Ya numpty! Scots language mangled by US Wiki teen

HIS first efforts gave fair warning of the ‘guddle’ he was creating.

But an American teenager has been accused of ‘cultural vandalism’ after writing thousands of garbled online articles about the Scots language.

In the space of seven years, the 19-yearold from North Carolina, who uses the online handle Amaryllis Gardener, contributed almost half the 60,000 articles on the Scots version of Wikipedia.

His early efforts came with the warning: ‘The “Scots” that wis uised in this airticle wis written bi a body that’s mither tongue isna Scots. Please impruive this airticle gin ye can.’ Yet, as entry after entry went unchallenged, he removed the caveat and carried on creating and editing tens of thousands of topics.

Only latterly did it transpire that every single one was written not in the language of Robert Burns, but in gobbledegook.

The definition of village, for example, reads: ‘A veelage is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smawer than a toun.’

The database is one of the few substantial online resources that claims to be in Scots and is used for translation services offered by tech companies.

Around 50 scholars are now putting right what they have called ‘cultural vandalism’. Expert Ryan Dempsey said: ‘Among Scots enthusiasts [Wikipedia] has kind of become a running joke.

‘Potentially tens of millions of people now think that Scots is a horribly mangled rendering of English rather than being a language or dialect of its own, all because they were exposed to a mangled rendering of English being called Scots by this person.’

Scots Wikipedia was founded by native speakers but over time they drifted away and the well-meaning youth filled the void. He said: ‘I don’t mind if you delete my articles and ban me from the wiki.

‘I’ve found out that my contributions have angered countless people, and that’s all the devastation I can be given.’