Why do Scottish People dislike being called 'Scotch'?

Asking this because I've just seen the Stuart Leevid of him performing in scotland and him called the crowd 'scotch' and it being a big deal, is it like called an American a 'yank', or an English person a 'limey' (ie its dehumanising and vaguely offensive, but possible to use it in banter between friends) or is it really offensive and not cool, like referring to a German person as a 'Kraut' or worse (don't really want to type quasi racial nationalistic slurs on here, even in the context of meta question about such terms)

Thoughts!

It's just wrong. Scotch is a drink, the correct term is Scottish.

It's like calling someone from Holland "Hollandish". It's not offensive or anything, just a made-up word that no-one uses, except people who have no clue about the correct terms that exist.

United Kingdominium

United Statesians

Merkins

Not sure this really answers, but OED:

But before the end of the 18th c. Scotch had been adopted into the northern vernacular; it is used regularly by Burns, and subsequently by Scott; still later, it appears even in official language in the title of the ‘Scotch Education Office’. Since the mid 19th c. there has been in Scotland a growing tendency to discard this form altogether, Scottish, or less frequently Scots, being substituted. At the beginning of the 20th c., while in England Scotch was the ordinary colloquial word, the literary usage prefered Scottish in applications relating to the nation or the country at large or its institutions or characteristics. Thus it was usual to speak of ‘Scottish literature’, ‘Scottish history’, ‘the Scottish character’, ‘a Scottish lawyer’, ‘the Scottish border’. On the other hand, it would have sounded affected to say ‘a Scottish girl’, ‘a Scottish gardener.’ Although ‘the Scottish dialect’ is now the usual designation, it is seldom that Scottish is used as a n. instead of Scotch. Recent usage favours Scots in ‘Scots law’, and it is now almost universal in historical references to money, as ‘a pound Scots’.

In the 20th c. the word Scotch has been falling into disuse in England as well as in Scotland, out of deference to the Scotsman's supposed dislike of it; except for certain fixed collocations, (such as ‘Scotch mist’, ‘Scotch whisky’) Scottish (less frequently Scots) is now the usual adjective, and to designate the inhabitants of Scotland the pl. n. Scots is preferred (see Gowers/Fowler Mod. Eng. Usage (1965)).

It's anachronistic. So it's offensive in that you're ignoring how a people like to be referred to and using a pre-ww2 term.

http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100406160842AARATCg

shirty fuckers imo

Scotch = Whisky

It makes them feel cheap.

http://i.imgur.com/jhDUR.jpg

I thought the guy on the label was a leprechaun when I was a kid.

Britishers

http://southparkstudios.mtvnimages.com/shared/downloads/images/season-5/511/image-17.gif?width=320

Scotch broom(s?):

http://www.idahoweedawareness.org/vfg/weedlist/scotchbroom/media/scotchbroom1.jpg

So as not be confused with Canadians...
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2106/2435770590_b4d097d862.jpg

^^^incidentally an entertaining read.

Scotch is for whisky and pancakes. Any other context and you'd assume the person saying it is an American tourist.

A.J.P. Taylor makes a big deal of using "Scotch" in English History 1914-1945 because he's English and that is the "correct" English word. It's a huge fucking dick move.

Yeah that's an arrogant position to take. But lol no shock that it's Taylor taking it...he always came across like a pompous ass

I like him as a writer and like any historian you have to recognise his weak areas but it might be the first recorded genuine Challop in literature.

He also calls the book english history when using England to mean Britain had became an anachronism after wwii.

Ajp Taylor be trolling.

Origins is some challops.

i think the origins of the second world war--the big OMG CONTROVERSY one--is probably necessary to read and consider (along with a bunch of other stuff) if you're trying to get a decent understanding of the war. but yeah, comes across as kinduva dick.

ha xpost.

Not offended in the least by "Yank" btw.

But "Scotch" is clearly a descriptor for inanimate objects whereas "Scottish" is for people, animals and anything else living. (Much like "Oriental" for rugs, arts, etc vs. "Asian" for people and other living things.)

yank only bothers me because "yankee" is such a specific descriptor of a specific within-U.S. regional culture with specific touchstones and stereotypes, so saying "yank" to mean someone from, like, iowa always sounds kinda ignorant. but whatever, there's room i guess.

it just sounds kinda like if americans called people from london "geords" for some reason.

He also calls the book english history when using England to mean Britain had became an anachronism after wwii.

tbf he says that he's pedantically sticking to the series title, Oxford History of England, and will only refer to events north of the border inasmuch as they impact on specifically "English" history.

I get that, but I'm still not offended. I mean, it's not my wish to be called a "Yank," but it doesn't hurt my feelings either.

what about "Septic" as in rhyming slang "Septic Tank"?

I get that, but I'm still not offended. I mean, it's not my wish to be called a "Yank," but it doesn't hurt my feelings either.

yeah totally. this is a very minor concern. plus my english mother calls me a yank every time i do anything she thinks is silly and takes after my father (frequent), so i am pretty inured.

On the Yank/Yankee thing -- used among Americans, it definitely refers to New Englanders, but when talking among non-Americans, it refers to the generic American I've called myself one when I speak with you dirty, untrustworthy furriners.

"seppo"

Totally not bothered by this (unless it's being done by some twat in the hopes that it will cause offense). As said upthread it was the norm until recently anyway. Can't help but think some of the objection comes from Scottish chip on shoulder looking for another frying.

I've had some rousing arguments with americans who were really outraged by the septic/seppo rhymin slang used here. It was funny stirring them.

(this was on usenet, where I did shit like that out of boredom)

Rhyming slang is one of those "end run of our country's society and we're just trying to make words be all funny" things anyway. I guess when television and reading books and such gets all boring, you have to do something before the street riots.

no its older than that

Rhyming slang is awesome fuiud

It's kind of like the hashtag rap of English-speaking countries that aren't the US, right?

I don't understand what 'hashtag rap' means...so, no?

It's like calling someone from Holland "Hollandish".

Correct term is "Hollandaise" iirc.

hahah nice one Phil

A.J.P. Taylor makes a big deal of using "Scotch" in English History 1914-1945 because he's English and that is the "correct" English word. It's a huge fucking dick move.

― a SB-in' artist that been in the game for a minute (Noodle Vague), Sunday, March 27, 2011 10:53 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

haha was about to post exactly this

A.J.P. Taylor makes a big deal of using "Scotch" in English History 1914-1945 because he's English and that is the "correct" English word. It's a huge fucking dick move.

Was just reading how, when J.G.A. Pocock criticized English historians for consistently treating the history of England as the history of Britain, and vice versa, that A.J.P. Taylor said, "What have the Scots ever contributed to history"?

in the forward to english history 1914-1945 ajp taylor explains that it is called "english history" despite covering britain because before 1945 england and english was used interchangeably with britain and british. I'm not sure how true this is, though the conflating of britishness with englishness is inescapable in popular culture

to the present day

Used interchangeably in England, yes, and by English historians, definitely.

the conflating of britishness with englishness is inescapable in popular culture

― findom haddie (jim in vancouver), Wednesday, May 1, 2019 3:43 PM (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty sure I wasn't clear on what and where exactly Scotland was until very near adulthood so sorry abt that

Strangely in north america I find people who think that Scottish people aren't British which as a Scottish nationalist I'm not offended by but I am a little confused about. Like what do people think the UK is?

(xp) I'm assuming you weren't born and brought up in Great Britain though, that's the difference.

xp - Americans get more history from before 1702, after that history shifts hard to the colonies/Revolutionary War/etc.?

The quote from AJP Taylor and the JA Hobson hoohah served to remind me that these public school/Oxbridge writers and thinkers of Liberal Left were often just a snobbish and hideous and their right wing counterparts.

'as' not 'and'

https://www.reddit.com/r/Scotland/comments/ig9jia/ive_discovered_that_almost_every_single_article/

lol i love wikipedia

lol this made my day.

oh no

This is like the art brut-ish, dumber grandnephew of the Thomas Chatterton hoax.

Amazing

omg

Where'd Tom go?

Crivvens

A'm a ... a brony, an INTP

Ha ha argh

The time I was part of the problem: I added a couple of sentences to Middle English wikipedia and I don't know Middle English.

I did check every word I used came from some Middle English sources or the existing wiki pages, spelt the same and in the same grammatical case/context - so I liked to think it wasn't entirely made up, but, y'know.

Anyway someone came along and changed all the spellings to his preferred ME dialect and that was good, because at best what I wrote was likely a mishmash of different ME dialects and eras, and at worst it may have been totally wrong.

But it did make me wonder, if I were a ME scholar and contributed in a particular dialect/style and it was overwritten with this guy's favourite, would I be annoyed? Is it better for the wikipedia to be consistent or representative of variety?

Obviously as a non-linguist and non-Wikipedian it's not my place to answer those. And, also obviously, that would be a very different judgement call for living minority languages than for archaic language funsies. But questions like that are definitely things to bear in mind before you treat it as representative of the language, use the dataset in your computational linguistics AI model, etc.

Oh yeah, those and the nature of wikipedia and the sheer openness to loons, trolls, bored teenagers and quirky experimentalists & crusaders to do whatever they like with it, as above, of course. (Boring reply to funny story, sorry!)

first rule of wikipedia is most persistent douche wins

feeling sorry for the guy now:

A'v bin tawkin wi the Scots admin, an he's no in ae guid wey at aw. He's isnae takkin aw this awfy weel.

A'm actual feart fur him! A'm wirrit thit he micht dae somehing tae hissel...

— Cobra! 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 🇮🇹 🇮🇪 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 (@Cobradile94) August 26, 2020

I mean it was a bit of a weird and counterproductive quest but also seems like the quest of a bored and quite possibly neurodivergent kid and I hope he isn't being piled on too vigorously

(may not be a "guy" or a "he", the twitter thread is a bit confusing re pronouns so apologies if I've got them wrong)

yeah I feel sorry for the person. I mean it's a huge waste of time what they've done but they don't deserve to be hated, they're obviously misguided/obsessive.

the fact of the matter is that there are so few people in the world with a good understanding of the Scots language that it was possible for this to go undetected/publicized for so long. find the yen for revitalizing a, pretty much, extinct language over celebrating the many dialects of standard English which are currently in use in Scotland a bit weird tbh

Jen was suggesting earlier that there also just isn't a standardised Scots in the same way as there is English (for good or bad!)?

Well I suppose the standardisation of english stems from mass compulsory education, mass media etc. and before that it was all different dialects, scots was overtaken specifically by this diffusion of English.

The SLD is a Holyrood-backed independent attempt to standardise things (for use in official translations etc) and publishes dictionaries like https://dsl.ac.uk/ but the point's pretty much correct I think

Another worry about this wikipedia thing is the number of places that use wikipedia for training data. There are a number of systems that claim to support automated translation to and from Scots and actually turn out to support translation to/from whatever language this person has effectively made up.

try this on your mac terminal and be disappointed:

say -v Fiona "Greetings traveler, My name is Falconhoof and I will be your guide on your quest"

someone went to the trouble to make a phoneme ruleset, maybe an unofficial dictionary as well?