Lingo Differnces

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boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
77
Cornwall
That may be true in scotland, i just don't know but is certainly not in Wales. The Welsh kingdoms once extended much further, well into Shropshire, for instance, in the north (the capital of Powys was once Wroxeter) and their language was Welsh. There was also Welsh, or a near relation, spoken in Cumbria in the early Dark Ages .

Of course Welsh or Brythonic was once spoken further east but not right across the country.

It was noticeable how the Shropshire accent thickened into that of Radnoshire that seemed to shade into a Welsh form even if the speaker was still using English as I went west. I think I remember that the original Ernest the policeman in the children's radio programme Larry the Lamb spoke with a Radnorshire accent but that was about 60 years ago.
 

treadlightly

Full Member
Jan 29, 2007
2,692
3
65
Powys
Of course Welsh or Brythonic was once spoken further east but not right across the country.

It was noticeable how the Shropshire accent thickened into that of Radnoshire that seemed to shade into a Welsh form even if the speaker was still using English as I went west. I think I remember that the original Ernest the policeman in the children's radio programme Larry the Lamb spoke with a Radnorshire accent but that was about 60 years ago.

Agreed. i wonder if British celtic culture was as homogenous as is believed or if the western half was influenced by Atlantic coast settlers and the east from Germanic Europe ?

I love the Welsh borders for its mix of cultures, accents and place names.
 

Stringmaker

Native
Sep 6, 2010
1,891
1
UK
The language is being used primarily to promote the language, which has survived against all the odds largely due to small communities which refused to give it up.

One does not exclude the other.

The oppressions of the native speakers of Welsh and Gaelic was an awful tyranny but it doesn't make his comment any less true.
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Agreed. i wonder if British celtic culture was as homogenous as is believed or if the western half was influenced by Atlantic coast settlers and the east from Germanic Europe ?

I love the Welsh borders for its mix of cultures, accents and place names.

Well certainly up here with place names and etymology you can see the Irish influence on the west and the Germanic/flemish on the East. Very polarized when you get to smaller more insular communities like islands and fishing communities.
 

boatman

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Feb 20, 2007
2,444
4
77
Cornwall
Agreed. i wonder if British celtic culture was as homogenous as is believed or if the western half was influenced by Atlantic coast settlers and the east from Germanic Europe ?

My thoughts as well, if one follows Barry Cunliffe and others that there was an Atlanto-Celt sea bordered linguistic area then the same logic should apply to the North Sea basin with Tacitus's Ingvaeonic or North Sea Germanic around the area. Lots of other evidence but perhaps OT at the moment.
 

teine

Member
Jan 12, 2013
15
0
central Scotland
The one that seems indicative of Dundonians is "circle." In Dundee it's how they refer to roundabouts (those strange ring shaped traffic management systems that the US use crossroads in stead of). I think I'm correct in saying that only Dundonians call them circles. Though no-one seems to like them as much as the road planners around East Kilbride.



A lot of the areas around me call it the circle too, even if its a triangle!:confused:, granted thats usualy in the villages,and usualy where the natives congregate, lol
 

teine

Member
Jan 12, 2013
15
0
central Scotland
Every language absorbs words from different ones into the vocabulary. English is probably the best example of them all. I'll bet the French and Italians cringe at the way their borrowed words are pronounced in English.

Regarding the 2% of speakers. That is a sad result of the ethnic cleansing carried out in Scotland in the form of the clearances and the governing from far away and disconnected westminster. Kids were regularly beaten in schools in Scotland for speaking Gaelic. More recently with a local enlightened devolved government more Gaelic schools both primary and secondary are opening and the culture rich Gaelic language is making a resurgence.

Cheerie an drasta

Windy



It is sad but growing, i am a learner and my boys are fluent and attend a Gaelic school, the different dialects are amazing, i find it hard with many natives speakers as i speak glasgow gaelic, but my boys have no bother as they are in complete submersion and are taught by teachers from all the islands, my little translaters;)
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Forigners do not always understand the differences in nationalities - I have heard some folk describe Wales as part of England and some folk call the Basque people French or Spanish... calling an Angle "Saxon" is not too different!

Mr. Fennna has a good point that still bears witness today, modern incomers if asiatic are all Indians (whether Pakistani, Bangladeshi etc) White ones are Pole (though could be Serbs, Romanians ect) Africans are all lumped together as are those from China, Korea etc. It's only when living closely with these comunities we learn the difference and you can tell the Ghanaians from the Nigerians.
 

Stringmaker

Native
Sep 6, 2010
1,891
1
UK
I sometimes ponder how the Romano British reacted to the Friesans, Jutes, Angles and Saxons appearing after the Romans left.

It is now understood that there was no invasion, but it was a gradual process. I like to imagine them all moaning about the incomers who speak funny!
 
It is sad but growing, i am a learner and my boys are fluent and attend a Gaelic school, the different dialects are amazing, i find it hard with many natives speakers as i speak glasgow gaelic, but my boys have no bother as they are in complete submersion and are taught by teachers from all the islands, my little translaters;)

Did we not meet at a John Muir Trust beach cleanup at Camasunary a couple of years ago teine?
 

EdS

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
I disagree with your circular argument theory Boatman, but then, in Scotland it is used as place name evidence for the changing languages.....and to some extent the incursions of Norse and Angle.
It is also used to differentiate between Pictish place names and later Scots Gaelic ones.

Pit is farmstead/holding while Baile is the same but in Gaelic. We can tie the name quite tightly to not only the actual use of the place but to the culture of people who owned and worked it.

Interesting to ramble around Scotland working out who was there before :)

cheers,
Toddy

What about Ben Rhydding?
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
What about Ben Rhydding?

You might want to read this: - Ben Rhydding is a Wharfedale village in the Metropolitan Borough of Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. It is part of the Ilkley urban area and civil parish.
It is situated on a north-facing valley beneath the Cow and Calf Rocks and above and to the south of the River Wharfe, and falls within the historic West Riding of Yorkshire.
The former name for the village area was Wheatley. In the 19th century it was noted for a popular and thoroughly equipped hydropathic establishment, opened in about 1844[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2][/SUP] at a cost of £30,000.[SUP][3][/SUP] It was the third major hydropathic establishment in England, "perhaps the most deeply respected and certainly the longest-lived".[SUP][4][/SUP] Ben Rhydding, the name given to the establishment was also given to the railway station built to serve it and by which the village subsequently became known, is allegedly the ancient name of the uplands above Wheatley. In a 1900 history of Upper Wharfedale, a footnote describes the circumstances, citing Collyer's History of Ilkley:
Dr. Collyer writes that when Ben Rhydding was building, and the founders were casting about for a name, the matter came up in the "pint-pot parliament", which had sat at the Wheat Sheaf in Ilkley time out of mind. Mr. Hamer Stansfeld (the founder) wanted "a good an ancient name", and was particularly wishful to know what the upland was called in the old times on which Ben Rhydding is built. Nancy Wharton, our hostess, said she knew, and gave us the name Ben (not Bean) Rydding. It had passed out the common memory, but had survived by some good hap in Nancy's mind, and it was from this little seed the name sprang again which has become famous
 
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Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
A lot of the areas around me call it the circle too, even if its a triangle!:confused:, granted thats usualy in the villages,and usualy where the natives congregate, lol

I didn't know that, used to be a sure sign someone was from seagull city.
 

merrygold85

Nomad
Sep 11, 2010
328
1
Ireland
Goatboy most of the Scots have Pictish roots....the Norse and Angles just merried in. The latest Irish diaspora are just doing the same.

Did you know that the word Scot comes from the Latin word Scoti, which is what the Romans called the Irish that raided Britain?
 

Toddy

Mod
Mod
Jan 21, 2005
38,937
4,570
S. Lanarkshire
Funny thing though.....the archaeology actually supports the theory that the Scots went 'to' Ireland from Scotland in the first place....you can see Ireland from Scotland and vice versa. Among a people who used the waters as their highways it was literally just across the road.
One people living on both sides of the channel.

Then they got caught in a pincer move by Britons and Vikings, and probably since their leaders were married into the Picts and again, vice versa, they settled back down in Scotland.
The vocabulary of Scottish Gaelic is very similar to Irish, but the grammar structure is different. It's postulated that the grammar structure is actually Pictish, because it's similar to the way the Welsh and other P celtic peoples speak.
That grammar structure is still there in modern Scots too, compared to English.

It might not be grammatically correct English, but the way that many of our regional dialects throughout these islands use sentence structure for emphasis, agreement and courtesy (give someone their 'place', for instance) is very understandable, in all of it's nuances.
There might be jokes about them, call them 'rustic', 'country bumpkin', but perhaps those old thought processes and sentence constructions are really remnants of older languages.

M
 

xylaria

Bushcrafter (boy, I've got a lot to say!)
Funny thing though.....the archaeology actually supports the theory that the Scots went 'to' Ireland from Scotland in the first place....you can see Ireland from Scotland and vice versa. Among a people who used the waters as their highways it was literally just across the road.
One people living on both sides of the channel.

Then they got caught in a pincer move by Britons and Vikings, and probably since their leaders were married into the Picts and again, vice versa, they settled back down in Scotland.
The vocabulary of Scottish Gaelic is very similar to Irish, but the grammar structure is different. It's postulated that the grammar structure is actually Pictish, because it's similar to the way the Welsh and other P celtic peoples speak.
That grammar structure is still there in modern Scots too, compared to English.

It might not be grammatically correct English, but the way that many of our regional dialects throughout these islands use sentence structure for emphasis, agreement and courtesy (give someone their 'place', for instance) is very understandable, in all of it's nuances.
There might be jokes about them, call them 'rustic', 'country bumpkin', but perhaps those old thought processes and sentence constructions are really remnants of older languages.

M

I was really suprised how close stoke-on-trent dialect gets to welsh in how some sentences are constructed. I will look in scots and irish grammer when I get my head around welsh. I read a few years ago about an historian based in belfast that studied the way linen was origanally processed either side of the water, he concluded that scotish side came first and seeded the irish side with both people and the same mass linen processing method in cut pits. He then fell head first in to a boiling peat pit of modern northern irish history as this idea wasnt palettable to nationalists, he probably got out of it with the old claim "sorry not my period".
 

VANDEEN

Nomad
Sep 1, 2011
351
1
Newcastle Upon Tyne
I wonder if you could translate something if I didn't put up the English first?

"Dinna lay bye for yersel a hantle o trock in iss warl, far it’ll get aa roosty an moch etten, an a thief mith braak in an pinch it. Bit gaither in for yersel treasure in hivven."


Whey aye bonny lad arl giv it a garnn meesell coz arm arlmust inglish, & geet proppa edukayted as owt!

Don't keep aside a handful of goods in this world, as it will get all rusty and moth eaten, and a thief may forcibly enter your premises and purloin it for himself. But gather for yourself treasure in heaven.

I rekun thats me spell checker up the Swanee agin fo a bit.
 

Goatboy

Full Member
Jan 31, 2005
14,956
17
Scotland
Whey aye ya canny man, yer deed reet. Perfect score that man. It takes one of our Novocastrian brothers to translate Doric, excellent.

GB.
 

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