Quote Originally Posted by highlander_Daz View Post
as far as "scottish" English goes its simply English by any other name, English is a language made up of words from other languages anyway and all the hullabaloo about "preserving" it is nonsense - its a foreign language to this country which weve adapted to suit, Id prefer to see resources and effort made into preserving and increasing awareness of scottish Gaelic.
There is no such thing as the "one" Scottish tongue. Gaelic itself came to Scotland in what, about the fifth century, correct? English (Inglis) came in a few centuries later (about the eighth, I believe). So yes, one is slightly more recent than the other, but sitting here in the year 2007, does it really matter if one language has been in Scotland for 1600 years and the other for only 1300 years?

Gaelic used to be spoken in Scotland over a much broader area than it is today, to be sure -- just look at a Scottish map and see all the place names with Gaelic roots in "non-Gaelic" areas and that will show you how wide spread it once was. But even then, there are some regions of Scotland in the borders especially where Gaelic was never spoken. To the people whose anscestry is there, Gaelic is the foreign language. Scots is the "Mither Tongue."

Scotland has a very unique cultural and ethnic mix. The Scottish people have been cobbled together from Pict and Gael, Anglo-Norman and Norse, and this is reflected in their language as well as their culture.

I think it all needs to be honored.

Aye,
Matt