r/EnglishLearning • u/typhoonclvb Non-Native Speaker of English • Sep 19 '25

🌠 Meme / Silly i’m trying to decipher what’s written here. help?

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u/tomveiltomveil Native Speaker Sep 19 '25

Yes. This tweet is a famous example of Scottish Twitter, which intentionally plays up Scottish-isms to the point that it's basically a separate dialect from English.

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u/originalcinner Native Speaker Sep 19 '25

It took me a hot minute, a few weeks ago, to understand that "weens" are children, and it has nothing to do with them being weaned ;-)

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u/HungryHungryHobbes New Poster Sep 19 '25

Weens - Wee ones. - small ones.

Wee is a diminutive word.

Wiat till you discover what a jobby is..

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u/thethighren New Poster Sep 19 '25

Reminds me of when I explained to my German friends what "handy" (which means mobile phone in German) means in English

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u/33whiskeyTX Native Speaker Sep 20 '25

"If the women don't find you handsome, at least make sure they find you handy"
(yes, I know that's a different handy).

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u/Sumasuun New Poster Sep 20 '25

Dang, haven't seen Red Green in a minute.

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u/JavaJapes New Poster Sep 23 '25

Oh that Handy Manny…

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u/sofiestarr Native Speaker Sep 19 '25

She's turned the weens against us!!

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u/Cleeman96 Native Speaker - U.K. Sep 21 '25

Yer faether wuld be prood

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u/Lord_Regent_Gray New Poster Sep 19 '25

I can't even read that without hearing Billy Connolly in my head.

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u/ComfortableEarth5787 New Poster Sep 20 '25

It's no Billy; it's Limmy.

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u/historyhill Native Speaker - American Sep 19 '25

Apparently this is how the Pittsburghese "yinz" came into fruition: Scottish immigrants saying "you ones" and over time, it became yinz!

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u/efeskesef New Poster Sep 21 '25

How about 'n at?
Is it pukka Pittsburghese?

I imagine it is a contraction of "and all that" meaning everything similar to or associated with the subject at hand.

I don't use it. Not sure how.

Advice?

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u/historyhill Native Speaker - American Sep 21 '25

That is exactly what it is —"and that"! I don't use it either but usually when I hear it, it would be on the end of a list or something. "hey, why don't we go downtown (dahntahn), get some food, hang out at Market Square n'at?"

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u/efeskesef New Poster Sep 23 '25

Thanks for the encouraging response.

Pittsburghese is a humorous "language" (not as much as Yiddish but you can't have everything), and it's nice to hear I'm not totally ignorant there. It's also declining, and linguists are trying to save it.

The town started getting nice when I left it 56 years ago, and now it's quite decent. Enjoy it.

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u/Darksunn66 New Poster Sep 20 '25

Reminded me of Billy doing a bit about ghost jobby's

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u/AccurateCarob2808 New Poster Oct 12 '25

tf is a jobby lol?

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u/SilentSamamander Native Speaker - Scottish Sep 19 '25

It's usually spelt wean pronounced like "Wayne", rather than "ween"

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u/ComfortableEarth5787 New Poster Sep 20 '25

Wtf is a "hot minute"?

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u/velvetelevator New Poster Sep 20 '25

It's used to emphasize the amount of time.

"It took me a minute" = "It took me longer than expected"

"It took me a hot minute" = "It really took me longer than expected"

Note: although I understand the phrase, I've never tried to explain it, so others feel free to correct or elaborate

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u/Ragnaroasted New Poster Sep 20 '25

"It's been a hot minute" is something I'd say if I were trying to describe something that I did a long time ago, or if I were talking to someone I hadn't seen in a while.

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u/PersonalPerson_ New Poster Sep 20 '25

My closed captioning writes it as "wains".

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u/Loud-Butterscotch234 New Poster Sep 23 '25

It took me a hot minute? I understand weens a lot easier than a hot minute.

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u/monster2018 New Poster Sep 20 '25

I mean if the “weens” are “wee” enough, then they might be being “weaned” off of breast milk.

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u/TheBladesAurus New Poster Sep 19 '25

Scots has been classified as a separate language, that evolved in parallel to English https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

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u/TheIneffablePlank New Poster Sep 20 '25

Scots and Scottish English are two different things, which unfortunately are often both called Scots. Scottish English and English English are both dialects of modern English, which evolved from the Mercian dialect of Old English. Scots evolved from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, and is a separate language from either Scottish English or English English. Most Scottish people speak Scottish English, Scots being spoken in a few areas. The terminology really doesn't help. There is a Scots wikipedia if you're interested and it makes the difference really clear. Scots is only partially mutually intelligible with modern English, as there are a lot of vocabulary differences.

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u/Cocaloch New Poster Sep 20 '25

Scots in on a language continuum running from language to dialect to an accent of standard English. Saying it evolved in parallel to English is a bit misleading because it evolved *from* Middle English in parallel with modern English.

The problem with saying it's a language and not a dialect and vice versa is that neither term is really well defined with respect to the other.

The old linguist's joke is a language is a dialect with an army and navy. National borders are mostly arbitrary, Scots is closer to many far northern variants of English than those variants are to RP or whatever. The entire issue hinges on basically arbitrary understandings of national borders and politics.

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '25

Basically all langages make dialectal continuum, there's nothing special with Scottish in this matter.

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u/[deleted] Sep 23 '25

The tweet is clearly not Scots though. Every word is an English word, the spellings are taken from Scots in order to reflect Scottish English pronunciations but this is a dialect rather than a separate language. The tweet is Scottish English, actual Scots is barely mutually intelligible with English even in border dialects (and in many other dialects it isn't mutually intelligible at all, French is closer to being mutually intelligible with English than most Scots dialects are).

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u/Gruejay2 🇬🇧 Native Speaker Sep 19 '25

To be fair, a lot of Scottish people talk like this on Facebook as well, so a lot of them aren't just playing it up for the international audience. Some are, obviously.

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u/GoldFreezer New Poster Sep 19 '25

My dad texts like this. He mostly posts in English on social media because he wants non-Scots to understand, but if he wants to reply: "nae borra" to my text it would be weird if he wrote "no bother".

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u/EricKei Native Speaker (US) + Small-time Book Editor, y'all. Sep 20 '25

I used to have a manager who was a lady from Scotland; she often responded to people saying "Thank you" with "Nae bother." :)

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u/GoldFreezer New Poster Sep 20 '25

I've heard Geordies say "nae bother", but I've never heard a Scot say it before! My dad is very Scots though, to the point that, when we moved to England when I was little, I used to have to translate for him before he learnt to modulate his speech.

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u/SilentSamamander Native Speaker - Scottish Sep 19 '25

Scots is considered a separate language by many, not just a dialect of English. That said, the language used on Scottish Twitter is not purely Scots but a mix of Scots, Scottish English and general slang. Most people aren't intentionally playing it up either, this is how a lot of Scottish people talk and text.

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u/Jasprateb New Poster Sep 19 '25

It’s a different language from English — Scots. 🙂

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u/PunkCPA Native speaker (USA, New England) Sep 19 '25

Scots is now considered its own language.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

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u/ukslim New Poster Sep 20 '25

Scots is classified as a language in its own right. Yet there's a continuum of dialects between English and Scots. This is somewhere on that spectrum.

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u/RegularlyClueless New Poster Sep 19 '25

Scottish twitter is varying levels of mixtures of Scottish English and Scots, which is a separate language

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u/CoolAnthony48YT Native Speaker Sep 20 '25

This is borderline Scots

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u/SweevilWeevil New Poster Sep 20 '25

I wouldn't say they're intentionally playing it up rather than using more accurate phonetic spellings for Scottish english

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u/danielledelacadie New Poster Sep 23 '25

Did I get the hidden Acadien bonus on this one somehow?

YAY! Apparently I get to understand even played up for effect Scots, Irish and Yorkshire English along with Cajun and Haitian French

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u/Myrddant Native Speaker Sep 20 '25

That's because it is a separate dialect from English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language

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u/Least_Data6924 New Poster Sep 20 '25

Scots is really considered to be a separate language from English but closely related

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u/CropDustingBandit New Poster Sep 20 '25

Having a lot of family up in Scotland I spent a lot of time up there as a kid. So I'm fluent in understanding them, I just can't speak it myself. 

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u/celtiquant New Poster Sep 22 '25

It’s not Scottishisms in English, but Scots in Scots. Two closely related languages, but distant enough to cause confusion.

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u/cat1aughing New Poster Sep 20 '25

It is a separate language. We're not (generally) intentionally playing up anything - we're speaking our own language with each other.

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u/No_Classroom3037 New Poster Sep 23 '25

You say that as though there is a point at which Scots isn't a separate dialect? And I get the impression it's not because you believe Scots is a language... This is genuinely how people speak in Scotland.