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How super!

Um, almost the entire Scots Wikipedia was written by someone with no idea of the language – 10,000s of articles

It gets delicious too:

That view was backed up by the chief scientist at text analytics company Luminoso, Robyn Speer, who noted that several large language detectors use Scots Wikipedia as a reference.

“I believe that the cld2, cld3, and fastText language detectors all have Scots (sco) as one of the languages they claim to detect, and all of them are getting their belief about what Scots is from Wikipedia,” she noted.

In other words, fake Scots language is rapidly becoming real Scots online. And all because of a prolific apparent non-Scot.

20 thoughts on “How super!”

  1. Dennis, Offender of Krauts, Frogs and other Wogs

    “This is going to sound incredibly hyperbolic and hysterical,” noted Ultach, “but I think this person has possibly done more damage to the Scots language than anyone else in history. They engaged in cultural vandalism on a hitherto unprecedented scale.”

    You could completely vandalize Scotland’s culture in less than an hour and still have time to take a long pee.

    Once again I am reminded why half the family tree fled the place the minute they were able.

  2. off topic but still on Scotland.

    “Giving her daily update on coronavirus, First Minister Nicola Sturgeon told MSPs the two deaths on the daily figures were a reminder that coronavirus was still a “threat” in Scotland.”

    A look at the chart in the news story might suggest that the “threat” of Coronavirus had fucked right off.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-53920476

  3. The account in The Register seems to record fairly, though rather downplay, the fact that it was a bout of moralistic outrage from real Scots speakers about the apperance of the issue, which blinded them to its substance and prevented more timely action.

    As an enjoyable story, this will be probably be rather ruined by the fact that it gives Oliver Kamm a chance to say “I told you so”.

  4. As someone who genuinely grew up speaking Scots (a Northeastern dialect) I can assure all of you Sassenachs that Scots Wikipedia, along with virtually all of the Scots on the internet, is complete and utter gibberish.

    Even the “good” stuff is largely bastardized Glaswegian, and they don’t even speak Scots, even when they’re not stabbing each other.

  5. Dennis, Showing Off My Scots-German Temperment

    Apart from hoots, crivens etc, what on earth distinguishes Scotch English from English?

    Based on the article, I’d suggest it’s the fact that nobody actually gives a shit about Scots English.

  6. “what on earth distinguishes Scotch English from English?”

    Among other characteristics: the cadences, the pronunciation of the letter “r”, and the disinclination to drop the letter “h”.

    If you are deaf to such subtleties then you could focus on items of vocabulary, idiom, and sentence structure. But apart from missing some allusions you’d find it all perfectly comprehensible.

    The story, however, was about Scots not Scots English.

  7. Dennis, Stickler For Detail

    The story, however, was about Scots not Scots English.

    I stand corrected…

    Based on the article, I’d suggest it’s the fact that nobody actually gives a shit about Scots. Based on fact that it seems nobody gives a shit about Scots, we can probably safely assume nobody gives a shit about Scots English as well. I know I don’t.

    There. Fixed it.

  8. For all that the Nats are pro Scotland and anti-Union, it’s surprising they didn’t notice it years ago and get it sorted. That doesn’t say much for their actual love for Scotland and its language.

    On that note, as pointed out, Scot’s isn’t English poorly (or differently) articulated. Quite a lot of Scots words are Scandinavian in origin e.g. Scots: Braw; Swedish: Brå, and the expression “lang may yer lumb reek” uses ‘reek’ in the Scandinavian meaning, that is ‘smoke’ rather than the English meaning of smell strongly.

  9. Whit wye shuid we be carin aboot Scots?
    Scots is a leid thit is integratit intae Scots cultur, is pairt o wir identity, an is whit maks oorsels different fae the rest o the warld. A wheen o fowk hae an attatchment tae the leid fae bairnheid an their hames wi’oot even kennin it. Scots has ayewis hid spikkers at aa livvels o society, fae aa backgruns an fae aa waaks o life.

    From https://oorvyce.scot/

    If you can find me an ordinary person north of the border who can understand this without a good deal of head scratching, let alone speaks in anything resembling it, I’ll buy you a very large malt.

    Scots was invented by maniacal nationalist academics, partly because they were madly jealous of the Welsh and Irish having their own proper languages, and partly because they could see opportunities for grant applications. It’s based on the language spoken in the Scottish Royal Court, up to 1600, because there are lots of documents written in it (almost all tedious legal stuff), but bears about as much resemblance to anything spoken or written in Scotland today as Middle English does to modern English.

    There’s zero literature (compare Welsh with the Mabinogion and the Red Book of Hergest, and many Irish Gaelic (and Scots Gaelic) examples) – Burns, the chief literary figure, wrote in his local dialect of Lallans bearing little resemblance to this farrago, and his main work is titled: Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect (oh, what a giveaway!).

  10. Let’s grant the north Britons their extra phoneme. They do have /χ/ (the greek letter ‘Chi’) as in ‘Loch’ which other of speakers of standard English do not.

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