Are their any ILMers here who are not from english speaking countries?

I don't post that much to ILM these days, but I've tried to represent da Helsinki massive.

"scots" is certainly a language but i'd argue that nobody speaks it exclusively. (i used to know a lot more about this, but it's a long time since i was at university and i was always more interested in a) stylistics and b) whether it was true that the moderately attractive scots tutor never wore knickers than in the actual details of scots itself.)

whether or not people are aware they're using elements of it is a different matter. mostly what we (and yes, i know i'm english, but let's overlook that for the moment) do is use a smattering of scots words (wee, thole, scunnered, radge, bam, dobber etc) within the grammatical and lexical framework of english.

i assume scots has (had) its own grammatical structure but i know fuck all about it. however, i did buy my dad a copy of "the mither tongue" for christmas so maybe i'll nick it back and read it myself. or get him to post here, heh :)

you might well be right. fucking hell, i wish i'd paid a bit more attention at university now, instead of thinking about scanties (another scots word, surely) and the lack thereof.

granpaw laughs hard
when he sees this shite card!

anyway. moving on. one of the more interesting sociolinguistic points here stems from stan's comment up the top:

the finnish and norwegian and scottish speaking parts of the world are awake yet

when i first read this i thought he was joking. but then i thought: hang on - is he? i mean, i wasn't sure (until he said upthread) what stan's first language was, and - even though my sister-in-law now lives there - i'm pretty shaky on what else is spoken in belgium (flemish? walloon?) and where.

so, stan: were you joking, or is there a perception in europe that scotland is divided from england not just in all the ways we know about (hem-hem) but by language too? i'm genuinely intrigued.

No it is not! There are many many varieties of Scottish accent, and I don't find any of them particularly comedic. Grimly, don't some relatives of yours speak the Doric?

Malaysia.

[gruff] aye, quine. [thinks] er, fit like yersel'?

(as you can tell, despite half my dad's family speaking fluent doric - a dialect rather than a language, i'd argue - i'm not very good at it myself. that said, if i'm up speyside way i do find myself using all manner of words and pronunciations i'd never normally adopt, eg "onyway".)

i'd like to devide my 12-point vote heartily between all who've spoken whichever language on this thread (& for being hearteningly articulate so unbelievably early in the day, too!:)

p.s. a personal (repeat) message to fair ailsa: beer is food! (hint: look up that other thread for a longer 'xplanation:)

(Tiit, no, I have NOT forgotten about the CDR I owe you.)

j/k

It was included to teasingly tickle the Scottish sensibilities, yes. But I wasn't laughing at them at all, I respect those feelings (after all, I should have written "Flanders" instead of "Dutch speaking part of Belgium" myself, but I didn't because I thought that would complicate my answer for people who don't know about the situation over here).

(I guess I just wanted to see if Welsh speaking people would reply and a British civil war would erupt.)

meh! meh!
(*gets hand out from offa arse, waves madly*)

I don't know about the rest of Europe, but as someone from Flanders (a part of a country where we speak our own (some would say comedy versions of) Dutch and not connected to the other half except by royalty, taxes and football (if and when successful), I think we think we instinctively feel a bond with other peoples who are in (reasonably) similar situations.

Emsk can speak Welsh. Anyone else?

or is it oes?

goddamn internet.

as you can tell, the answer's not "yes" at all. it's the opposite. still, i find women speaking welsh - or even women with a welsh accent - strangely erotic.

on the subject of scotland and england, here's iain macwhirter's 2007, from the (scottish) sunday herald. sure, it's tongue-in-cheek. but it does deal deftly and cleverly with what might just prove to be a fucking enormous constitutional explosion - and also serves as a primer for the many, many issues involved in the whole union v independence affair, if anyone's interested.

i look forward to discussing this more at substantial length come the run-up to the holyrood elections :)

(marcopollo, sorry for derailing your thread so spectacularly. i'll stop now. still: lang may yir lum reek wi ither fowk's coal, or something.)

i'm from the flanders, like stan, but i'm not cool like him.

Hi Tuomas, I lurk these days. You were also very nice and it was fun to meet you!

Nathalie is WAY cooler than me. And she can knit!

Thanks, hope we get to meet again one day. If you ever come to Helsinki and want someone to show you around, just ask me.

An P sucks. Sorry, that last record might be bearable, the previous ones were simply horrendous.

Heck, if a pretty Scottish boy opens his mouth and starts talking, regardless of "deep voice" qualification, I'm like, SWOON.

Y ¿donde esta las personas de España? O, en más, alguien del pais, er, que hablamente español. Boy didn't that deteriorate rapidly? Or "rapidamente" if you're so inclined. Anyway, if you would've caught any of my forebearers 85 years ago, you would've needed someone who understood both Spanish and English to translate. Though they would've definitely spoken a lot better Spanish than I do. ;)

Lovelace--- Are you someone I know? What with the Embassy e-mail addy and everything, seems you might be.

Also that Sebastien guy who posts metaphysical stuff is French or Belgian, isn't he?