Talk:Proposals for closing projects/Closure of Scots Wikipedia

Comments after close

[1] was removed as a comment after close. The following was the text. --Abd 17:39, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Page 139 of this book by Cambridge University Press makes it clear that it is not officially or legally recognized anywhere, not even within Scotland. Chzz already disproved that the one group that "recognized" Scots by pointing out they had no legal authority, while I pointed out that the ISO codes are created by a corporation that sells standardizations and has nothing to do with linguistics on top of them providing a code for Cockney, which is clearly not a language. Ottava Rima (talk) 12:53, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Additionally, this comment: --MF-W 18:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

IT is ridiculous to consider closing a Scots language wikipaedia. There a considerable amount of literature in it. Robert burns wrote mostly in it. Queen Elizabeth the first of England was considered to speak 6 languages, one of them Scots. The problem with the language is that it is mutually intelligible with english. This is an easy concept of your perhaps portugese-spanish speaking, or scandinavian. Scots is a difficult language to seperate simply because of the dominance of English. Had Scotland not united with England and wales to for the UK it may well have continued to develop a more unified and easily recognised written form. I think Most Scots (Myself included) would admit that distinguisinshing between the languages is difficult.

In any case, whether you consider the Scots a language or a dialect, surely keeping the wikipaedia in scots project open is valid for the following points; 1. Historical significance of the language (Consider the phrase "Auld lang Syne") 2. Current recognition by the European charter for minority languages. 3. Recognition and promotion of the language by the Devolved Scottish Government. 4. Estimated 1.5-2 million users of the language in the Scottish Census 5. Official use of Scots in both Government and Education in both Scotland and Northern Ireland.

It seems that not only will a scots wikipaedia not only enrich the understanding Native english speakers worldwide (I cant think of any other language that is so mutually intelligble to english), it would help preserve the condition of a language that was recognised distinctly as seperate only 400 years ago as well as promote the cultural and linguistic identity of Scotland, Northern Ireland and the Scottish Diaspora around the world.

I would also argue that simply by the fact that other dialects of english and other languages seem to have there own language pages (Such as American, UK, Pirate!, Spanish (Castellano), Spanish (Peru)etc.etc.) and are in many ways more identical than scots surely A Scots Wikipaedia would be great thing! — The preceding unsigned comment was added by JohnShanks (talk)

And furthermore: --MF-W 18:07, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

• Support - I know this proposal has been rejected, but I just had to post a comment since I fully support the removal of it. First, I am from Scotland. I have lived here all my life and live in Glasgow, the most populous city in Scotland. I have grown up hearing Scottish English, yet I can't understand lots of the "words" in the "Scots" Wikipedia and the pronunciation of the majority of the words has no phonetic resemblance to the way they are spelled on the "Scots" Wikipedia. Furthermore, Scottish dialects of English are never formally written, they are not taught in any schools and I doubt there is a single person in this world who would actually find it easier to read than the English Wikipedia. I'd love to know where the "200,000 native speakers" reside, because I have never heard of them. The comparison of it do Danish/Swedish/Norwegian is ridiculous, because those are official languages and have recognised uniformity in written spelling, and are actually taught in schools and appear on official documents. It is entirely correct that it's about as legitimate as a "lolcats" Wikipedia, possibly even less so because at least "lolcats" English is actually written by some people! A complete waste of time and bandwidth.Impulsion (talk) 17:40, 21 January 2013 (UTC)

Having spent a whole year investigating this topic in detail I would NOT agree that it should be removed. Though the historical evidence is clear and abundant that until the 18th century the name 'Scots' or 'Scottish' was used as no more than a synonym for the English language it is is still a legitimate subject for investigation and enquiry. Indeed the history of the idea that Scots is or ever was a distinct language from English is complex and fascinating. I would therefore strongly oppose deleting it. I would of course be pleased if the editors of the Wiki pages would do a bit (in fact a lot) more homework and produce a neutral non-POV article which includes even some of the overwhelming historical evidence which refutes the Scots language argument. (P.S. Contrary to the above, the well known list of languages spoken by QEI did NOT include one called 'Scots' even though the list does include other minority British languages). Cassandra

Reddit: ”I’ve discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can’t speak Scots”

Maybe time to reopen this discussion, but for a completely different reason, according to this thread: I’ve discovered that almost every single article on the Scots version of Wikipedia is written by the same person - an American teenager who can’t speak Scots //Rotsee (talk) 19:24, 25 August 2020 (UTC)

Another metawiki discussion on the same topic has been opened, I will link it here so that perhaps the conversations can feed off of one another. Nesirky (talk) 02:03, 26 August 2020 (UTC)