[Pilsner]

Groundskeeper Willie speaks perfect english compared to the real Scots.

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."

[AnAmericanMother]

Braid (broad) Scots, or Lallans (Lowlands) if you prefer, is actually derived from Middle English, that's where the split began. There's some French influence (Scotland was always closer to France than England in many respects, hence "the Auld Alliance") and the Scots Literary Revival of the late 19th and early 20th century reshaped it to some extent, but the origin is mostly in ME.

The "frontier" or hillbilly speech depends on whar (or where) you are. The origin of that is not so much Lallans as the Scots Borders by way of Northern Ireland, but there are also quite a number of Elizabethan English links. The western settlements were about 50/50 Scotch-Irish and English, with some Germans and 'true' Scots thrown in.

[Salamander]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appalachian_English

And we love it....:)

[an’ it’s Appa-LATCHun, thank ye very much]