Scotland is particularly interesting to me since language occurs on a continuum between Scottish Standard English (SSE) and the Scots language.
SSE features unique words ("The word 'outwith' is not used outwith Scotland") and constructions (a waiter will ask "What are you wanting?" instead of "What would you like?", and after receiving the first order they'll ask the next person "And for yourself?" instead of, e.g., "And for you?").
Scots at its Scotsiest can look like this:
> What ken ye what may cast up the morn? For whatlike is your life? Ye ar but a waff o rouk at kythes a weeock, an syne eelies awa. Ye war better tae say, "Gin it's God's will, we'll be ey tae the fore, an we s' dae this or that." But no ye, na: ye blaw an blowst o what ye'r tae dae.
And speakers will choose a point somewhere between SSE and broad Scots depending on who they're speaking with, the formality, etc. It's quite common to get Scots words like "wee", "dreich", "swither", etc. The next step up is cannae/dinnae/widnae/etc for couldn't/don't/wouldn't/etc. I recently had a Shetlander say I was "glinderin ida sun". And then at some point it switches from "SSE with a Scots influence" to "Scots".
SSE features unique words ("The word 'outwith' is not used outwith Scotland") and constructions (a waiter will ask "What are you wanting?" instead of "What would you like?", and after receiving the first order they'll ask the next person "And for yourself?" instead of, e.g., "And for you?").
Scots at its Scotsiest can look like this:
> What ken ye what may cast up the morn? For whatlike is your life? Ye ar but a waff o rouk at kythes a weeock, an syne eelies awa. Ye war better tae say, "Gin it's God's will, we'll be ey tae the fore, an we s' dae this or that." But no ye, na: ye blaw an blowst o what ye'r tae dae.
And speakers will choose a point somewhere between SSE and broad Scots depending on who they're speaking with, the formality, etc. It's quite common to get Scots words like "wee", "dreich", "swither", etc. The next step up is cannae/dinnae/widnae/etc for couldn't/don't/wouldn't/etc. I recently had a Shetlander say I was "glinderin ida sun". And then at some point it switches from "SSE with a Scots influence" to "Scots".