Guilt Free Railing 12

[WouldBeGood]

The railing goes on

[quote forfucksakenett]@Haudyourwheesht of course but that gives rise to very interesting questions about what dialects we give privilege to and why. The more we hear varying dialects, the more people will get used to them.

It makes sense I suppose to have some sort of RP type neutral accent but giving space to a variety of dialects is never going to be a bad thing. [/quote]
@forfucksakenett I don't think there's a judgement in the situation I was describing, it's just that someone who wasn't brought up in Scotland can find it difficult to understand even a moderate Scottish accent, so it's naive to expect people not from Scotland to understand a broad dialect of any variety. It's just not maybe the way to catch the demographics who aren't being vaccinated. And I doubt Janey Godley is the way to catch the young either.

Having now seen the advert it's inspired a name change

@OhWhatsTheDifference

God I just saw the advert

Her accent is fine, it's the fucking irritating tone of it. Very 'wha's like us' i.e. aren't Glaswegians fucking hilarious, the Scousers of Scotland.

Yes. It’s the couthy tone that gets right on my tits

@janeygodless 🤣

And it’s not dialect but accent isn’t it?

@shouldistop, does he have a temperature? And does he need to 'go' anywhere, like nursery or childminder?

Putting my head above the parapet If he doesn't have a temperature or need to go anywhere, I probably would assume its a baby cold and forget about it.

I know officially he should be tested, and the household isolate until results are back but really about 90% of tests come back negative, so odds are it's nothing. The torture of testing little kids is rotten, plus the faf of isolating for most likely nothing.

Yes @Haudyourwheesht but they only struggle to understand it because they are not used to it is my point. We, as a whole nation, don't generally struggle with a relatively thick easy London accent because we are exposed to it more through tv and media. I'm not suggesting that you are being judgmental but we as a whole nation are.

Dialects are only hard to understand because we are not used to them not because one is more inherently difficult than another.

It's a regional dialect @WouldBeGood

East London

@Lockdownbear no temperature, he doesn't need to go anywhere, I'm still off with him. I could even avoid taking him anywhere indoors this week.

@shouldistop we have stopped testing DS unless we have to (like a Dr insists) he's become terrified of it.
Instead we will do regular lateral flow tests and he stays off nursery as he's unwell anyway.
There is so much going around as well as covid! Out of the 5 under 3s I've known test positive only one has had symptoms but it was sneezing lots!
There is also evidence that young children process the virus a lot quicker than adults so actually they aren't infectious for as long.

@forfucksakenett accents it depends a thick geordie one and I'm lost.
True dialects are difficult unless you know the words understanding a true cockney for example is very hard (and I grew up in South London!) Same goes with doric or the Norfolk broads dialect. But majority of people don't speak in the dialect most of the time people from the area will use the odd word here or there but that's different.

I'm pretty good with understanding accents having lives all over the UK including areas with strong accents such as Wales, the SW etc but it does take a while to get your ear in to them!

So other posters are right really for a public health message it's not going to get to large parts of the population so seems another pointless cost and advert.

Just to change the topic slightly, I'd like to rail about the high cost of train tickets.

I think I may have miscalculated my work holidays and am due some extra days for bank holidays so I thought I'd take a week off in November. Vaguely thought about going abroad on my own, but not sure if I'm brave enough, so checked out train fares to London instead as friend might come but won't fly.

A standard London return from Edinburgh plus 4 nights in a Premier Inn costs more than 4 nights HB in Tenerife at a 4 star hotel and that's before I add on the play I want to see and any attractions.

If you don't book your train tickets the second they go on sale the price is exorbitant. It's ridiculous. They claim they want people to use public transport more then it's overpriced, crammed and dirty. And the London trains are always delayed.

Oh and completely non cancellable as well @Haudyourwheesht.
Oh well maybe a few nights in the Lake District or see if I'm brave enough to go abroad again solo after we (hopefully) do our October Tenerife trip.
I wouldn't mind so much paying if I didn't feel that making holiday plans for November is as permanent as building a sand castle.

@rookiemere they are usually much cheaper closer to the time but worth double checking if they overlap with the rugby as that pushes prices up!
It can be cheaper to get singles and worth checking out the times of the trains.

DH recently travelled down near London for a funeral, the price dropped the week before and it was cheaper for him to go in first class on 2 singles than a standard return!

Thanks @Scottishskifun I'll wait and see what's happening nearer to the time then, still got to do battle to get the hours back anyway.

Our organisation seems to think that good old fashioned line management where checking everyone has their correct holiday allocation, is very old fashioned,but when we used to manage it on cards, I never lost any days. Now it's all on a system and no one cares other than to bean count the overall hours.

It's also worth looking at some of the fare comparison sites like red spotted hanky and others.

If it's a city break, I'd recommend Liverpool. Lots of places to see in the centre and it felt very safe to me. It usually involves a few train changes which seems to make it cheaper somehow.

I've not been to Liverpool @ElephantOfRisk so that's a possibility, but the draw of London is I could also meet up with some ex work pals and maybe my cousin.
Oh well who knows where we'll be in November. I'm getting increasingly pessimistic about the possibility of more restrictions - mind you a few nights away in South Queensferry would also be nice ( and also roughly same cost as Tenerife ).

Train tickets are a strange thing. While you can buy a straight through ticket some times it's cheaper to buy individually
I used to travel to Cumbria from Lanarkshire. Trying to buy the tickets via Train line straight through was about £20 dearer than pre booking the Glasgow-Carlisle section and paying Lanarkshire to Glasgow at the station and the same for the Carlisle to Cumbria train.

But knowing how the tickets work is mind boggling.
Another odd thing at one point we had a family rail card it was bought for a family trip to London. I was going into Glasgow was DS2 who was just a baby, it was cheaper to pay for him and use the rail card than just pay for me.

Do they still do group tickets on trains?

shouldistop Glad you got your day out, and that you're feeling better! But poor minishouldistop. I agree with the others - if you can just minimise going out for a bit I'd do that. If he develops a fever too, maybe test, but it really does sound traumatic for tinies.

Serious question - but is "strong Scottish" in whatever area, a dialect, or a language? I'm willing to accept its a dialect of the Scots language (as Scots is spoken in Scotland and English in England). But it's no easier for me as an English speaker to understand the different words/ grammar than eg scouse or geordie or yorkshire - which are definitely dialects of english. But I'm really struggling to work out where the line is drawn between something stopping being a dialect and becoming a language. Unless it is literally geopolitical despite any greater variations in a single language within an area.

[quote shouldistop]@Lockdownbear no temperature, he doesn't need to go anywhere, I'm still off with him. I could even avoid taking him anywhere indoors this week. [/quote]
I'd just carry on regardless, I maybe wouldn't take him to any baby groups just to avoid any other wee ones picking it up and having the same dilemma.

@ResilienceWanker I have questioned that before dialect vs language.
There seems to be an argument that 'Scots' as in the dialect of Burns is a language. But in my head it's an Ayrshire dialect. Burns talks about bairns, but I don't think that has ever been a word in Glasgow its weans.
Does anybody use the word 'syne'?

I remember a friend being flummoxed by an old workmate using 'cried' before he eventually figured it out it was 'called', as in "what are you cried/called"
I was in Edinburgh and had someone tell me about his Doctor, then I twigged it was his Daughter he was taking about he repeated it about 3 times for me.

Language evolves through time as well and people travelling more and listening to films and telly accents and dialects will diminish in time.

Yes it's an interesting one. My degree only skirted round this and I honestly don't know where the line is.

I had a very vocal American professor who insisted that Scots was not commonly spoken in Scotland. He argued that most of us spoke a regional dialect of English with a few Scots words thrown in. This seems about right to me but my degree is in literature not language. I do have a Scots dictionary though and the vast majority of words in it are completely unrecognisable to me.

@forfucksakenett I'd agree with your professor. Regional dialect with a few Scots words.

I have the Gruffalo in Scots there are words in it I had no clue about thing like Hoolet, which is Owl. I have never heard anyone talk about a hoolet.

Agree, there is no "Scots", whatever the powers that be would like to think. Regional dialect varies enormously around the country. My three grandparents who were alive when I was growing up were from Fife, the Borders and Ayrshire - they all spoke in different ways and used different words and expressions. A great aunt from Aberdeen used a lot of Doric words, a girl I shared accommodation with at Uni from Shetland appeared to be speaking a totally different language at times.

"Scots" isn't a language, it's a mish mash, a hybrid dialect based on English. Most people in Scotland use some dialect words - stookie instead of plaster cast, or wee instead of little. But nobody, speaks the full-on "Scots language" in the way the Scottish government would like to believe it exists as something totally separate from English.

If "Scots" is a separate language, then so is American English, Australian English or South African English.