Scots is generally regarded as a distinct language, but this looks to me like it’s probably Scottish English. Compare that with the front page of Scots Wikipedia* which is much harder to understand than this is. Half of the weirdness in this message is spelling English words how they’re pronounced with a strong Scottish accent:
Urgh, I’m fair scunnered with that daft idiot down the road, always haverin about his new motor like it’s something pure gallus
Which only leaves a small number of dialect-specific words.
*
Just…don’t look into the history of said site. Or do, it’s very entertaining but also kinda sad.
Scots shares many words with English, and many words that look like they are English words spelled differently are indeed distinct Scots words, like gie, wi, aheid, heid / heed, oot, pairt, whit, et cetera. Scots also has a ton of regional dialects, and is spelled phonetically, so spellings can vary widely. There is also literary Scots vs spoken Scots. The Scots on Wikipedia for example is not the sort of Scots you’d usually hear someone speaking, or not at least that I’ve ever heard. Scots vs English as used today is often more of a spectrum than a clear distinction for these reasons. Like, sure, you can write in such a way that 99% of the words are not recognizeable to someone who doesn’t know Scots, but a sentence could also contain words that work in either language and still be considered Scots because those words are shared. There is also writer intention: a writer may use the English spelling of a word, whereas they’d use the Scots version in speech. Likely a result of the fact that for years, Scots speakers have been punished for speaking and writing Scots in schools, as a part of an intentional attempt at erasure of the language. This is where we get features like the “apologetic apostrophe,” which further muddies the waters, making it as though Scots writers are writing ‘English with an accent.’
IMO, I’d definitely call the language in this post Scots.
Scots is generally regarded as a distinct language, but this looks to me like it’s probably Scottish English. Compare that with the front page of Scots Wikipedia* which is much harder to understand than this is. Half of the weirdness in this message is spelling English words how they’re pronounced with a strong Scottish accent:
Which only leaves a small number of dialect-specific words.
*
Just…don’t look into the history of said site. Or do, it’s very entertaining but also kinda sad.
Scots shares many words with English, and many words that look like they are English words spelled differently are indeed distinct Scots words, like gie, wi, aheid, heid / heed, oot, pairt, whit, et cetera. Scots also has a ton of regional dialects, and is spelled phonetically, so spellings can vary widely. There is also literary Scots vs spoken Scots. The Scots on Wikipedia for example is not the sort of Scots you’d usually hear someone speaking, or not at least that I’ve ever heard. Scots vs English as used today is often more of a spectrum than a clear distinction for these reasons. Like, sure, you can write in such a way that 99% of the words are not recognizeable to someone who doesn’t know Scots, but a sentence could also contain words that work in either language and still be considered Scots because those words are shared. There is also writer intention: a writer may use the English spelling of a word, whereas they’d use the Scots version in speech. Likely a result of the fact that for years, Scots speakers have been punished for speaking and writing Scots in schools, as a part of an intentional attempt at erasure of the language. This is where we get features like the “apologetic apostrophe,” which further muddies the waters, making it as though Scots writers are writing ‘English with an accent.’
IMO, I’d definitely call the language in this post Scots.