Maybe one day you’ll learn about dialects.
I just checked my watch, looks like I’ve got just enough time to waste to teach you.
The way Scottish people speak English is a dialect, and it actually varies somewhat depending upon the part of Scotland they are from. Dialects are linguistic varieties which may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar.
Dialects can be defined as “sub-forms of languages which are, in general, mutually comprehensible”.
English speakers from different countries and regions use a variety of different accents, as well as various localized words and grammatical constructions; many different dialects can be identified based on these factors. Dialects can be classified at broader or narrower levels: within a broad national or regional dialect, various more localized sub-dialects can be identified, and so on. The combination of differences in pronunciation and use of local words may make some English dialects almost unintelligible to speakers from other regions.
The major native dialects of English are often divided by linguists into three general categories: the British Isles dialects, those of North America, and those of Australasia. Dialects can be associated not only with place, but also with particular social groups. Within a given English-speaking country, there will often be a form of the language considered to be Standard English – the Standard Englishes of different countries differ, and each can itself be considered a dialect. Standard English is often associated with the more educated layers of society.
This means that when you sneer over someone’s dialect and insist that their use of it means that they cannot speak the language, despite an obvious mutual comprehension, you are not only discriminating based on their origin, you are also doing so based upon perceived class and education level, which can make your comment range from xenophobia and classism to overt racism.
AKA, not good. There are layers to comments like that.
Let’s go ahead and chat about the three general categories! British Isles Dialects. How many dialects do you think there are in the UK? There are 30+ in England alone!
There are more dialects in the world than there are languages, and none of them are incorrect – on the contrary, language exists merely because it is a widely accepted set of meanings given to objects, actions, and ideas. If everyone understands what you’re saying, your words spoken are just as valid as anyone else’s, which is why when brand new slang comes out, and different meanings are assigned to words, it’s absolutely not incorrect. Language is dynamic, it changes with the needs of the populace.
If it didn’t, you wouldn’t be speaking English right now, you’d be speaking a form of German called Anglo-Saxon, and writing in runes called Futhorc (Elder Futhark to be precise, which came from Germanic Tribes. Younger Futhark comes from Nordic Countries) which was replaced by a version of the Latin alphabet introduced by Irish missionaries in the 9th century.
English is a West Germanic language that originated from Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain in the mid 5th to 7th centuries AD by Anglo-Saxon settlers from what is now northwest Germany, west Denmark and the Netherlands, displacing the Celtic languages that previously predominated.
Celtic languages were actually spoken all the way down into the Iberian Penninsula, but many were snuffed out, and the non-English people in the UK still have to struggle to keep what parts of their original languages they can.
So how about instead of asking them to speak English which, btw , they were, as it was perfectly comprehensible Scottish English…. how about you stop being a gatekeeper for a language that is so widespread and dynamic that there are literally dialects of it in most parts of the world?
germansingergirl
blakekathryn
gummygunk
annaxmalina
tangentwithtanner
snowghoul
kaledo-art
dededos
