#but who is generally seen as unbearably common and vulgar

[mekanikaltrifle]

tbh the survival of small languages and dialects of all stripes is deeply important to all our cultures-- and I don't mean this in a weirdo blood-and-soil nationalist way-- because it helps to keep different ways of thinking and seeing alive. Often, languages come with their own perceptions on time and colour and days and night, anything they could possibly have. Major languages too, but the smaller ones are always at risk of being lost to time... and with them go the context, the meanings and the different perspective that its individual speakers could have had.

For instance, in Scots, there's a fundamental minor difference to time and how it relates to the individual compared to standard English. In Scots you can often hear folks saying phrases like 'that's me away' (or awa' in very broad Scots, pronounced a bit like awah), when you're looking to leave a place. Taken literally in English that would be incorrect, as you are not in fact physically leaving, and it's not like you're watching your own body wander off out the door. However, in this case the 'what is about to be', and the 'what is right now' are functionally the same thing. Time becomes a little malleable in the Scots way of looking at it.

Of course this is hardly the only example and I am sure people can add their own examples of similar but... it's interesting to think about, isn't it? How your language approaches both the physical and the abstract, and how its constructed your brain to think. Because language physically shapes your brain, and knowing more is always good for the old grey matter.

[calltainn]

OP, ye cannae go leaving aw this in the tags:

#i love the scots language now

#I used to be IMMENSELY embarrassed about speaking it

#and if anyone wants to know why you are well within your rights to ask!

#the Scots-speaker angle is a very strange wee existence

#not the beautifully-endangered faerie-like brogue of the Gaels

#not the robust unstoppable beast of the Anglos

#a strange offshoot sister from days gone by who never left

#but who is generally seen as unbearably common and vulgar

#despite its history as both a language of law and a language of poetry

tbh the survival of small languages and dialects of all stripes is deeply important to all our cultures-- and I don't mean this in a weirdo blood-and-soil nationalist way-- because it helps to keep different ways of thinking and seeing alive. Often, languages come with their own perceptions on time and colour and days and night, anything they could possibly have. Major languages too, but the smaller ones are always at risk of being lost to time... and with them go the context, the meanings and the different perspective that its individual speakers could have had.

For instance, in Scots, there's a fundamental minor difference to time and how it relates to the individual compared to standard English. In Scots you can often hear folks saying phrases like 'that's me away' (or awa' in very broad Scots, pronounced a bit like awah), when you're looking to leave a place. Taken literally in English that would be incorrect, as you are not in fact physically leaving, and it's not like you're watching your own body wander off out the door. However, in this case the 'what is about to be', and the 'what is right now' are functionally the same thing. Time becomes a little malleable in the Scots way of looking at it.

Of course this is hardly the only example and I am sure people can add their own examples of similar but... it's interesting to think about, isn't it? How your language approaches both the physical and the abstract, and how its constructed your brain to think. Because language physically shapes your brain, and knowing more is always good for the old grey matter.