Scotched English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Scotched English is standard English that has been changed to make it look like Scots. This can come about in two or three ways:

It might just be an outcome of the fact that most native Scots speakers have only ever been taught how to write (standard) English and this makes them change the Scots in their head into (standard) English grammar and idiomatic expressions.

The people writing aren't native Scots-speakers. When writing they are thinking in English and just changing the words (lexemes) and spellings of the English model in their heads. Another form of this is where an English text is taken as a foundation and then the words or spellings are changed.

Often words found in dictionaries are used out of context or people choose idiocyncratic words, idioms, morphological elements or syntactic structures that are taken from or founded in English and aren't a part of Scots, and is used where Scots would have an existing authentic version of its own. This normally comes about because of the lack of knowledge of Scots on the part of the writer.

It also may come about because the Scots dialect of the writer is very anglified.