Proportion of people who can speak Scots or Gaelic in Scotland (2011)
Proportion of people who can speak Scots or Gaelic in Scotland (2011)
‘I’ve heard that people in that big white area – the recently Gaelic part of the Highlands – have a less pronounced Scottish accent than those in the rest of the country, since there’s no established variety of Scots there.
That’s basically the same in the Nordics too. Those areas which historically had a sami population don’t barely have what could be called a dialect which is different from standard swedish or standard bokmål. Some linguistics traits you for example only find in Finnmark and the posher parts of Oslo in Norway due to the sami population got forced to speak norwegian, which obviously was bokmål/riksmål and not the local norwegian dialects. Same in Sweden with rikssvenska instead og bondska. And I would guess the same goes for finnish in the areas which historicaly have been populated by sami or swedes. Though I guess this is a trend which is to be expected. Spain and France may have the same trends too, though idk.
Look up Irish (gaelic), and you’ll see how it just collapses aswell. All the celtic languages have declined alot the latest 200 years except kinda welsh (and Cornish, but that was revived and is still in its rebirth, so going from 0 to a couple thousands is impressive, but still a very small language). Also, norn in Shetland basically died out in the 1940s. Like in the last native speaker died in the late 1800s, but a guy had grown up speaking it with his grandparents and still knew how to speak it until he died in WW2. So currently there’s an effort to bring back the language, as the shetlandic and also the Orkney dialect to a lesser extent have kept many remnants from the norn language of the vikings. I think that project will really attract alot of learners in the upcoming years, becoming a symbol of their norse identity and all that cultural reawekening they are currently undergoing especially on Shetland.’
1834 map of Scotland
3D Rainfall Map of Scotland
3D Rainfall Map of Scotland
‘How does Scotland handle that much water without flooding?
Lots of bogs to deal with the water, and lots of rivers/streams to carry it to the sea.’
Scottish River Basins
Scottish River Basins
‘The shape of Scotland (and the rest of UK) is very beautiful. I like how Scotland has parallel lakes (lochs). How different is the history and culture of the islands off the coast when compared to the mainstream island ?
The highlands and islands of scotland have similar cultures due to their low population densities and the highland clearings having changed life there as well. They’re all much more rural and have much higher levels of Gaelic speakers compared to the Scottish lowlands.’
