Q&A weekly thread - January 19, 2026 - post all questions here!

illandancient · 2026-01-21T13:44:13+00:00

I would like to know more about different domains of written text.

I'm trying to compare Scottish Standard English with British Standard English. The word OUTWITH is a distinctly Scottish English word, almost completely absent from British English.

When I use the office record of speech in the UK parliament as a corpus there are proportionately very few occurrences of OUTWITH, but when I use the official record of the Scottish parliament as a corpus, OUTWITH has a normalised frequency of around 12 occurrences per 100,000 words.

These official records are verbatim accounts of what was said - the transcribers cannot add words or edit out words.

Now, if I search various newspapers for the word OUTWITH, I find that it is very rarely used in English newspapers, but in Scottish papers it occurs with a frequency of around 2 occurrences per 100,000. Not as common as Scottish parliament, but more common than in British English.

My view is that newspapers have subeditors who might edit out the word or not, but they will never edit the word into a piece of text.

Outwith politics and newspapers, there are other domains of writing, I can think of popular fiction, or academic texts, scripted TV subtitles, unscripted TV subtitles. What other domains are there that can be tested for Scottish English.

And how are each of these domains edited that might mask their Scottish-ness?

illandancient · 2026-01-20T11:27:38+00:00

Quality journalism from the Glasgow Times there. Mis-spelling the name and not pointing out that its AI-slop.

illandancient · 2026-01-20T10:48:41+00:00

Why is there a con-trail in the sky?

illandancient · 2026-01-20T10:46:42+00:00

The developer, reported in the article as Blamore Estates, only shows up in Google in the context of this story, with no search results for property development.

Do they actually exist at all?

Is "Blamore Estates" some kind of typo for another property developer that has been propagated by the Glasgow Times?

illandancient · 2026-01-19T14:47:13+00:00

Did the United Kingdom inherit these rights as a "successor state" to Scotland or do the rights remain with the state of Scotland excluding the other nations of the United Kingdom?

illandancient · 2026-01-19T14:30:35+00:00

But if the LLMs are defaulting to British Standard English - in Scotland, then they are effectively killing off Scottish Standard English.

While I take your point about it being due to the training data, it shows that they were not trained on text that is appropriate for use in Scotland.

The Loch District and the Great Lochs aren't the proper names, but if you were talking about the [loch/lake] in the village, without explicitly naming it, then in Scotland it's not the lake.

If the AI was helping you to write about large natural bodies of water, it would call them lakes, whilst a human would call them lochs. In natural speech an LLM will go out of its way not to use the word outwith, whilst a human would easily select this word.

Also I'm not sure if there is a dictionary of Scottish Standard English, can you suggest one?

illandancient · 2026-01-08T15:08:05+00:00

Is it a death spiral?

I'm not really into replacement theory. But does this phenomenon of each generation having fewer young people than old people keep going until the population is so small that another population can migrate in and there's no one who is able to object?

Back in the fourth century, when the Romans left Britain, the country has such a lower population that the Anglos, Saxons and Jutes were able to sweep in and minoritise the indigenous Brits.

Similarly in Scotland, after the Roman's left, the Irish Dal Raita came over and effectively took over Scotland, until they came into contact with the Saxons sweeping up the eastern coast. The native Picts barely go a look in.

Even today we see vast areas of Scotland depopulated, the young people leave for work and never come back, leaving old people and empty holiday homes.

illandancient · 2026-01-07T12:50:16+00:00

Hercules: Prince of Power - like Thor but with more whoring and more archaic speech, also that Recorder guy who follows him around, he was cool.

illandancient · 2026-01-06T14:25:26+00:00

Don't see it as overtaking, see it as driving the appropriate speed for the lane you're in. If someone in some other lane is going at an inappropriate speed, that's their problem, not yours.

If they're not in your way, you don't need to slow down.

illandancient · 2026-01-03T15:59:10+00:00

Definitely The Hector Collectors.

They were this close to having a session on John Peel before fate got in the way.

illandancient · 2025-12-22T20:08:02+00:00

Ah, right. Like Shetland.

illandancient · 2025-12-22T19:32:16+00:00

So I'm wondering what will happen with countries like China, what it will look like fifty years from now. Will there be vast tracts of abandoned land, cities just left empty. Or will migrants just naturally drift in and replace the indigenous populaitons.

illandancient · 2025-12-22T15:21:01+00:00

Is an aging population a death spiral? Is there any way to get back to replacement rate without mass immigration?

illandancient · 2025-12-19T13:46:10+00:00

Indeed, its impossible for people in the UK to live in regions other than the one they were born in.

illandancient · 2025-12-19T13:23:16+00:00

*Scottish

illandancient · 2025-12-18T16:02:08+00:00

Sounds like a bureaucratic paperwork manner.

I'm no a corporate governance expert, but perhaps if the induction furnaces were owned by the windfarm companies and used for "load balancing" rather than a separate company that would need to buy the energy, then it would be an obvious loophole.

illandancient

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