A surprising number of people don't appear to realise that Scottish Gaelic & Scots are two completely different languages. My goal for 2025 is to write a book on the history of Scottish languages. Gaelic, Scots, Cumbric, Pictish, Norn, & Scottish English. - ThreadSky

weegingerdug.bsky.social • 57 days ago

A surprising number of people don't appear to realise that Scottish Gaelic & Scots are two completely different languages. My goal for 2025 is to write a book on the history of Scottish languages. Gaelic, Scots, Cumbric, Pictish, Norn, & Scottish English.

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johnmcg03.bsky.social•57 days ago

Aye that's because they've never been taught Scottish history

weegingerdug.bsky.social•57 days ago

There is shockingly widespread ignorance on this topic

johnmcg03.bsky.social•56 days ago

That's because there's not enough Scottish history taught in schools

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

The story of Scotland's languages isn't taught at all.

johnmcg03.bsky.social•56 days ago

I was taught very little of anything to do with Scotland it was all 1066 etc.

lowriwilliams.bsky.social•56 days ago

I'm taking part in a minority language challenge this Jan and will be having a go at SG as, embarrassingly, I know very little about it and it's the only one of the Celtic languages that's had any coverage in my field to date. Your book sounds really interesting and a very worthy project for 2025!

illandancient.bsky.social•56 days ago

I could send you the numbers behind my histomap if it helps

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

That's very interesting

illandancient.bsky.social•56 days ago

There's some guesswork and extrapolation from datapoints that we do know, but I've found it useful for keeping straight the relative population sizes - there's never been a time when "millions of people spoke Gaelic" in Scotland.

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

Well, there were not millions of people in Scotland until relatively recently.

wattgfield.bsky.social•56 days ago

I’d read that!

marysummer.bsky.social•56 days ago

Looking forward to your book 👍🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

caoimhinsmo.bsky.social•56 days ago

What doesn’t help is when “Scottish Gaelic” is referred to as “Scots Gaelic”. Might be ok historically, but these days it sure adds to the confusion.

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

I ran out of characters and had to edit.

caoimhinsmo.bsky.social•56 days ago

I didn’t mean you. I meant lots of international language lists. Fortunately, though, the term “Scots Gaelic” seems to be a lot less common than it was 10 or 20 years ago, and “Scottish Gaelic” more common.

irenemackenzie.bsky.social•56 days ago

I moved to Banchory eight years ago and found that Doric has many of the same words as lowland Scots. I can understand 90% of it, I love it here! Fit like?

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

Doric is a dialect of Scots

meidasscotland.bsky.social•56 days ago

If you need any Doric contributions let me know. There are many doric words and phrases which are not directly scots

irenemackenzie.bsky.social•56 days ago

Well, that makes sense, there are words that I use that bring blank looks but I never felt more Scots than I do here. Just a brilliant place. Have a great year!

skullkidtermina.bsky.social•56 days ago

A surprising amount of Scots don’t realise the rest of the world doesn’t consider ‘whit team dae yay support?’ a life altering question

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

That's an, em, "interesting" take on a post about languages.

macnabracha.bsky.social•56 days ago

Siud a bhiodh inntinneach!

dampscot.bsky.social•57 days ago

All power to your pen Paul

eliredman.bsky.social•56 days ago

Pictish. 👍 Looking forward to this.

augustchill.bsky.social•56 days ago

My goal for 2026 is to read that book!

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

I'll have to write it first!

ianmnoone.bsky.social•56 days ago

The earliest of my known Shetlandic ancestors had patronymics, and lived in the early 18th century, around the time Norn died out on the islands. I love listening to Scots and am having a go at Gàidhlig, but I'd really love to see more on Norn revival

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

These links might be useful

https://archive.org/details/anetymodictofthenornlanginshet/01%20An%20Etymological%20Dictionary%20of%20the%20Norn%20Language%20in%20Shetland%20Part%20I/

https://nornlanguage.x10.mx/index.php?nynorn

hayloftbooks.bsky.social•56 days ago

Sounds good - as a Cumbrian dialect speaker with a grandfather from Inch, near Stranraer, plus using English at school & speaking French I’m very interested in languages. There’s a lot of Norse in Cumbrian dialect too.

elemjay.bsky.social•56 days ago

New book for my teetering towers incoming.

stewartog.bsky.social•56 days ago

Sign me up!

melissapudding.bsky.social•57 days ago

Oh my the ignorance is extraordinary.

weegingerdug.bsky.social•57 days ago

It's truly shocking. I keep hearing people living in Lowland towns with Gaelic names asserting Gaelic was never spoken in the Lowlands. In fact Gaelic was spoken in South Ayrshire until about 1800. The last known speaker was Margaret McMurray who died in Maybole in 1761

jacksloan.bsky.social•56 days ago

Latin? I think it was Scotland's third language in the early modern period, alongside Scots and Gaelic.

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

Yes, Latin was a major written language in Mediaeval Scotland as it was elsewhere in Europe, but Latin never had a community of mother tongue speakers in Scotland & never had a distinctively Scottish variety.

lillyh.bsky.social•56 days ago

Do we actually know anything about Pictish?

weedavey.bsky.social•56 days ago

There’s a fair bit left in place names, so we know what geographical features were called and that it was almost certainly Brittonic

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

It was certainly closely related to Brittonic but it probably escaped the massive Latin influence Brittonic experienced during the Roman occupation of Britain.

clatchardcraig.bsky.social•56 days ago

It's a compelling idea: Pictish was closer to Old Irish/Gaelic than previously thought because neither came under Roman role or Latin influence. This would also explain why Pictish was replaced by Gaelic so quickly...

illandancient.bsky.social•56 days ago

Some people do. Fiona Campbell-Howes might be a useful contact for this sort of thing.
https://open.substack.com/pub/fortrenn/p/an-eighth-century-royal-circuit-in?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=nb9zo

weegingerdug.bsky.social•56 days ago

A friend of mine wrote his PhD thesis on the Pictish language
You can download it here

https://theses.gla.ac.uk/6285/7/2015RhysPhD.pdf

lillyh.bsky.social•56 days ago

Oh, that's really interesting - thanks!

maureenpickering.bsky.social•57 days ago

I look forward to your book, Paul. That will be a fascinating read.

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