But I couldn't understand far more than half of the people I spoke with.
Groundskeeper Willie speaks perfect english compared to the real Scots.
But West Highlanders (ahem!) speak the purest English in the world.
Even if the keelies and furryboots call us 'teuchters' . . . . < g >
Scots -the language- used to be a separate dialect of English, although in most places it is now little more than an accent (although enough of an accent to make a lot of what is said a mystery, at least until you get used to it). The little bit of reading I've done about it makes me think that Scots, three hundred years ago anyway, had wandered less far from German than standard English. A lot of what one thinks of as Daniel Boone-Davey Crockett frontier/hillbilly speech, is in fact gramatically correct Scots. "Whar" and "thar" for "where" and "there."