English speakers: did you know that when you learn English, you get a FREE bonus language? Due to mutual intelligibility (when two languages are closely related enough that you can understand one if you know the other), if you are fluent in English, you can read literature in Scots. Because of the colonization and disenfranchisement of the Scottish people, it isn’t very popular to write in Scots and authors get told nobody will read their books, so I HIGHLY suggest you do. Support colonized people writing in their own language! Support Scots!
Suggested Scots lit:
Trainspotting (cult classic about the life and times of heroin addicts, mostly known for the movie adaptation, but it was a book first. Probably the easiest to read on the list for people who know English but don’t know Scots.)
Be Guid Tae Yer Mammy (a darkly comic family drama, involves interesting topics like invisible disability, is in fact very funny)
But’n’Ben A Go-Go (Scots cyberpunk! Suggest you start with one of the other books above and get used to Scots before tackling this one though. This is written in “What if Scots, but it’s the future so it evolved some?” so reading it is definitely hard mode. But if you’re up for the challenge, it’s some solid SF.)
These are just three. Please add on with other books in Scots if you have any recommendations.
Lastly: Here is an online Scots-English dictionary to help you out, should you need it. Happy reading!
I love this, because there’s obviously something very clever going on to analyse patterns of language, but it’s also profoundly ignorant.
[ID: A screenshot of a Grammarly correction, labelled “clarity: conciseness”. The original text reads “Every book, which wasn’t many…” This is crossed out with the suggestion “Everyn’t many book” and the note “Consider shortening this phrase.” /end id]
Story time: this reminds me of some kids in an English class I’m in. They were doing written work and the teacher and I were going around checking their work. They had to do like, “do/do not”, and one example was “prepare”. Something like “My father does not/doesn’t prepare dinner”. I look at this one kid’s paper and this galaxy-brained child had written “My father preparen’t dinner” and it took everything in me to not lose it laughing right there like. This child saw a pattern and ran with it and I respect that.
Intermittentlysmitten hid this in the tags and shouldn’t have.
Reminds me of that post on how Irish(?) doesn’t have a way to use “yes” or “no” to answer a verb question, or something like that, so that if somebody asks if you murdered somebody you can’t say “yes” or “no,” you have to say “I did murder” or “I didn’t murder,” which led my brain to produce the negative verb “murdidn’t.”
I studied English Language at A level and while every lesson up to that point had been about how to use the rules and abide to them effectively at this point it was just a group of rabid 6th formers chanting WHY? WHY CAN’T WE USE A DOUBLE NEGATIVE? and the teachers just deadass were like “you can, you’ve just been told you can’t” and it was the best possible answer to give because the point of language is communication: you understand what the other person said? you won the game. you succeeded at languaging. that it that’s the point
we all understood “My father preparen’t dinner” and “English allown’t us to do it” here? so like, go forth and be powerous I say
french people will really be like “our société? culturally catholique? mais non, this country is laïque there is no public religion to be found here!” and then 5 minutes later say “oh we do not work tomorrow because it is *checks french fonction publique calendrier* the feast of the assumption of the holy virgin mary so every public building in the whole entire country is closed :)”
idk which is funnier, the fact that 90% of the french people reblogging this agree and think its funny or the other 10% who are Très Bouleversé™ writing entire essays correcting me.
like i know you people have argumentative writing skills drilled into your head by the french education system from the age of 10 or whatever but please calmez-vous lol
ifesbob 