
FAQs regarding Scots Wikipedia controversy - elliekelly
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/FAQs_regarding_Scots_Wikipedia_controversy
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JdeBP
Unfortunately, it isn't just a _Wikipedia_ thing, and the headlines and
article titles are going to make people miss another problem. There are a
whole bunch of English-to-Scots translations on Wikidata and Wiktionary that
were added by the same person. Wikidata in particular was designed to be
machine-scrapeable, so there are an awful lot of translators on the WWW that
will now tell you that the Scots for "Italian cuisine" is "Italian cuisine".

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stevula
This is certainly true. After reading about this controversy, I wanted to get
a feel for the level of mutual intelligibility between Scots and English. To
do this, I tried to search for a translation of The Lord’s Prayer in Scots to
compare to the English version but up came this Wikipedia page
([https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laird%27s_Prayer](https://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laird%27s_Prayer)),
which might be fine but I can’t be sure. And then I realized I couldn’t really
trust any of the other top results not to be copied from Wikipedia either.

~~~
JdeBP
The very title, and of course the Wikidata entry that comes from that, is
highly suspect. Stevenson's and Macleod's 2012 _Dictionary of Scots Words and
Phrases in Current Use_ says, in the entry for "laird" that

> It is not used in titles for the nobility, and no-one would talk about the
> Laird's prayer.

Just to add to the mix: Michael Montgomery's "The rediscovery of the Ulster
Scots language" in _Englishes Around the World: General studies, British
Isles, North America_ (1997, edited by Edgar Werner Schneider) gives the
_Ulster_ Scots "Lord's Prayer" from a promotional leaflet in 1994 as:

    
    
        Our Father at bes aboon,
        Yer name be tovit, Yer kangrick cum,
        Yer gate be tae be on the yird abooon forbye.
        Gie us ilk day wor day's breid;
        Forgie us the wrangs we hae wrocht
        Bein as we forgies themums at wrangs worsels;
        Dinnae airt us intil temptin, but save us fae aa ills.
        For yours bes the kangrick, the pouer an the glorie,
        For aye an iver. Sae mote hit be.

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dang
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24273851)

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sreekotay
This seems maturely handled.

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timkam
I fully agree. As I understand it, the user was a teenager who did not know
better and thought they made a sincere effort to contribute. Young and/or
inexperienced contributors are prone to make somewhat similar mistakes, albeit
usually less extreme. What message would it send if they were punished for
this?

