The uvular r's of French and the fricative, glottal ch's of German (and Scots) are essential to one's imagination of these languages and their speakers.
The Picts and Scots who were seen as the least civilised people on earth by the Romans would, one day, renew their capital city, Edinburgh, as an architectural homage to Roman culture.
And he made sure Thomson kept the Scots words in the song, arguing " There is a naievete, a pastoral simplicity, in a slight intermixture of Scots words and phraseology."
I think according to the census, it's at least one million or two million, one or two million Scots claim to speak Scots. OK, so that's about 25 to 30 %.
And on February 8, at the age of 44, Mary Queen of Scots was executed without Elizabeth first being consulted — a condition of Mary's execution that she insisted on but was disregarded.
As they cleared their heads after Burns Night on January 25th, having celebrated their national poet with whisky and haggis, another hangover loomed for Scots in less than a week's time.
Across the Atlantic came successive groups of Englishmen, Frenchmen, Germans, Scots, Irishmen, Dutchmen, Swedes, and many others who attempted to transplant their habits and traditions to the new world.
Those who stayed watching for the after-game chat on Sunday were rewarded with the extraordinary dignity of the Scots’ coach and captain expressing sadness without blame.
In 1978, thousands of the Scots sold their cars, and even their houses, and spent all their money traveling to Argentina, where the finals were played.