In Scotland Wales and Ireland (UK bit)

The Orange Order.

Amalfi you are so right about the language being viewed suspiciously, and it is so sad. I know plenty of your stereotypical middle class, middle aged white protestants who view someone giving a child an Irish name as aggressive and bigoted and just can't see past all the crap to see that there is nothing wrong with wanting to hold on to your culture. The fact that these are often the same people who bang on about their Orange heritage being misunderstood and not bigoted at all is a huge irony...

You need to remember that in Ireland, as a while, the Irish language was almost completely wiped out by the penal laws enforced by the English in the 1800s then with partition irish was marginalised by the unionist government in the 6 counties. 'Northern irish' became extinct in 1985/86 when the last native speaker died and it wasn't until 2000 when the EU stepped in to protect minority languages that it finally had some protection.

Irish names became popular in the late 1980s early 1990s in northern Ireland when there was a big push to 'regain our roots' but it is still looked at with suspicion by some unionists/twats under unionist guise.

Unfortunately our native language has been hijacked by politicians on both sides as a cultural war even though I do know many protestant children who learn irish . It proves that the conflict was never about religion as the media tried to paint it but about freedom, oppression and cultural identity.

This is off topic, but what is the correct term for the island comprising Ireland and Northern Ireland?

Ireland 🙄

Jazz do you have a link to those recordings? I'd love to have a listen.

I lived in Aberdeen for a spell. The Doric was really interesting. I saw a woman having a big bust up with her boyfriend in the street when I first moved there and she was yelling "FIT? FIT?" at him. I thought they were arguing about fitness or him calling someone else "fit" as in good looking . Only realised later that she was saying "WHAT"?

I also heard "Quine" for woman and "loon" for man. Is it "loonies" for boys? I asked my boss if she had children and she said "two loonies". I loved it! So much more interesting than where we live now. It's a little vanilla in this particular part of the Home Counties, though I do like it here too in a different way. I'm Irish (if I'm allowed to say that as someone from NI) but am so homesick for Scotland! I'm homesick for NI too of course.

Jolly it sounds as though Scots is around a generation behind the resurgence of Welsh. I hope it manages the same success.

My FIL (b1935) still worries slightly that it is more important for the children to learn English than Welsh for them to "get on" in life. When he was a child Welsh was only to be used at home, and for the lower classes. But my son, born in 2002, will be able to study the majority of a degree syllabus through the medium of Welsh if he decides to study in Wales. The progress since the 1960s with Cymdeithas yr Iaith etc has been enormous.

Life. I'm so baffled I can't even spell.

HOW IS IT POSSIBLE FOR PEOPLE NOT TO HAVE A BASIC GRASP OF THE GEOGRAPHY THAT MAKES UP THE COUNTRY THEY HAVE LIVED IN ALL THEIR LIVES?

Sorry just had to get that off my chest.

LucyBabs Saoirse is Seersha to me, I am baffled by Ms. Ronan saying it rhymes with inertia but maybe she figures it's as close as it's going to get??

OP Irish changes so much around the country that it can be very confusing. I heard a very interesting guy recently saying that years ago (as in 150+) two men could meet in the Midlands, one speaking Donegal Irish and one speaking Cork/Kerry Irish and neither would be able to understand the other based on accent and pronunciations.

My mom is from the East coast of Ireland, I'm from the West. She physically can't say the name Caoimhe the way I do. I say Quee-va, she says Kee-va, she struggles to do the Qu sound, entertains me greatly :)

And don't get me started on those who say "you say MOM? That's so American!". It's bloody not. It comes from Irish, my Nan was born in 1922 and said it, she wasn't exactly sitting I front of Nickelodeon copying it!

I think some Gaelic names are pronounced differently depending on if you are talking to the person directly or referring to them in the third person ie. Mhairi is pronounced Mahri in one case but Vahri in the other, it's the same with Seamas and Hamish, non native speakers didn't understand this when they adopted the names hence the confusion. I can' t remember which way round it is though ( Scottish Gaelic BTW).

I always thought Scots counted as a language because it developed in parallel to English from a similar root rather than branching off from English or being a degraded version.

I'm Irish and I just can't rhyme Saoirse with inertia. Seer sha rhymes with ersha (not a word)
Where the hell is Saoirse Ronan from if she thinks Saoirse and Inertia rhyme

OP you were given a tough time at the start of this thread, especially given you were just seeking knowledge! I hate when Mumsnet gets aggressive, it puts people off asking things in the first place.

In answer to the Neeve/Nee-uv thing - it's partly down to accent I suppose, if you listen to some Irish accents it'll become more clear - I don't know if you're acquainted with - the wee girl on that would pronounce it Nee-uv, but a lot of Niamhs would say Neeve.

The Scots thing - it's a language and has many different dialects within it. This website is great, it gives you loads of info about it and gives you lots of soundbites to listen to.

Luna I agree that there's a load of similarities between English and Scots but that's a particularly English excerpt you've chosen. In the same poem you have:

But Tam kend what was what fu' brawlie:
There was ae winsome wench and waulie,
That night enlisted in the core,
Lang after ken'd on Carrick shore;

I doubt my English DH would have much chance of understanding that! Awesome poem though, my favourite Burns. I'd also agree that sadly there is a class element involved in the use of Scots. My parents generation often received the strap for speaking in Scots at school, which boils my piss as not only is it a fantastic, very expressive language but it's part of our culture and when you look through the generations you hear a marked difference in the dilution of Scots. My great grandparents spoke either Gaelic or Scots (depending on the side of the family) but none of my generation speak Gaelic (something I hope to change one day) and only four out of 13 of us understand broad Scots, six of us use Scots mixed with English in every day conversation and the rest might recognise words like 'wee' or 'bairn' but that's about it. Most primary and secondary schools here teach some Scots poetry, secondary schools study Scottish literature (ironically as part of the English curriculum) but this isn't necessarily written in Scots, just by Scottish authors.

I would absolutely recommend reading some of the Scots versions of the Julia Donaldson books - here's a link to the Gruffalo being read on YouTube!

Sorry your thread got somewhat derailed, OP, hope you got a satisfactory answer to your original question.

treaclesoda The Scots language derives from Northumbrian English, hence a lot of of common words and expressions, although Scots then went on to pick up influences from Flemish, Norman, Old Norse, Gaelic and Cumbric too, making it into the disticnt language it became in its heyday.

Some of the words claimed as Scots words aren't really, they're just English words spoken in an exaggerated accent.

And that is the Scottish Cringe in a nutshell!

Treaclesoda - my mum's side of the family all come from Co Antrim and we have spent many happy holidays there. In the past there was lots of movement between Scotland and Northern Ireland which really are very close. I have always felt very "at home" in Northern Ireland and the way people speak is very familiar to me. Much more so than the way husband's relations from the North West of England speak, even though there was a lot of Irish immigration there too.