Any British aspies here?

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I'm British too.

Unfortunately, what you write makes it sound like you think the British (whoever they might be) are better than everyone else.

I don't think that, at all. If anything, a tendency for some people to believe that and act on it is one of the driving forces behind my rejection of that label.

I was born in the north of England of London parents.

The area was occupied by the Vikings and the local dialect in the town I went to school is closer to Norwegian than English.

I'm British.

I am a retired English "white collar" worker.

I'm middle class!

My ancestors came from England, Scotland, Italy and some Jewish from I don't know where, but they arrived in 1936 plus almost certainly some black African who arrived in Liverpool.

I'm a mongrel!

My ex is French, Italian, Algerian and Greek.

My children are Europeans (for another 23 months!)

I can claim to be most anything...

But really I am just me

Also a Brit here, from Lowestoft, Suffolk, tractor county lol

Isn't everyone ?

In historical terms, everybody is a "mongrel."

I'm curious: Could one, say from London, understand the local dialect of the area.

Is the vocabulary English, but the pronunciation Norwegian.

I can't lie: I'm a Yank LOL...so maybe I shouldn't be in this thread

I'm going to talk in general terms here.

Not counting recent immigrant languages (which would include everything from Polish to Bulgarian to Farsi to Urdu to Runasimi) there are several main languages spoken in Britain (!= the UK or the archipelago). These are English, Welsh, Scots and Gaelic.

Within that, there is local, regional and clinal variation. In the Northern Isles, the local dialects of Scots are heavily influenced by Old Norse via Norn (both functionally extinct). This includes a lot of vocabulary not found in English or other forms of Scots. An example would be the word for "small": "peerie" (Shetland) and the related "peedie" (Orkney). Even other native Scots speakers may need to listen very carefully to a native speaker of Orcadian (I've seen it happen: it's embarrassing!).

Gaelic, which isn't even related to English or Scots is still spoken as a first language in parts of the Outer Hebrides, although most if not all speakers of Gaelic are bilingual. Most place names are from Gaelic, ON, or corruptions of same. Most place names in Orkney and Shetland are derived from ON.

The Scots-accented English of much of Edinburgh would be intelligible to someone from London, but Glaswegian (Glasgow) or Doric (Aberdeen) probably wouldn't be, and even perhaps not to many other native Scots speakers. Cockney (parts of London) or Scouse (Liverpool) might be unintelligible to a speaker of a more formal speaker of English, never mind many Scots.

I register switch. When talking to someone from outside the Scottish central belt I'll typically speak a very formal version of English. If I'm in a cafe on the Fife coast I'll switch instinctively to the Lowland Scots I learned in the playground.

Hope that helps.

Aren't The Darkness from Lowestoft?

Good post - although Cockney is only one part of East London (if you were born where you can hear the Bow bells ringing you are a Cockney)

I love accents and dialects (along with learning about cultures and languages). My town has just 1 word that it holds as it's own odd local creation from many years ago and everyone I know here knows it, and no one outside the town seems to have a clue.

Cheeselog (that is what we call a woodlouse)

Yes they are, I used to stay at the drummers house as his brother used to baby sit me as a kid

Yes, I think i could be getting the same jitterbug feeling when I'm speaking to members of the national migration clergy and American Actors, playwrights and subtitleists.

Ha Ha love it.

Thanks very much, Niall.

I am assuming that "Scots" is either derived from, or is a dialect of, English. I know it's not Gaelic.

I'm a Brit. My county happens to have one of the ugliest accents.

Scots is a Germanic language, closely related to English. Gaelic is a Goidelic language, only very, very distantly related to either. English is closer to German than Gaelic is to English or any of the surviving continental European languages. They are not mutually intelligible.

Here is an article in Gaelic. I think this is about the USA: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2017/01/27 ... -bhagairt/ Something about public land in America, I think. Something about the land of a big hill, possibly one that's "very wet" ("drùidhteach"), or maybe just a reference to a big river. There are mentions of Roosevelt and John Muir, which are giveaways. I know some vocabulary (it can be useful in the hills), mostly geographical and cultural, but don't speak the language.

Scots diverged from what became modern standard English during the Middle English period. There are modern loan-words from both English and Gaelic, but there are several forms, from Braid (broad Scots), through to Scottish Standard English, which is what you'll hear in Edinburgh, for example. I speak Lallans, but usually only around other Lallans speakers. Here is an article about French influences on the work of Robert Burns: http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2017/04/25 ... ae-or-dee/ This is Braid rather than Lallans, so I can read it, but need to check some vocabulary.