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Crazy thing is - I am from the Southern part of the USA. We have so many dialects here . . . not that different than what I have heard all my life, LOL!!!
I guess it's all relative. I'm an American currently living in NC and originally from Michigan and I can't understand what the heck these people are saying half the time so don't feel bad.
I found it very hard to understand some folks from MS, especially my father in law. My fiance never struggled to understand our Scottish accent, i dislike the Edinburgh and Glasgow accents but i dont have a Glasgow accent thankfully i have a western/Renfrewshire accent which is polite, well spoken and clear.
I used to know a guy from Waveland, MS, and if you've ever seen the show "King of the Hill" and you know who Boomhower is, then you'll know who my friend from Waveland sounds like. At first I couldn't understand a darned thing he said. Sounded like he swallowed half his words and let the other half run together. Scary thing is after a while, I understood him perfectly. And yes, I was sober!
I found it very hard to understand some folks from MS, especially my father in law. My fiance never struggled to understand our Scottish accent, i dislike the Edinburgh and Glasgow accents but i dont have a Glasgow accent thankfully i have a western/Renfrewshire accent which is polite, well spoken and clear.
Surely the Renfrewshire accent is just a diluted Glaswegian one? I've never heard of anybody referring to a Renfrewshire accent before. Snob!
I was brought up in Cumbernauld, never lived in Glasgow but my accent is probably a "diluted" version of a Glaswegian accent. Now living in Stirlingshire people here can identify I'm not one of them.
Surely the Renfrewshire accent is just a diluted Glaswegian one? I've never heard of anybody referring to a Renfrewshire accent before. Snob!
I was brought up in Cumbernauld, never lived in Glasgow but my accent is probably a "diluted" version of a Glaswegian accent. Now living in Stirlingshire people here can identify I'm not one of them.
The Renfrewshire accent is alot nicer, i wouldn't say it sounded Glaswegian at all considering we are 17 miles from the Glasgow county border. Especially in my village our accents are nice and well spoken, and we're not rich either
You should definitely go to Birmingham or Manchester to hear some different accents. Both if possible. Birmingham and its accent are nearly always regarded scornfully in the UK, but don't worry about that - it's a great city, and although the accent can be strong, I would say it's not hard to understand.
The are two main historical accent divisions in England.
A line diagonally from the Severern Estuary to the Wash roughly follows the change from "southern" type to "northern" type accents.
The other divide is from somewhere south-west of Birmingham (bit vague about exactly where) diagonally south-east to the south coast, stopping more or less at Portsmouth.
West of this line traditional accents still retain rhoticity i.e. "R's" are pronounced more strongly, and words like "last" are pronounced somewhat more like in North America. In fact the rhotic accent, which used to occupy much more of England, was the accent that was originally exported to North America, and probably forms the basis of many of the present-day characteristics of North American speech.
The good thing about here is that Gaelic is our national language too as is English so we have a lovely unique accent. There are many regional dialects here too and some people still speak Gaelic.
The good thing about here is that Gaelic is our national language too as is English so we have a lovely unique accent. There are many regional dialects here too and some people still speak Gaelic.
Isn't Scots actually the "traditional" language of Scotland?
Isn't Scots actually the "traditional" language of Scotland?
Scots tend to be seen as the Lowlands Dialect ( though it extends North East to Aberdeenshire and beyond) and Gaelic ( a complete different language, a Celtic Language) is spoken in the Highlands of Scotland. Think of it more as an East/West division.
These are examples of Scots below ( from the Scottish Parliament) , as you can see if you speak English you can pretty much understand Scots ( as written by Burns the National Bard) .
Gaelic is a completely different entity. Gaelic in particular has been for the last few centuries "discouraged" by various means by the various "well thinking" governments and if you study Scottish History it is easy to understand why as the Gaelic population and their leaders became a thorn in the foot of Government. It never really went away but a lot of it ended up seen as a lesser language and almost banned, derided and ridiculed. There has a been a great Gaelic revival but for a long time speaking it marked you as a "Barbarian".
Gaelic is a beautiful soft tongue and I love it. When I lived in Scotland my fiance and I went to evening classes and did a few terms and I wished we could have continued with it.
Scots to me is a lot more like a different version of English and I am sure I will upset a lot of people who do speak it but I find it an irritation as I end up trying to figure out what people are saying rather than enjoying the sound of it for example as it is basically English with alterations and a different pronunciation. There are completely different words and expressions but though people argue it is a distinct language to me it is a dialect.
There are many forms of Scots dialects but Gaelic is not one of them.
The very Northern Bit of the Shetlands until the mid 18th century saw "Norn" spoken a Northern Germanic Language which became more or less extinct when Scots took hold.
As far as I know the Orkneys and Shetlands still have a very distinctive form of dialect linguistically due to their Norse roots.
Below some Gaelic as sung by Capercaillie one of my favourite bands :
Gaelic is a Celtic Language like Irish Gaelic, Breton, Welsh, Cornish and even Galician. My Grand-Father who was a fluent Breton speaker could understand and be understood in Ireland, Wales and The Scottish Highlands.
I would recommend the BBC "History of Scotland" as it explains the background to it all.
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