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Welcome to the Kotkeye ride home for Thursday August 27th, 2020. I'm Jackson Bird.

The Scots Wikipedia site that turns out to have been mostly written by an American teenager

who does not speak Scots. Some tips and insight on staying safe from COVID-19 when indoors,

breaking down the strange, undefeatable popularity of pumpkin spice,

and an update from Elon Musk to be on the lookout for.

Here are some of the cool things from the news today.

So the Scots language, like many languages, has its own Wikipedia, where articles are written, edited, and maintained by volunteer speakers of that language.

Or so we thought.

It's just come out that the Scots Wikipedia was largely written by an American

teenager who knew very little, if any, Scots. Scots is not just an accent. It's a West Germanic

language with its own grammatical structure that's distinct from modern English. Quoting

The Guardian, in the Middle Ages, Scots was one of the great literary languages of the British Isles,

but 18th century intellectuals, including David Hume, sought to remove Scotticisms from their

writing and speech. It has enjoyed growing momentum in recent years, and one of the forums

designed to promote it is Scots' Wikipedia, the largest open access corpus of the Scots language in the world."

And it's great that as younger generations embrace a minor language that many of their elders were judged or shamed for,

that they have an easily accessible online resource.

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