Zompist Bboard Again

Hello,

You may find my doctoral thesis, Étude comparative des pratiques des langues locales dans les diglossies de La Réunion et en Écosse, on any of these links:

You may also comment here or on the ResearchGate or Academia pages.

https://theses.fr/2025LARE0042

https://theses.hal.science/tel-05677033
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _en_Ecosse
https://www.academia.edu/171958012/%C3% ... C3%89cosse

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2026 8:06 am Hello,

You may find my doctoral thesis, Étude comparative des pratiques des langues locales dans les diglossies de La Réunion et en Écosse, on any of these links:

You may also comment here or on the ResearchGate or Academia pages.

https://theses.fr/2025LARE0042

https://theses.hal.science/tel-05677033
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _en_Ecosse
https://www.academia.edu/171958012/%C3% ... C3%89cosse

It looks really interesting, but my French comprehension is not quite good enough to get through¹. May I ask what orthography you were using for the Scots?

¹ My entire French comprehension being primary school French ‘lessons,’ random things picked up in discussions with French-speaking family members, and guessing, which can take you surprisingly far with (written) French, but not for something this long

Leider spreche ich kein Französisch, muss ich sagen.

Lērisama wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2026 9:04 am

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2026 8:06 am Hello,

You may find my doctoral thesis, Étude comparative des pratiques des langues locales dans les diglossies de La Réunion et en Écosse, on any of these links:

You may also comment here or on the ResearchGate or Academia pages.

https://theses.fr/2025LARE0042

https://theses.hal.science/tel-05677033
https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _en_Ecosse
https://www.academia.edu/171958012/%C3% ... C3%89cosse

It looks really interesting, but my French comprehension is not quite good enough to get through¹. May I ask what orthography you were using for the Scots?

¹ My entire French comprehension being primary school French ‘lessons,’ random things picked up in discussions with French-speaking family members, and guessing, which can take you surprisingly far with (written) French, but not for something this long

Andy Eagle's synthesis following his review of existing spellings: https://www.evertype.com/books/cts2-eagle.html. I also mentioned that of the blog I participated in: https://www.makforrit.scot/scots/stylesheet/.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2026 10:04 am Leider spreche ich kein Französisch, muss ich sagen.

Hier sind die Parolen für ein Leid darüber: https://www.songtexte.com/songtext/nami ... 8e441.html

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 12:56 am Hier sind die Wörter*1) eines Lieds*2) darüber: https://www.songtexte.com/songtext/nami ... 8e441.html

*) Parole means "slogan" or "password"
2) Hier sind die Wörter für ein Lied rather means "here are some words, use them to write a song"
More idiomatic version: Hier ist der Text eines Lieds darüber.

Did we congratulate you on your PhD? I don't remember. So, just in case, congratulations!

That does sound interesting, so thanks for sharing this.

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 6:56 am Did we congratulate you on your PhD? I don't remember. So, just in case, congratulations!

Agreed!

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 8:56 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 6:56 am Did we congratulate you on your PhD? I don't remember. So, just in case, congratulations!

Agreed!

From me, too!

WeepingElf wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 9:21 am

Raphael wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 8:56 am

Ares Land wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 6:56 am Did we congratulate you on your PhD? I don't remember. So, just in case, congratulations!

Agreed!

From me, too!

Me too as well!

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 12:56 am

Travis B. wrote: ↑Wed Aug 26, 2026 10:04 am Leider spreche ich kein Französisch, muss ich sagen.

Hier sind die Parolen für ein Leid darüber: https://www.songtexte.com/songtext/nami ... 8e441.html

Vielen Dank!

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 12:52 am Andy Eagle's synthesis following his review of existing spellings: https://www.evertype.com/books/cts2-eagle.html. I also mentioned that of the blog I participated in: https://www.makforrit.scot/scots/stylesheet/.

From glancing at that blog it underscores how much Scots is a separate language from English even if we English-speakers may manage to understand it at times (e.g. I can often make some sense of written Scots but have trouble understanding spoken Scots).

Oh, yes, congratulations on your PhD!

Congratulations MacAnDàil, and best of luck on your post-doctoral life!

Travis B. wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 10:19 am

MacAnDàil wrote: ↑Thu Aug 27, 2026 12:52 am Andy Eagle's synthesis following his review of existing spellings: https://www.evertype.com/books/cts2-eagle.html. I also mentioned that of the blog I participated in: https://www.makforrit.scot/scots/stylesheet/.

From glancing at that blog it underscores how much Scots is a separate language from English even if we English-speakers may manage to understand it at times (e.g. I can often make some sense of written Scots but have trouble understanding spoken Scots).

That is a really interesting observation, because I feel precisely the opposite way. I struggle to make sense of written Scots with all its spelling differences, but spoken Scots sounds exactly like Scottish English with a handful of lexical replacements. Ironically, Glasgow English — which lexically is almost identical to other English varieties — can be considerably harder for me to understand than ostensibly ‘Scots’ speech. (And I have a Northern Irish colleague who’s even harder to understand.)

So I’m not quite sure how to resolve this puzzle. I can see three possibilities:

• Either what I’m calling ‘Scottish English’ is in fact Scots, spoken much more widely than I thought it was (a position I’ve seen before; but then why’s it intelligible to me?);
• or ‘Scots’ is merely a dialect of English with its own spelling conventions (but then why’s it so widely considered a separate language?);
• or Scots is defined by its lexical differences (‘muckle’, ‘scrieve’, ‘anent’), which indeed are not intelligible to me without prior exposure, but of which I’ve heard practically none in spontaneous speech (in which case true Scots must be on the verge of extinction, unless Glasgow is unrepresentative).

To me I often feel that written Scots is essentially a mixture of an alternate orthography for English plus some lexical differences; the main hard part about understanding written Scots is when it uses an entirely foreign word, with a different etymology, for something that cannot be chalked up to simply having undergone different sound changes (as in the case of, e.g., of Scots ane versus English one or Scots tae versus English to).

Spoken Scots, though... I just don't understand for whatever reason. I have never heard Glaswegian English, though, so I cannot compare and contrast it with 'proper' Scots.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2026 2:22 pm (as in the case of, e.g., of Scots ane versus English one or Scots tae versus English to).

To be honest, I’ve always perceived ⟨tae⟩ as being homophonous with my unstressed ⟨to⟩. Maybe if I listen very carefully I can hear a slight difference in vowel quality, but it’s subtle.

Spoken Scots, though... I just don't understand for whatever reason. I have never heard Glaswegian English, though, so I cannot compare and contrast it with 'proper' Scots.

This is the first sample I ever heard of Glaswegian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YfRbNipdOg. That one’s a particularly strong accent though (probably due to the character being a stoner) — it’s a bit less broad in some other videos of his, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKfAjlW6E30.

(I’ve seen an explicit claim that in the latter video they’re talking Scots, not English. I’m skeptical, because lexically it’s almost identical to speech which is uncontroversially English, especially if you look at northern English dialects.)

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2026 3:42 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2026 2:22 pm (as in the case of, e.g., of Scots ane versus English one or Scots tae versus English to).

To be honest, I’ve always perceived ⟨tae⟩ as being homophonous with my unstressed ⟨to⟩. Maybe if I listen very carefully I can hear a slight difference in vowel quality, but it’s subtle.

Spoken Scots, though... I just don't understand for whatever reason. I have never heard Glaswegian English, though, so I cannot compare and contrast it with 'proper' Scots.

This is the first sample I ever heard of Glaswegian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YfRbNipdOg. That one’s a particularly strong accent though (probably due to the character being a stoner) — it’s a bit less broad in some other videos of his, e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKfAjlW6E30.

(I’ve seen an explicit claim that in the latter video they’re talking Scots, not English. I’m skeptical, because lexically it’s almost identical to speech which is uncontroversially English, especially if you look at northern English dialects.)

I could understand half of that Glaswegian without subtitles, and with subtitles I could follow most of it.

In contrast, take https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TRVV9xJYgxk -- I can't understand the Scots at all as spoken even though it is spoken far more clearly than your example of Glaswegian. Even with the text I have hard time parsing it.

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2026 5:26 pm In contrast, take https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TRVV9xJYgxk -- I can't understand the Scots at all as spoken even though it is spoken far more clearly than your example of Glaswegian. Even with the text I have hard time parsing it.

This has the same problem that I see with many examples of Scots, though, namely that it’s a single sentence that seems selected to maximise the lexical differences with English. I’m more interested in longer texts, such as the ones on the website linked earlier.

bradrn wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2026 5:39 pm

Travis B. wrote: ↑Fri Aug 28, 2026 5:26 pm In contrast, take https://www.youtube.com/shorts/TRVV9xJYgxk -- I can't understand the Scots at all as spoken even though it is spoken far more clearly than your example of Glaswegian. Even with the text I have hard time parsing it.

This has the same problem that I see with many examples of Scots, though, namely that it’s a single sentence that seems selected to maximise the lexical differences with English. I’m more interested in longer texts, such as the ones on the website linked earlier.

For https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=le3cBRlWSE8, except when he's talking about 'fit' the main way I can even tell that he is speaking a form of Scots rather than English is by which participle endings he uses (i.e. if the past participle ends in -/ɪt/ he's speaking Scots).

Phonetically that guy's Scots seems as far from Standard English as basilectal forms of my native English are ─ and I am most definitely a native English speaker. However, he has far more lexical differences from Standard English than I do (as lexically, aside from a very small set of words and ignoring things such as verb principle part differences, my English is essentially Standard English).