language. It was a creative amalgam of several different languages including Danish, German, Latin, French and other languages that were common throughout what is now the British isles. I think it is the very creolized qualities of English that have made it the durable, flexible and important language that it is today.

[@LangKuoch]

This was lovely. As a native English speaker who was always curious about mutual intelligibility between languages, it was amazing to experience some partial intelligibility with the Scots language! :)

[@drrd4127]

I am from Scotland, I can understand him perfectly word for word so I don't understand how that feels but I want to. (Scots version of what I just said above: a'm fae Scotlans, a kin un'nerstaun th' lad perfectly wurd fur wurd sae a dinnae un'nerstaun hoo yon feels bit awaint tae.)

[@gamespotlive3673]

@@drrd4127 Perhaps listen to swedish or dutch. That might give something similiar.

[@moko561]

@Arstozkan M.O.I border inspector. I'm from southern USA and my parents are from Pennsylvania so I could barely understand most parts but it felt great since I know how partial mutual intelligibility feels like

[@A.Steptoe]

@@drrd4127 I know there are native americans, can we class picts as native scots?

[@martinfrostnas6610]

@@gamespotlive3673 Hardly! Though for me as a Swede, standard Norwegian is a good comparison

[@EsKakktuzz]

Very bizarre to think a language could be so different but at the same time so similar to standard modern English

[@EsKakktuzz]

+The L33T PenguinFTW I believe in Xidnaf's video he actually says this is a language not a dialect. I thought dialect was the way in which people spoke as opposed the actual usage of words?

[@EsKakktuzz]

+The L33T PenguinFTW ahh right I see

[@meloncooler1252]

+The L33T PenguinFTW Its a different language than English, a lot like the differences in Czech and Slovak. In Czech you say "Jak se maš" for "How are you"," and in Slovak it is "ako sa maš." The two are very similar, but also different. Much like English and Scots.

[@meloncooler1252]

The L33T PenguinFTW Yeah, I'm pretty good at understanding different accents, but there were still a quite a few different words. An example would be the words for language and dialect beings leeds and bay-leeds (I believe, I'm not 100% sure about that).

[@meloncooler1252]

The L33T PenguinFTW Yeah, I've had a little problem with that as well, but I usually figure out that its a place afterwards (although some I still don't know about).

[@UncleFeedle]

My old grandfather used to say all sorts of stuff in Scots. As a child, I just thought of it as some kind of slang or accent. It's only years later that I learned this was actually a language. This has given me a completely new appreciation of it. I can understand some 80% of spoken Scots and it's amazing to me that I never actually realized this, because I didn't recognize it for what it was.

[@blackstarr5]

My grandmother immigrated fr Scotland in her early 20's. She could speak "braid Scots", but they weren't allowed to, as children in school. It was seen as "less than". Like a language that uneducated, ignorant, poor peasants spoke. 😥

[@sophiabreidfischer6242]

Yes, exactly, My fam came ages ago but little bits I thought were just cute or their personality I now realise actually are a valid tognue

[@louiserocks1]

It's cool how he says the gh in words like eight/might/brought

[@realistdm4749]

It is a very conservative pronunciation. That sound has been lost in English, though it is still written in many words: daughter, brought, eight, etc.

[@zyrohnmng]

'gh' used to be very similar to how 'ch' is used in German today.

[@JimBeansSaloonCream]

Nena Vaskina that's just a west coast Scottish dialect

[@jjrneptune]

I think that’s yough, a letter that was in English but is no longer in our dialect

[@lemardeyoutubegod125]

James Rawson it is a sound not letter like how we have the th sounds but no Th letters for each and how we have many vowels sounds but only 5 vowel letters.

[@misterrioter3575]

Oh god when he said "Firstly, what is Scots?" I heard, "Firstly, we're escorts," Jesus

[@eveningdim7167]

Mister Rioter He looks like he could be one.

[@sweiland75]

This isn't about your Mother.

[@heronimousbrapson863]

Mister Rioter A source of much misunderstanding.

[@qutaibaabumatar6015]

@YLR Entertainment .> huh? lol wut I have no idea what you're on about lol hahaha

[@thanos5497]

Wow you’re so funny

[@Pining_for_the_fjords]

Now I know what Norwegians hear when they listen to Danish.

[@lil_weasel219]

@FichDichInDemArsch Its not. As Bokmal (most used) is actually Danish (East Scandinavian), while Nynorsk is actual Norwegian (West Scandinavian)

[@lil_weasel219]

@FichDichInDemArsch Well lets just take a look again at the OP's post lol. "What Norwegians hear when someone speaks Danish".....when almost all used Norwegian IS DANISH (Bokmal)🤣. Dont you foken get it smh

[@wesmont87]

Danish is intelligible to native Norwegian speakers, however these two languages are not mutually intelligibile -- it's one-way. Maybe that's the cause of the confusion?

[@thane_snipes]

@@lil_weasel219 Norwegian Bokmål isn't Danish though. Especially the spoken varieties are rather different.

[@lil_weasel219]

@@thane_snipes Its a variant of Danish. Its not standard Danish, but guess what, Its still freaking Danish.

[@askarturebekov709]

His "eight" sounds like "echt" or "acht" just like other germanic languages!

[@markenangel1813]

that's him pronouncing the "gh," the [x] sound is what gh was originally pronounced as.

[@mightyxt]

He is speaking Scots.

[@Isochest]

Yes I agree. I am a native of Manchester England.

[@BoraCM]

Early Modern English dropped this sound entirely, and both are derived from proto-germanic.

[@Lithoxene]

English "right" and German "Recht" used to be pronounced very similarly

[@Olentzaro]

It is nice to hear Scots spoken of in the Scots language itself.

[@rogerwilco2]

Xidnaf sent me here. Being Dutch myself I have an interest in the various Germanic languages. This is an interesting data point. It reminds me a bit of Afrikaans from South Africa.

[@lybreix]

Same

[@31415equalspi]

Goeiedag. Hoe gaan dit met jou?

[@VoidUnderTheSun]

As a South African, it doesn't really sound like Afrikaans at all...

[@brainandforce]

UnderTheSun But to me, an English monoglot with zero exposure to Afrikaans or Scots previously, they do sound similar.

[@cedricdesaint-rome9965]

Brain&Force i'm Canadian although i know a bit of Dutch, i feel like Scots could easily be the result if you somehow merged Dutch and English (although Scots lacks the "ui" sound found in Dutch, like in the word "thuis", and it also doesn't have as much of the "g" or "r" like in the word "graag" or "grappig"). if Scots had more of this sound, someone who has heard a bit of Dutch before could probably mistake Scots for some dialect of Dutch. and xidnaf sent me here too haha

[@larryf2821]

The difference between a language and a dialect is a political one, not a linguistic one. Serbian, Croatian and Bosnian were once considered one language, now they are three. The Chinese "dialects" are not mutually intelligible.

[@sirwootalot]

***** Outside of Serbia and Croatia, that's the academic standard, since they are *completely* identical. However, Croatia has two other unique languages which are *not* recognized as "Croatian" - Kajkavian and Chakavian. As an outsider, it's one of the most intensely confusing things in the world - why pretend a language that isn't unique is, then go on to suppress your truly unique native languages?

[@dertoaster696]

sirwootalot haha you're right, i am croatian but it's really hard to understand kajkavian

[@Rolando_Cueva]

The German "dialects" are not mutually intelligible either hahaha.

[@jsrodman]

@Strava 89 Perhaps, though I know multiple people born in what was Yugoslavia who feel they are the same language, and that the choice of different scripts is "artificial" and "political". I don't have a dog in the discussion, and recognize that languages have many potential points at which divergence can begin. As to Larry F's point, there dialect, to a linguist definitely means something different from language, and this distinction is definitely not political. For the example of Chinese "dialects", we're just using the wrong term from a linguistic perspective, but it's the common-usage term regardless in that case. They are, from a linguistic perspective, independent languages with a lot of overlap in their script. But since language overlaps heavily with political and cultural identities, the terms used often do become politically charged. So the choice of what to use outside a linguistic context can be more political than anything else.

[@ido9988]

@Strava 89 The difference is still rather small, even minute, when compared with other languages around the world. The divergence between the different Sinitic languages is usually compared to the Romance tongues (languages descended from Latin, like France, Catalan, Italian, Castilian, Portuguese, et cetera). A Mandarin speaker could bearly understand Cantonese at all, yet most people consider all of them speakers of Chinese. Linguists generally consider Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Montenegrin different standards of the same language, usually called Serbo-Croatian. Similarly to the situation in India and Pakistan, where both Hindu (the national tongue of India) and Urdu (that of Pakistan) are actually the same language - Hindustani, the only reason the standards of Serbo-Croatian are considered different languages by their speakers is political in nature. That situation is not uncommon, by the way. Speakers of Swedish and Norwegian can understand 90% of each other's tongue. Czechoslovakian is much the same, too.

[@jarrettwattenburger1272]

Came for the Scots. Stayed for the history. And the Scots.

[@shibolinemress8913]

I speak American English and German, and could understand about 80% of this on first hearing. It feels about the same as when I listen to Yiddish, which is close to German. Quite fascinating!

[@arvinrajmathur378]

I also speak American English and German (also learning Danish) and I could understand almost everything

[@AWSMcube]

Anyone else here from Xidnaf?

[@ericshen6532]

No

[@veroarroyo1]

yes

[@misterrioter3575]

Aye lmao

[@adelineinactivity]

yes

[@JacobFromOmaha]

Yeah, as soon as he linked the vidoe, I was like "'kay, bye." Didn't even finish the Xidnaf video. Always been fascinated by Scots, and really enjoy listening to it. Would love to learn it someday.

[@brerbunny]

I found this very interesting. I'm from South England but I ken what he's saying. I love these separate languages, it's what makes visiting different countries and regions so fascinating. Long may these old languages live on!

[@Foxxx-01]

"aboot"

[@ExplosiveBrohoof]

echteen seventies.

[@roryahconnolly]

"echt"

[@jonasbrm]

lexxypexxy bay-leads

[@BrokVoekler]

jonasbrm Ken Incase you are wondering, it means KNOW, not can.

[@Megacooltommydee]

lexxypexxy Are you from Canada, eh?

[@mandypandy111ify]

Wow...I never knew that language that was so similar to English existed. It's weird how I understood MOST of it, but some parts I couldn't. It sounds like English with rolled Rs and random, short unintelligible blips.

[@satibel]

+Vriska Serket that's the opposite of for example, German or French where you get a few bits but that's cooler because we're not exposed to that a lot. But if you lived in some parts of Africa or China, you would get this often, so you probably wouldn't pay a lot of attention if you weren't interested in the subject.

[@mandypandy111ify]

manaquri That is true. A lot of languages are mutually intelligable, such as Spanish and Italian, German and Dutch, or Finnish and Estonian. If my Native language was one of those, I'd be more used to it. But it isn't. Scots is the only language that's like that with English, and it's not very well-known. So English speakers like me often find it cool to hear a language that's so similar.

[@mandypandy111ify]

manaquri Also, the second closest language to English is German, and they're definitely not mutually intelligable. Although I will say that I can figure out some words in German since it has so many cognates with English.

[@IanMonroe]

+Vriska Serket I think Frisian is probably the second closest. Even Dutch is closer than German likely. I mean if you look at a map it makes sense. :)

[@mandypandy111ify]

Ian Monroe I guess it does. And I've never actually heard Frisian being spoken or read it, so I'm not sure what it's like. But you're probably right.

[@ObeyBunny]

Holy shit, this was awesome! I desperately want a graph on how English and Scots words diverge from the same root language. You don't understand how Earth-shakingly useful this is if you're a writer trying to create a family of languages or if you want to do a time-travel subplot justice. Thank you, Doctor Dauvit Horsbroc and Xidnaf! Thank you so much!

[@abacussssss]

They actually diverged from Old English, which is not that long ago.

[@derglotzer167]

+Oliver Daugherty-Long Middle English around the late 14th century.

[@derglotzer167]

t diverged from Middle English as a state language but remained pretty similar to the dialects across Northern England, ie ot remained English but was never the same as the Mercian that replaced the original Saxon dialects of the South East, ie Scots is just the English language as spoken and developed in Scotland.

[@Mr.Nichan]

One thing to consider is interaction. Languages aren't monolithic units, every language is a continuum of dialect; in fact, every individual speaks a little differently. Lects (languages/dialects) borrow from each other more or less depending on how much and what kind of interaction there is between them. What we think of as "languages" can evolve together because changes (in pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, etc.) spread comparitively quickly throughout a population that is like a single speech community. The spread of changes tends to be slower between groups of people who interact less and especially between groups whose languages have lower mutual intelligibility. Old English was a continuum of dialects, which all interacted with Each other. During the Old English period there was some divergence between the Northern and Southern parts of the dialect continuum*. They stayed separate throughout the Middle English period and up to the modern day, but there was always significan interaction and intelligibility between the groups, and changes could spread between them. I believe this meant that it stayed mostly parallel to the other dialects of English thoughout most of the Old English and Middle English periods, but then really started to diverge in the late Middle English period. I'm not really sure why, but it is notable that they were separated by an international border at the time, and had a long history of different foreign influence affecting Northumbrian dialects than Southern dialects. For example, French was losing prestige much earlier in Scotland, about the same time Scots was starting to converge with itself and diverge with southern English. *The word "dialect continuum" usually implies that two or more parts of the continuum are not mutually intelligible; I don't intend any such meaning.

[@TampaZeke]

The way he says "seven" and "seventy" it sounds like a New Zealander or a South African.

[@ct_fox3001]

The way he pronounces daughter is exactly the same in the german bavarian dialect. This is so fascinating. When some north Germans speak exclusively in their dialect, I cannot understand a single word and with me speaking Bavarian, communication is absolutely impossible. But the scots and bavarian pronounciation of daughter is the same lol

[@aswfabt]

Wow that’s weird.

[@VidsMCandMarkus]

This reminds me of videos like "what English sounds like to foreigners"

[@ayem4425]

This is a wonderful video! I'm going to show part of it to my language students here in New York. It's so amazing to hear clearly modern English words interspersed with what sounds like Icelandic or Old English. Also beautifully delivered by the lecturer.

[@Ma1nspr1ng]

Gosh it does sound like icelandic

[@richlisola1]

Scots is its own language, it came from Middle English-It was in that time period when the languages split from one another.

[@janetrizvi6019]

Fit wye is a' the comments in English? Is there nae Scots spikker tae spik up fur oor ain spik? Och I dinna think there's mony spik sich an academic Scotch spik as oor friend the doctor, but mebbe we need mair like him tae gie's back oor pride in oor ancient wyes.

[@ieatcheese9950]

I agree with you. I'm wondering why there aren't alot of Scot speaking people here too. I am still wondering how I understood you seeing as I can only understand English. Our languages really are similar then.

[@k___1604]

I could read that o.0 ^^

[@buzhidao5065]

was that doric?

[@the1exnay]

Are there many native scots speakers in Scotland? Or is it basically dead?

[@the1exnay]

Please Save me Interesting. That's more than i expected, but less than i suspect is necessary for it to survive naturally. But maybe Scottish pride will keep it alive

[@kokofan50]

There times when I feel I understand German better than I do this.

[@Mr.Nichan]

Haben Sie Deutsch studiert?

[@MarcHarder]

Ek ha nigh, oba ek kaun fäl festone

[@lkjkorn19]

I love this! I love how Scots still uses the velar fricative, it sounds so wicked!

[@TheAtlantaVideos]

“Velar fricative” - just what I was thinking

[@wtc5198]

I think it has both the voiced, voiceless and the labiovelar voiceless one. And [w], of course.

[@wtc5198]

@@TheAtlantaVideos it's a kind of sound used in languages (Scots, Scottish Gælic, Russian, Polish, High German, Arabic, Spanish, Mandarin and many more.)

[@DavidFraser007]

Ha ha, I had to google that. But it's normal in Scots (my language), 3 spellings ch, gh and quh. Here in Czech Republic they have words that start with a ch, we don't do that in Scotland.

[@roseyega3296]

I’m from Scotland and find this easier to follow as he mostly talks about places and why the language was influenced from these places and also where it’s spoken.

[@UhtredOfBamburgh]

Its weird that I understood everything as a native English speaker but it really was at the very precipice of crossing the threshold into incomprehension the entire time.

[@persomnus]

listening to Scotts makes my brain fuzz out I can understand enough to feel like I should understand it all but enough is different that I'm totally lost

[@kaitlyn__L]

Thankfully the mutual intelligibility makes it one of the easiest to learn by immersion as an English speaker.

[@Smittel]

This sounds like a weird mix of German English and Dutch

[@alexismoon3070]

you are very right.

[@ThreeRoundBurstMusic]

Der Retro I could be very wrong, but I believe it branched off from English during its Middle English days, and took a LOT more Dutch and German than Latin, for example. Therefore, it is essentially a more Germanic English (similar to the beginning of English).

[@zanderrose]

Its closest relative other than English is Frisian. Those three (English, Scots, and Frisian) form the Anglo-Frisian branch of the West Germanic languages. While English was influenced by Norse, French, and Latin throughout the middle ages, Scots was influenced only a little bit by Norse and barely at all influenced by french and latin. Frisian was influenced by none of these. Scots keeps more original West Germanic words than English but not as many as Frisian. That is why an English speaker can understand maybe 60-70% of Scots and maybe 10-15% of Frisian.

[@b.walters1888]

It's Scots.

[@docbrown68]

Soonds lk hame tae me! :)

[@SupremeLordEnki]

Is it just me who finds his accent or the accent in general so fucking calm that you can just lay and relax and release all the stress tension thats been shitting you all week?

[@fluffywarhampster]

To a native speaker of english who has had any exposure to scottish or irish english speakers this is going to be almost 100 percent mutually inteligible. Its mainly picking up on the accent and small phonemic difference and than you can pretty easily identify words based on their root and piece together meaning. Very cool to hear spoken and i am glad people are making and effort to maintain this language.

[@nordlandskaka]

As a Norwegian - and more specifically a western Norwegian - fluent in English (C2/native level), I feel like I'm in a particularly well-suited spot to understand Scots. Just from watching a minute and a half, there's a few words that are very different from their English counterparts but so near what I gather from the context are their Norwegian counterparts that it's understandable.

[@Mancastle]

i'm from scotland, and i understand this perfectly :)

[@rafael.a.aponte]

I agree with what one commenter said about processing Dr. Horsbroch's words through our "English recognition engine." With a lot of his words that processing helps us, but with others it must lead to misunderstandings, simply because they're phonetically similar to words we know, albeit with different meanings. I wish this video had Scots subtitles so I could look up some of the vocabulary. Anne Donovan's novels in Scots are a pleasure to read for several reasons, one of them being that you can isolate unfamiliar words and phrases in them and then have a nice 'Aha!' moment when you find their meaning.

[@Phobero]

"Understond". Love that. Reminds me of my stay in Edinburgh: went there to study English, came home with a thick Scottish accent :D

[@athulfgeirsson]

Unnerstaun.

[@drrd4127]

Thick accent in Edinburgh??🤣🤷🧐 Huh,What? 🤔 I always mistake people from Edinburgh for being English because their accent is so soft. Most people from Glasgow will say "un'nerstaun" that is definitely thicker than understond

[@QUINTUSMAXIMUS]

Well, I have spent 14 minutes listening to this. As time went by, I was able to pick up somehow how the pronunciation is different. For example, whereas in English the word much sounds like muck in Scots, it appears. That's one example. Also, in Middle English, the "gh" in night had a guttural sound. Scots seems to have retained that whereas English has lost that. I think if a person can understand the changes in pronunciation, then they would be able to decipher much of this. It is different enough to call it a separate language, kind of like how Italian and Spanish are separate languages that branched off from Latin. If you spend some time studying the differences, you would pick this up somewhat quickly, but Italian and Spanish are closer to each other when it comes to pronunciation.

[@spcxplrr]

yeah [x] (said guttural sound) was an allophone (variant) for [h] (the h sound) after a vowel, which became silent gh in modern english.

[@break1146]

I was able to pick up on that sound rather quickly, as there is almost no sentence in Dutch we don't use it. Pronounce night with the gutteral sound and it almost becomes nacht. Lots of words are just easily referenced with Dutch, so that was quite interesting. Speaking another Germanic languages gives you a larger comparison pool.

[@purestress2597]

Up until 0:30 I was just thinking. Okay. I understand all this stuff. Then.... It's was all different, and I just thought.... WHAT THE HECK WAS I THINKING. I don't know this at all.

[@philinator71]

+Ryan Moore I know, I was thinking " pshh this would easy! I just have to concentrate" then he suddenly changed to indecipherable words and found myself completely lost for a few seconds till 0:49 . Even then I had to really think what he was saying in order to understand.

[@mandypandy111ify]

+philinator71 He was speaking Scots the whole time, ya know.

[@purestress2597]

Yeah.

[@timcrouch2415]

Yep I was with him for a few minutes. Then he dropped the bomb.

[@Thedarkbunnyrabbit]

It's not too terrible. He throws a lot of proper names out and whatnot, but if I filter those out I can follow along pretty well.

[@keetrandling4530]

A transcript of this would be helpful.

[@ominusomega7803]

Its absolutely fascinating, how the longer you watch the video, the more you slowly understand....

[@Piper_____]

I know I’m a native speaker, but I feel like I forgot to study vocab for a few weeks, and now I can’t understand what we’re doing in English class

[@goobertsnoobert9015]

4:50 “with the dope end of the 15th century”

[@weepinghomonculus4887]

lmao

[@elkhananeli]

What a wonderful intro to Scots language! Well done Dr. Horsbruch!

[@anitameie]

Hahaha! Thank you! It was an extraordinary experience. At the beginning it was a little hard to understand them, but then I got used to it and could translate quite well. Leaving aside some lapsus in which I spoke to them in Spanish and to the Argentinians in English, hehe! It was a lot to fun! Plus, they were really cooperative and friendly. Thank you for the support. And yes, I looved Braveheart. When I attended English Culture at university I fell in love with Scotland's history. You rule!

[@Leviwosc]

I speak Dutch (native), English, West-Frisian, Afrikaans and German. Thus the big West-Germanic languages and I understand almost everything without a problem.

[@foreverandever5548]

Scots is ma mither tongue. It's awfu guid tae see thuir's mair videos oan here aboot the leid itsel. When a go abreed maist fowk dinna ken wit am bletherin aboot sae that's wan hing whaur a hiv tae tae stairt speaking Inglis. Scots is my mother tongue. It's awfully good to see there's more videos on here about the language itself. When I go abroad most people don't know what I'm "talking" (closest translation in English) about so that's one thing where I have to start speaking English.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I had to re-read this about half a dozen times going “why write it out twice?” before I realised the second one was actually a translation, haha

[@j_mie6]

I'd say the correct translation of "bletherin" is "blathering", but perhaps that's more "speaking nonsense" than it is "talking"? (disclaimer, I'm a native English speaker)

[@foreverandever5548]

@@j_mie6 Disputable considering people say a “wee blether” which means talking to someone for a short while after meeting them. I wouldn’t consider every use to be “blather”.

[@j_mie6]

@@foreverandever5548 fair enough!

[@NovaPrima]

This explains a hell of a lot about the New Zealand accent.

[@afminto]

You can hear pieces of many different modern English accents in Scots: "seven" like New Zealand, "about" like some Canadians, "ing" sounding like "in" like the Southern and Midwestern US.

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@afminto aboot in Scots is not rly the same as when ppl write Canadians saying it. Canadians it’s more like ou/ow that then elides into -oo at the end. In Scots it’s just full on oo, bc ou is also said oo in Scots - very much like French ou in oral posture, while English speaking Canadians “aboot” has a much further back oral posture. Like listen to a Scot telling someone to get OOT and then compare to a Canadian saying that.

[@afminto]

@@kaitlyn__L Most Canadians do not say "aboot" fully like ou in French, I agree, but there are some that do and some that say about like "a boat".

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@afminto that’s fair, and yeah I’ve met a few who do “aboat”. Guess I was thinking more Ontario city than just “Canadian”. You’re right I could’ve worded that better

[@marti-nz]

As a kiwi myself I can actually understand this without too much difficulty.

[@AltoonaYourPiano]

It's so similar to English that for me it's perfect mutual intelligibility almost to the point of natural intelligibility but just different enough that I miss some things if I'm not actively paying attention. I wonder if this is comparable to Swedish and Norwegian or Spanish and Portuguese, or if they're more like English and Frisian are to each other.

[@kourii]

Obviously no precise, objective metric for measuring it, but I'd say this is more comparable to Swedish and Danish (specifically a Danish speaker hearing Swedish); Spanish and Portuguese would be more like English and Frisian, and Swedish and Norwegian would be in between (but, again, it's not easily quantifiable)

[@Bellg]

As a dutch (flemish) speaker I understand this almost entirely

[@kathywolf4558]

I found this video by accident. I have not heard the Scot's since I was a child and both my grandfathers would use the Scot's. Thank you! Moran taing!

[@Honeydew7396]

Even though I can't understand him a lot of the time, I really enjoy listening to this language. It just sounds so cool! :)

[@kacywatson6314]

It refreshing to hear Scots on KZbin. I actually understand him better than modern English English or American. A thumbs up tai a fellow Perth man 👍🏻

[@CheesyHotDogPuff]

Scots is to English what Afrikaans is to Dutch

[@connermiller7982]

CheesyHotDogPuff Scots is to Old English as Modern English is to Old English*

[@dimmacommunication]

Conner Miller Sorry as a foreigner i don't understand lok

[@vnixned2]

afrikaans is easy to follow, scots isnt

[@carloseduardoaguiar8712]

and Galician is to the Portuguese

[@MartyMusic777]

Conner Miller Hah...no. English is my main language, and I've devoted quite some time to its study; were I to listen to Old English spoken, I would barely be able to understand a word. Listening to Scots, I can understand 90% of it, and most of the outlying words just become normalized as I listen further. A better comparison would be between Middle English and Modern English. Mutually intelligible to a degree, but confusing as Hell sometimes.

[@MountMonty]

I thought he was speaking English with a strange accent for the first minute of this vid.

[@johnrichards7179]

Monty Well, some people would say he was. It's a matter of opinion.

[@DaLong88]

Sounds so familiar. I'm studying in Scotland at the moment and sometimes Scots sounds a little like a funny German or Scandinavian accent to me. Definitely a nice language! :)

[@Luic1987]

I speak native english, fluent german and a little dutch. Where the root is not recogniseable to an anglophone, i found I often could use the root of the verb or noun from german and knew what he was saying. Two examples from the 1st 40 seconds among many are "sprung" (originate - as in ursprünglich) and "ken" (kennen - to know) but there's dozens throughout.

[@pappagamingpoo9766]

Weird thing happened to me with this video. I watched this video like year ago. I could understand like 50% what he was saying but when I started to learning Spanish I watched this again and I could somehow understand about everything. I think this happened because I started watching Spanish videos and was used to really focus hard on the listening.

[@jimmydickson8854]

Watching you from Western Australia ,x fifer ,old jimmy ,heard some words iv never used for years ,Well said sir

[@maogu1999]

Spearings, leed, echteen, briddhvyugfjfsah... Wow... This is fascinating

[@perthrockskinda2946]

to Spier = to Ask, Enquire (Spiering = Asking) Leid = Language Eichteen = Eighteen briddhvyugfjfsah = must be Dutch.

[@charlotterushforth918]

As a Linguistics scholar I can tell you Scots is its own separate language. It has nothing to do with politics, and it's not a dialect of Northumbrian language. It is not a "dialect" because Scots speakers consider themselves to be culturally separate (not politically separate necessarily) from Northumbrian English speakers. Also, they are not necessarily mutually intelligible? Though I don't know enough about Northumbrian English to say 100% they are or aren't mutually unintelligible

[@jimosaurus42]

I am able to understand the vast majority of this video but do not claim to speak the Scots language. I would say Scots and English are indeed mutually intelligible. I speak three English language dialects fluently; Yorkshire english, Canadian English, and received pronunciation. I've never heard a linguistics professor ever definitively claim to know exactly where the border between a dialect and a language is. It is clearly a cultural and in many cases political issue. The line between the concept of dialect and language is indeed blurry and so far (at least as I understand it) not concrete.

[@charlotterushforth918]

"The only thing that can save an attempt to impose a formal definition on the terms “language” and “dialect” now is perhaps to be found in popular usage, which suggests that languages are written and standardized and have a literature, while dialects are oral, without codified rules, and have no literature. " from www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2016/01/difference-between-language-dialect/424704/ Therefore Scots is a language; it has a literature and is written, well distributed actually thanks to Rabbie Burns

[@horseenthusiast9903]

I think I know motherfucking Elvish and Hylian a little better than parts of this. And I'm a native English speaker. Scots really interests me now; I love how it simultaneously sounds like a different language and a modern Scottish dialect.

[@Halrax_38]

I know this is 5 years late, but Sindarin or Quenyan? Elvish is a language family, not a language.

[@ConvincingPeople]

Scots, insofar as I am concerned, is both a separate language from Standard English and a dialect of the English language at large - or, more accurately, it is a continuum of dialects ranging from near-identical to English proper to utterly mutually unintelligible. In some cases, I do think that these differences are highly politicised, as in Northern Ireland, to the point that divergence is valued over accuracy to actual speech, but that does not make the assertion of difference overall any less valid. It's a little like the differences between Low German, Alsatian and Swiss: All are strictly speaking German, but all are essentially different languages, distinct in flavour and vocabulary to the point of being quite alien to one another.

[@thezonx354]

To talk “aboot” Ah, I see what you did there 🇨🇦

[@just_some_guy_innit]

you can thank us scots for you lot saying "aboot" 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇨🇦 we are yer proud aulder brers and we're always here for yous

[@kaitlyn__L]

@@just_some_guy_innit yeah, a lot of Canadian terminology (which didn’t come from French) has ties to Scots, and so do some southern US dialects (for instance in another linguistics video I’ve seen ppl from Louisiana and neighbours being like “wtf I can understand this fine” about Scots)

[@nozrep]

there’s a lot of brer rabbit, brer frog type of sentences in 1800’s and early 1900’s childrens’ stories of the American south too.

[@drrd4127]

Scots say "Aboot" Some Canadians say "Aboat" Two completely different pronunciation.

[@AndyKordo]

I remember reading an article about the Scots language, but this is the first time I hear it. It's so similar to English! It sounds like a dialect of English. I understood most of it.

[@yougoslavia]

As a British person, this was really easy to understand.

[@crazwizardlizard]

I memorized a Robert burns poem in scots a while ago and I didn't know that's what it was in! That's so cool.

[@tibetan.music.universe]

I listened to this when i was nearly blacked out drunk and thought it sounded identical to norwegian

[@NoRygBu]

This is THE BEST Video speech about Scots and mutual intelligibility of all times!! 🤓😎

[@nerysghemor5781]

Overall very interesting to listen to, and I learned quite a bit too--a good deal, considering that my UK/European history is rather shakier than it should be. On mutual intelligibility I am not going to comment, since I have had exposure to the written language for quite some time and likely have an unfair advantage compared to some Americans. Even a couple of years of German before ever seeing Scots is helpful IMO...just as it is with, say Chaucer, for providing some background on the Germanic languages as whole, and a look at some of the words that seem to have disappeared out of English but still are in current use in other languages in the same family. I can't really know what would and would not be understandable to someone without that prior language background. And as someone from the Southern US, the term "Southron" particularly gets my attention: this is something seen fairly often around the Civil War time frame in the US. We seem to have buried most of it here, but the small traces of Scots left behind in the South are really fascinating. :-)

[@nozrep]

fascinating. barely understand as an American English speaker. But I understand more the more I listen. Fascinating!

[@servantofaeie1569]

Im also American and can understand 95%

[@playbackz2440]

@@servantofaeie1569 same

[@playbackz2440]

I’m from New England, that might help

[@BFDT-4]

Likewise, xidnaf sent me here. One of the things I had always wondered about with the different dialects of English is what are the "ends" of mutual intelligibility. It seemed to me that Scottish English and something in Mississippi would be at the very end. Well, now I see a better example of one of those ends, Scots. Also, perhaps Frisian (although I regard that as closer to Dutch or German) or a daughter dialect of British English such as Indian English, Singapore English or perhaps Belize English. This is very interesting. I hope that Scots has more media than this. I will look. And now, yes, I found a good start: sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page Thanks!

[@IkkezzUsedEmber]

Frisian used to be more of an inbetween language of dutch and english, but due to hundreds of years of cultural mingling frisian (west frisian, i should say) has become more and more dutch, basically using 1 to 1 dutch grammar, with just pronounciation and words being different. It's without a doubt more mutually intelligible to dutch than scots is to english, but it's still not completely mutually intelligible

[@briangrimm538]

Native English speaker from the Pacific Northwest and listening very carefully I could understand about 90% of it.

[@the1exnay]

It's so interesting listening to a language like this, where it's so similar but at times unintelligible. Is this the only example of a language similar enough to English that it's possible to understand a significant amount?

[@foreverandever5548]

Scots is the closest language to English, another would be the Frisian language. You're able to understand some of it as it's down to mutual intelligibility.

[@Lebst]

I think what people are forgetting about this video is that this is a careful reading/speech that would be way slower than conversational Scots and there are still parts that are hard to understand! I reckon it would be hard to understand it in a conversation. I wish there were more resources for learning about this wonderful language.

[@Emslaender_Jung]

As a german native speaker i can understand a lot of it if i listen carefully. My second language is north west low saxon. Thats a lot closer to dutch, danish and english.

[@Vazlist]

Excellent lecture. Thanks for this!

[@mister_betechkin]

It's funny how my patchwork high school German is helping me understand a couple of words here and there - words that I wouldn't have understood otherwise - like referring to the scottish language as a lied (song in german, but I got it through context clues). Now that I've said that, it'd be really funny if I've got that totally wrong lol

[@servantofaeie1569]

Yea, i think those are actually cognates

[@khanarash8857]

I heard this language for the first time and I feel that I can speak scots easily.. Respect from Kashmir

[@aswfabt]

The hardest part is probably the accent. Scots is easier to write than English. English and Scots sound similar but are written differently.

[@khanarash8857]

@@aswfabt I am talking in regards of pronounciation and accent as well. I can easily speak it. Thankyou so much for information bro...I really appreciate it ❤️

[@ijsmale]

As I gaed ower the brig, the toun nock chappit hauf twa, and thir lassies spiert gin I haed been lowsit shuiner nor I ettled. That's pure Ayrshire Scots. Translation - As I went over the bridge, the town clock struck half past two, and these girls asked if I had been let off earlier than I expected. There is no one here that can tell me this is just English with an accent or a dialect of English. Aabodie needs tae read "Scots, the Mither Tongue" by Billy Kay.

[@drrd4127]

Interesting how in Ayrshire you say "I" instead of "A". I moved overseas and it is the part of my tongue that I can't seem to drop. A'm instead of I am. A've instead of I've.

[@martinfrostnas6610]

It's about as divergent from Standard English as Swiss-German from Standard German. So it could be argued to be a distinct English dialect group, but the line is difficult to draw.

[@uwuthuismydaddy5192]

I'm very conflicted, should I learn scots or just continue to be amazed by this beautiful example of a dialect continuum.

[@jetison333]

well if you sit and be amazed for too long you'll eventually learn it.

[@Honeydew7396]

Yes, I am an American, and I've only spoken to a few Scottish people in my life. I don't know a whole lot about Scotland, but it seems like a cool place. I'm sure European people are used to being exposed to a variety of languages. I find languages fascinating (I'm studying Latin and Japanese), but we don't have much linguistic diversity over here.

[@anubis1ra1]

With the exception of some vocabulary (e.g. muckle), it was surprisingly easy to understand. I'd bet I'd struggle more to understand this all written out, though. This was a really cool experience!

[@JordanSullivanadventures]

This is the trippiest thing I've seen

[@anitameie]

Thank you very much for the support! It was a great experience and they were really nice. We had no problems understanding each other :)

[@tuxcup]

Now I am 4-lingual! - Scots - English - Mandarin - English

[@tuxcup]

Oops, I meant Cantonese

[@-TK-]

and English too

[@mihanich]

scots is just an english dialect

[@-TK-]

mihanich no. It's understandable to some extent but it's not the same thing.

[@mihanich]

Troll King​ i didn't say it is the same thing, its just a variety of english with it's own peculiarities. I speak german, and the difference between standard english and scots english is roundly like that of between standard german amd bavarian german.

[@Xbusk]

My wife and I were at the beach yesterday and we were sitting next to a few foreign exchange students who were from Scotland that spoke this language. At times we couldnt understand them at all and couldnt make out the language until a fellow scotsman asked aye are yee Scots? And they replied cheers lol. That's when we knew they were Scottish. I had to do more research today. I couldnt believe Scotland has a few native languages that arent fully english. Very interesting to say the least!

[@CrypticWizard9]

I understood this quite easily, but that is probably because I live in a part of Canada with a very Scottish and Irish influenced dialect.

[@FreedomPoint]

That's very interesting. Which part of Canada is that?

[@CrypticWizard9]

FreedomPoint The Maritime Dialects of Canada. You can especially hear in the Newfoundland accents but it is still present in the rest of the Atlantic provinces. We are the only other people in the English world besides the Scots to use the "Gaelic Gasp" where we enhale whilst saying 'Yes' or 'No'.

[@FreedomPoint]

CrypticWizard9 The "Gaelic Gasp" is rather interesting. I hadn't heard of it before reading your reply and doing a little searching. I can't say that I've ever heard a Scot do it before, so perhaps it's only used in certain areas and dialects.

[@CrypticWizard9]

FreedomPoint Yeah, over here the gasp is dying too. I wish it wasn't but everybody tries to speak more urban dialects nowadays. Another oddity is how we use 'right' in place of rather. e.g. "Oh, it 'twas right cold out yesterday".

[@FreedomPoint]

CrypticWizard9 Using "right" instead of "rather" is still very common (right common, haha) in the UK. In Northern England we often pronounce it as "reet", e.g. "T' film was reet good, eh?" Sounds like your dialect of English still retains a lot of British influence, which is intriguing.

[@joecao9910]

I can understand about 50% of what he is saying. A beautiful language.

[@jeffmorse645]

I read something about Scots a while back. It said its of the same Germanic branch as Frisian and English.

[@derglotzer167]

+Jeff Morse It was an English language. Today its a series of English dialects that have been influenced to varying degrees by modern English. In other words its a richt bourach!

[@TimLimDimSims]

The Scots and the English speakers really deserve to have this as a classified language that is learnable and annotated in its own right. So many speakers of English don't have the experience of having a language so closely related to theirs because English tends to consume wherever it goes.

[@LeeReed1002]

Ironic how in terms of purity and influence from other languages such as French, Scots is more like original English than modern English as it preserves the old Germanic infections and pronounciations.

[@ineedabetterusername7424]

Interesting how there are a lot of words in Scots that are almost identical to the other Germanic tongues: Scots "myckel" and "sprak" to Swedish "mycket" and "språk," and German "sprechen/Sprache) (English "much/many" and "to speak / language"); Scots "ken" and "syck" to German "kennen" and "solche" (English "to know" and "such"), just to name a few. Really cool language -- that is no more a mere "dialect" of English than Dutch is to German or Swedish is to Danish. Mutually intelligible, related languages, perhaps -- but literally only AFTER you've studied other foreign languages... Really cool to hear it spoken though. Beautiful!

[@servantofaeie1569]

In Middle English it was "mychel", which in Modern English is "much".

[@Ken-kl2jo]

I can understand 80% of this

[@Stuadh]

Dauvit! Cha robh mi an duil gu bhi gad fhaicinn air YT! I didnae expect tae see you here!

[@Envy_me94]

Honestly who cares if its a different language or dialect. Im a New Zealand born Australian with full British blood and could have a full conversation with this man only misunderstanding a couple of words. He pronounces several words exactly like a New Zealander.

[@Faliat]

You could say the same thing about Danish and Norwegian or both languages with Swedish, though. So why can't English and Scots be like that? It's called "mutual intelligibility". When two or more related languages can be mostly or partially understood by each other despite them being separate.

[@jimosaurus42]

Faliat you raise a great point. I've often read that the difference between a language and a dialect is an army. I am not convinced Scots is any more a distinct language from English then say Norwegian is from Danish. Like so many topics the intelligent mind should accept complexity and not try to boil down an issue to merely black and white.

[@CosmicDoom47]

It's because the word "dialect" has no scientific definition. It's a political one. Mandarin and Cantonese are "dialects" of Chinese, but are closer than French and Spanish, which are separate "languages"?

[@Faliat]

Aashil Desai What about Galician and Portuguese?

[@CosmicDoom47]

I don't know a lot about those. If the speakers of Portuguese and Galician insist that they're different languages, then they are. The language/dialect distinction is whatever you want it to be because linguists don't distinguish the two.

[@CobraTheSpacePirate]

Its like my Grandma speaking Fries to us when we were little kids, we just called it Grandma Minnie Talk.