I’m posting this here because I’m honestly so sick and tired of this kind of thing. Especially in regards to endangered languages
But yeah. so funny
For those who don’t know, Scots language is not the same as Scottish Gaelic. They are unique from each other. Some people know Scots language better as being referred to as a dialect, so if you’ve heard about the Scots dialect before online, they’re probably referring to Scots language.
UNESCO recognizes it as a vulnerable language (Gaelic is considered more severely as “endangered”).
The Scots Wikipedia is exactly what it sounds like, an alternate wikipedia where the articles are all written in Scots. There are other wikipedias that provide content for other languages the same way. It helps preserve and give access to a threatened and underrepresented language, which is invaluable.
About 16 hours ago, it was discovered that an American teenager has been editing and writing articles not in Scots, but in an American’s disrespectful phonetic take on what he thinks Scots sounds like.
“The problem is that this person cannot speak Scots. I don’t mean this in a mean spirited or gatekeeping way where they’re trying their best but are making a few mistakes, I mean they don’t seem to have any knowledge of the language at all. “
This problem isn’t unique to this incident. Frequently on tumblr I see Americans making jokes about Scottish actors making what they’ve called “garbled Scottish sounds” and attempting (and failing) to type in Scots. Scottish languages have been decimated over the centuries, and Scots Wikipedia should be an amazing language resource.
The worst part? He’s apparently been at this for YEARS. He’s edited or penned nearly 1/3 of Scots Wikipedia. Apparently when Scots speakers have corrected him in the past, he’s had a “haughty attitude,” claiming that other Scots speakers (who were never present, unsurprisingly) approved of his failed attempts at writing in Scots.
The damage is heart wrenching:
“Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own, all because they were exposed to a mangled rendering of English being called Scots by this person and by this person alone.
They wrote such a massive volume of this pretend Scots that anyone writing in genuine Scots would have their work drowned out by rubbish. Or, even worse, edited to be more in line with said rubbish.
Wikipedia could have been an invaluable resource for the struggling language. Instead, it’s just become another source of ammunition for people wanting to disparage and mock it, all because of this one person and their bizarre fixation on Scots, which unfortunately never extended so far as wanting to properly learn it.”
Even worse, many people are praising this kid as the all-time most dedicate “troll,” as funny, etc. It’s inexcusable.
They’re hoping Scots speakers will volunteer to help fix all of the nonsense articles he’s put up.
I hope some people with a solid linguistics and/or Scots background can help in damage control:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/ig9jia/ive_discovered_that_almost_every_single_article/
https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uiser_collogue:AmaryllisGardener#This_users_doesn’t_know_Scots.
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Requests_for_comment/Disruptive_editing_on_sco.wikipedia_on_an_unparalleled_scale
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Forum#Scots_Wikipedia_is_largely_not_written_in_Scots
The notes in some those meta threads just make this worse. Debating whether it was well-intentioned or not. First, that’s immaterial - the problem is real regardless of intent. Secondly the user history is showing this actually had been noticed before - there are comments addressing this from 2016!
This is showing a MAJOR problem with how minority language wikis are being handled and they’re still debating whether it should be classified as vandalism or not.
