A SCOTSMAN Explains The SCOTTISH Accent(s) to a LONDONER

Comments · 2.9K

• AL

  @AleksiJoensuu · 4 years ago (edited)

  I went to Scotland for a couple weeks trip in 2016 or 2017. I&apos;m from Finland and fairly fluent in a kind of generic &quot;English&quot;. I fared fine around Edinburgh but had a hell of a time in Glasgow. One of my favourite travel memories is walking in to a Glasgow restaurant and asking for a coffee. The lady at the till, perhaps in their late 20s or early 30s, said &quot;I&apos;m srhglybgh drrgblyrggh th&apos; cfeeshmschke brechgegyyche&quot; (or something, I had absolutely no idea what she said). So I paused, and said &quot;I&apos;m... I&apos;m sorry, you&apos;re going to have to speak to me like I&apos;m a child,&quot; thinking to make a joke of it. What she did was one of the most brilliant pieces of customer service I&apos;ve seen. <br><br>So she was on board: didn&apos;t even blink, but instead leant in a bit, and calmly, clearly and slowly, and so, so warmly, smiling as if speaking to her own children, said &quot;I&apos;m soorry deeear, there&apos;s noo moore cooffee. The macheeens broooken!&quot; Tapping* her R&apos;s, stretching her vowels, filling my request perfectly. <br><br>So I had a tea, and a story that still makes me laugh.<br><br>* Edited from &quot;rolling&quot; A kind commenter pointed that scots don&apos;t roll their R&apos;s, and they were absolutely right. I can still hear it in my head and rolling is certainly the wrong word for that. :)

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• AL

  @alexwars8327 · 4 years ago

  Funny situation in pub in Spain. Two Scots from different parts of Scotland needed a Polish guy to translate between them. The Polish man was living for a long time in Scotland.

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• DB

  @dbry4756 · 4 years ago

  I traveled to Scotland several years ago. Conversed with a couple fellas in a pub, and understood nothing but &quot;cheers&quot;.

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• LE

  @leechumbley5440 · 3 years ago

  I&apos;m a Yank in Germany. I had an elderly Scottish woman patient who&apos;d married a German in her teens. She seemed withdrawn. Seeing her birthplace, I said oh we can speak English. She in German: no I&apos;ve forgotten everything. Really? Ja. So I sang Harry Lauder&apos;s &apos;If you can say it&apos;s a braw bricht moon licht litte nicht, then you&apos;re aw richt, ya ken.&apos; For a second she looked at me like she&apos;d seen a ghost, then broke into a smile from ear to ear and radiated joy. Like a miracle.

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• RE

  @reddturner6992 · 3 years ago

  I used to teach English in Leningrad. We had several native-English speakers from the US, England, Wales, Ireland. And Scotland. This one fellow, from Glasgow, had a very strong accent. One time he called me at home late at night, rather inebriated. I could not understand anything he said. I asked him to speak Russian to me and then we were just fine - an American and a Scotsman using Russian as a vehicle of mutual communication.

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• MA

  @maryavatar · 4 years ago

  I’m from Orkney, and I thought I spoke English until I moved to Edinburgh for university, and one could understand me. &nbsp;I was speaking Orcadian Scots. &nbsp;I also had a lab partner from Birmingham, and we had to write notes to each other, because we could understand each other’s written English, but not each other’s spoken English.

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• BO

  @BogsChips · 4 years ago

  yes yes, calm down Comments. &nbsp;the young man is sophisticated &amp; well-educated or &quot;posh&quot; as you all keep whining. Most people can discern that his accent is not as characteristically strong as most Scottish natives we all hear. Gideon addresses that Jack&apos;s &quot;r&quot; is much softer.<br>MAYYYYBE just mayyybe Gideon chose him for this video because he IS easier for Non-Scots to understand.

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• NO

  @nocturne7371 · 4 years ago

  Im Swedish and I used to live in Australia. A friend of mine there was born in Scotland and his parents had a strong scottish dialect. So strong that none of his friends in Australia could readlily understand them. But me, not having English as a first language had, to their big surprise, no problems understanding them. To me it sounded like a Swede from the north of sweden speaking with a very strong accent.

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• JU

  @julieannscotia7632 · 3 years ago

  As a yank married to a brilliant Scotsman from Ayrshire - we married 50 years ago this year. My first 2:years of marriage living in a small village; I was completely lost. My Hubbie had to translate for me constantly. It was hilarious! &nbsp;It took about 18 months for me to be able to understand the local lingo. &nbsp; Then we immigrated to America and it took my husband 5 years for everyone here to understand him!!! So I did the translation for him. Haaaaaa. &nbsp;This was interesting, but agree, a bit posh speaking for me. &nbsp;Use to the Glasgow dialect. &nbsp; JulieAnn from California 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

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• DO

  @doesnt_matter_x · 2 years ago

  My Scottish husband (born in Irvine, raised in Kilmarnock) had his &quot;customer service&quot; voice, which sounded like he went to an English boarding school to make it easier for non Scottish speakers. I was keen on his true accent in the bedroom 😘🥰

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• KA

  @karphin1 · 4 years ago

  The Gaelic language is taught still, here in Nova Scotia, on the Island of Cape Breton. &nbsp;A hundred years ago, there were 100,000 Gaelic speakers there. A proud Scottish heritage here. The surnames are often of Scots background….a boatload of MacDonalds, for example.

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• ZO

  @zososldier · 4 years ago

  I know this isn&apos;t the focus of this channel but it would be hilarious to get a American with a super deep southern accent to argue with a Scot with a thick Scot-English accent.

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