# Ancient Web: A Glasgow Webmaster Made a Scots Tongue Survival Glossary An informal university-hosted Scots Tongue page collects pronunciation tips, local sayings, place-name surprises and hundreds of Scots-to-English translations. 2026-09-29 :: Switchboard Tech Services ![Ancient Web: A Glasgow Webmaster Made a Scots Tongue Survival Glossary](https://switchboardtechservices.com/static/images/defaults/articles.webp) Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). A visitor may believe they know English until someone tells them that **Milngavie** is pronounced more like 'Mul-guy' and that a **bairn** is a child. [Visit the Scots Tongue glossary](https://kjt.stir.ac.uk/general/scots.html) This university-hosted personal reference is an **informal guide** to the Scots language, pronunciation, sayings, personal names, and place names. Its author says they are from **Glasgow**, and warns that the vocabulary is neither authoritative nor complete, particularly beyond the author's home region. That disclaimer matters. Scots has regional forms and a substantial literary history, not just a collection of funny English misspellings. The page describes its development alongside English and links readers to the **Dictionaries of the Scots Language**, the **Scots Language Centre**, and the **Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech**. ## What a visitor's dictionary actually teaches The [pronunciation section](https://kjt.stir.ac.uk/general/scots.html) explains the guttural sound represented by **ch**, the Glasgow glottal stop, rolled **r**, and place names that resist guesses based on their spelling. The **Scots Words** list is enormous: *blether* means idle chatter; *dreich* describes miserable wet weather; *greet* means weep; *hame* is home; and *wheesht* is a demand for quiet. Its value goes beyond word-for-word translation. It includes context for things a traveler might see, such as a **close** in a tenement building, the **Barras** market in Glasgow, a **Burns Supper**, a New Year's **first foot**, or **Hogmanay**. There are hints of food, work, humor, and everyday relationships throughout. The guide sometimes notes uncertainty about spelling, dialect differences, and double meanings. That preserves the author's particular perspective rather than pretending the glossary is a definitive dictionary. The requested page continues as a very long HTML document with internal headings and lists instead of splitting everything into a modern app. That is why it remains good for quick searching: find a term in the browser, read the neighboring entries, and discover another one. The page does not display a trustworthy **original publication date** in its visible text. Its inclusion here is based on the surviving personal reference format and specialist educational material, not an invented claim that it launched in the 1990s. The old Web made room for somebody to publish a language guide too eccentric, local, and long to fit a commercial travel leaflet. [Explore the original Scots vocabulary and pronunciation guide](https://kjt.stir.ac.uk/general/scots.html). Part of the [Ancient Web Collection](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-collection/). - Categories: [Ancient Web](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/categories/ancient-web/) - Tags: [#ancientweb](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/ancientweb/), [#webhistory](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/webhistory/), [#linguistics](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/linguistics/), [#scotslanguage](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/scotslanguage/), [#glossaries](https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/tags/glossaries/) [Articles RSS](https://switchboardtechservices.com/feeds/articles.xml "Subscribe using an RSS reader") --- Canonical URL: https://switchboardtechservices.com/articles/ancient-web-a-glasgow-webmaster-made-a-scots-tongue-survival-glossary/ Language: en-us Content type: article Author: Switchboard Tech Services Published: 2026-09-30T04:22:37+00:00 Modified: 2026-10-18T21:00:16.627042+00:00