Almost every article on Scots Wikipedia is written by one American teen, who does not speak Scots and is just writing English in an "accent" - This mad lad "has possibly done more damage to the Scots language than anyone else in history."

[Extremist Frank]

Linguists & translators are up in arms on reddit & twitter because some American brony & INTP has autistically edited the Scots-language wikipedia over a period of seven years in accented English. This is the thread on reddit where the revelation was made:

Even though their Wikipedia user page is public I don’t want to be accused of doxxing. I've included a redacted version of their profile here just so you know I'm telling the truth I’ll just say that if you click on the edit history of pretty much any article on the Scots version of Wikipedia, this person will probably have created it and have been the majority of the edits, and you’ll be able to view their user page from there. They are insanely prolific. They stopped updating their milestones in 2018 but at that time they had written 20,000 articles and made 200,000 edits. That is over a third of all the content currently on the Scots Wikipedia directly attributable to them, and I expect it’d be much more than that if they had updated their milestones, as they continued to make edits and create articles between 2018 and 2020. If they had done this properly it would’ve been an incredible achievement. They’d been at this for nearly a decade, averaging about 9 articles a day. And on top of all that, they were the main administrator for the Scots language Wikipedia itself, and had been for about 7 years. All articles were written according to their standards.

The problem is that this person cannot speak Scots. I don’t mean this in a mean spirited or gatekeeping way where they’re trying their best but are making a few mistakes, I mean they don’t seem to have any knowledge of the language at all. They misuse common elements of Scots that are even regularly found in Scots English like “syne” and “an aw”, they invent words which look like phonetically written English words spoken in a Scottish accent like “knaw” (an actual Middle Scots word to be fair, thanks) instead of “ken”, “saive” instead of “hain” and “moost” instead of “maun”, sometimes they just sometimes leave entire English phrases and sentences in the articles without even making an attempt at Scottifying them, nevermind using the appropriate Scots words. Scots words that aren’t also found in an alternate form in English are barely ever used, and never used correctly. Scots grammar is simply not used, there are only Scots words inserted at random into English sentences.

Here are some examples:

Blaise Pascal (19 Juin 1623 – 19 August 1662) wis a French mathematician, pheesicist, inventor, writer an Christian filosofer. He wis a child prodigy that wis eddicated bi his faither, a tax collector in Rouen. Pascal's earliest wark wis in the naitural an applee'd sciences whaur he made important contreibutions tae the study o fluids, an clarified the concepts o pressur an vacuum bi generalisin the wark o Evangelista Torricelli.

In Greek meethology, the Minotaur wis a creatur wi the heid o a bull an the body o a man or, as describit bi Roman poet Ovid, a being "pairt man an pairt bull". The Minotaur dwelt at the centre o the Labyrinth, which wis an elaborate maze-lik construction designed bi the airchitect Daedalus an his son Icarus, on the command o Keeng Minos o Crete. The Minotaur wis eventually killed bi the Athenian hero Theseus.

A veelage is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smawer than a toun, wi a population rangin frae a few hunder tae a few thoosand (sometimes tens o thoosands).

....

This is going to sound incredibly hyperbolic and hysterical 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. Wikipedia is one of the most visited websites in the world. Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own, all because they were exposed to a mangled rendering of English being called Scots by this person and by this person alone. They wrote such a massive volume of this pretend Scots that anyone writing in genuine Scots would have their work drowned out by rubbish. Or, even worse, edited to be more in line with said rubbish.

Wikipedia could have been an invaluable resource for the struggling language. Instead, it’s just become another source of ammunition for people wanting to disparage and mock it, all because of this one person and their bizarre fixation on Scots, which unfortunately never extended so far as wanting to properly learn it.

This kid's edits dominate the Scots Wiki's landing page:

Edit: not sure why the last pic isn't loading, here's the Scots Wikipedia link https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

Update 1: Looks like the media is catching on to this and screeching about "cultural vandalism" similar to the reddit thread.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia
https://gizmodo.com/alleged-teen-brony-has-filled-the-scots-wiki-with-thous-1844845086
https://www.verdict.co.uk/scots-wikipedia-gibberish/

The teen admin's post history makes it seem like he's genuine and not trolling the Scots.

 

[The Lizard Queen]

Some trolls are losers.

Other trolls are legends.

 

[WinchesterPremium]

Scots really is just accented English tho.

Its like a European version of Eubonics.

 

[Agent Abe Caprine]

Member sin 2016 'n' nae a single archive in th' op? fur pity.
Archive

 

[{o}P II]

People who write in a Scottish accent are subhuman

 

[Brain.exe]

Some trolls are losers.

Other trolls are legends.

If he was a bad troll, we wouldn't be sitting here discussing him, now would we?

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Ok, I googled "Scot Language" to see what is this about, and I ended up in the wiki page reading without realising, hahahaha...

 

[Clem Fandango]

Scots really is just accented English tho.

Its like a European version of Eubonics.

Yep, this made me laugh

Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own,

It is, kiltfag. I know it makes Scots blood boil that they speak *spit* English, but they do. Saying "an aw" instead of "and all" (one of the examples used by the "hysterical linguist") doesn't make a new language.

 

[Lolcow Imperium]

holy shit thank you for bringing this to the farms attention i havent laughed this hard reading something in a long time.

 

[Kingu Cinnamon]

Scots really is just accented English tho.

Its like a European version of Eubonics.

People who write in a Scottish accent are subhuman

I know this is a pretty common take and probably told in jest but this is the exact reason that this is such a damaging action. Not to go about it but scots split from mainstream English in about 1375-ish. and as such it's not just an accent (that's Scottish English btw) which is only 175 years after the split of Danish and Swedish. It does have unique words , words not in use in modern English and it has its own grammatical rules. As such the argument if it is a language or a dialect have been going on forever, but this Wikipedia article just adds fuel to the fire of "haha lol it's just English but written to how haggis niggers talk, how stupid"

I know this post is an autistic scree but I just get saddened every time I hear a common falsehood about history like "the crusaders where just zealots that wanted to kill brown people" or "Scots is just mispronced English."

 

[WinchesterPremium]

I know this is a pretty common take and probably told in jest but this is the exact reason that this is such a damaging action. Not to go about it but scots split from mainstream English in about 1375-ish. and as such it's not just an accent (that's Scottish English btw) which is only 175 years after the split of Danish and Swedish. It does have unique words , words not in use in modern English and it has its own grammatical rules. As such the argument if it is a language or a dialect have been going on forever, but this Wikipedia article just adds fuel to the fire of "haha lol it's just English but written to how haggis niggers talk, how stupid"

I know this post is an autistic scree but I just get saddened every time I hear a common falsehood about history like "the crusaders where just zealots that wanted to kill brown people" or "Scots is just mispronced English."

Swedish is just accented Danish. Its like Scandinavian Ebonics.

 

[ObeseScreamingBlackMan]

You're now reading it all in Count Dankula's voice.

 

[From The Uncanny Valley]

I wish I could be this dedicated when it came to trolling.

 

[Sinner's Sandwich]

holy shit thank you for bringing this to the farms attention i havent laughed this hard reading something in a long time.

Farmers were already aware of it. The reddit OP stole it from 4chan or KF.

reddit General

When I think of people involved in a child free lifestyle I think of impromptu trips to Europe, ski trips, Instagramming at expensive, swanky high end restaurants and hotels. Not low class manchild shit like eating tendies in bed in your jammies watching bean mouth cartoons snuggling up next...

kiwifarms.net

 

[Tasty Tatty]

Ok, I'm confused now... it's just a regional way of speaking or is "Scot" a real language like, say, Gaelic? Wiki (...damn it!) says "Scottish Gaelic" is a thing.

I mean, there are different conjugations of spanish, but I doubt anybody would actually say Argentinian Spanish is a complete differnet language than common Spanish.

 

[Exorbital Columnations]

I know this is a pretty common take and probably told in jest but this is the exact reason that this is such a damaging action. Not to go about it but scots split from mainstream English in about 1375-ish. and as such it's not just an accent (that's Scottish English btw) which is only 175 years after the split of Danish and Swedish. It does have unique words , words not in use in modern English and it has its own grammatical rules. As such the argument if it is a language or a dialect have been going on forever, but this Wikipedia article just adds fuel to the fire of "haha lol it's just English but written to how haggis niggers talk, how stupid"

I know this post is an autistic scree but I just get saddened every time I hear a common falsehood about history like "the crusaders where just zealots that wanted to kill brown people" or "Scots is just mispronced English."

Law law law I cannae hear ye

 

[Daughter of Cernunnos]

They seem touchy about this. I'm all for preserving, promoting and protecting endangered languages but this one really does seem like accented English. What is it's relation to Gaelic? Is it a mix of Scottish Gaelic and English? I know of one hybrid language that's considered a language in it's own right- Michif; indigenous Cree language plus Canadian French. That's undeniably a language (afik), you'd think they'd focus on that (Gaelic). I find languages very interesting but only if it's explained in layperson terms. Linguists use so many technical terms and it's confusing.

Ok, I'm confused now... it's just a regional way of speaking or is "Scot" a real language like, say, Gaelic? Wiki (...damn it!) says "Scottish Gaelic" is a thing.

I mean, there are different conjugations of spanish, but I doubt anybody would actually say Argentinian Spanish is a complete differnet language than common Spanish.

Yeah, Gaelic is 100 percent legit. One of the few living Celtic languages but considered endangered. Good point about Spanish. No one considers Quebecois or Acadian French their own languages. It's a dialect and there's nothing wrong with that. I bet they do this to secure more funding to preserve their "language". But special government protections won't do much if nobody speaks it. Language is an organic thing. It exists in societies with all forms of government and even the absence of government.

 

[MarvinTheParanoidAndroid]

Is Scots even syntactically any different from plain English?

 

[Basil II]

lmao to any bagpipe niggers who speak scots and not gaelic.

 

[Aidan]

Ok, I googled "Scot Language" to see what is this about, and I ended up in the wiki page reading without realising, hahahaha...

This really drove it home for me thanks