Talk:Scotch

Untitled
"Scotch" should go straight to the whisky, because that's the only item in the list that can be, and usually is, referred to with the single word. --Milkbreath (talk) 02:57, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Agreed. See below.-ospalh (talk) 11:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Requested move

 * The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was no consensus to move. – Juliancolton  &#124; Talk 15:02, 24 August 2009 (UTC)

Scotch → Scotch (disambiguation) &mdash;Scotch should redirect to Scotch whisky, the main use of the single word "Scotch". The target already exists and redirects back to Scotch. It has templates added, so an admin is needed.-ospalh (talk) 11:02, 17 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Oppose The premise is that the primary topic of "Scotch" is Scotch whisky.  I disagree.  --Una Smith (talk) 03:02, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * It is rare that I agree with Una Smith, but she is clearly correct. The idea that Scotch only or primarily means whisky is a mid-nineteenth-century nationalist figment. It was debunked by the OED under the editorship of James Murray; it is denied of Canadian English, by an outstanding native speaker, Scotch by descent; it is false in almost every dialect. (Whether it is true in Braid Scots is not in question here; that's another language and has another WP). Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:24, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Hey PMAnderson, you think we scotched this? --Una Smith (talk) 03:28, 18 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Comment O.K. Learned something new. That's why I only claim an en-3 my user page.--ospalh (talk) 09:55, 18 August 2009 (UTC)
 * Oppose — I think this is pretty much settled, but what the heck... a fourth opinion never hurt anyone. — V = I * R  (talk) 06:56, 19 August 2009 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Can this be entirely accurate?
"There remain, however, places and situations where it is still used in a non-pejorative sense, such as in Southern Ontario...." I am from western Canada and that is certainly the term there, where my grandparents and their dozen-odd siblings were beaten if caught at school speaking Gaelic. And I have far more recently been stopped in Australia by astonished individuals visiting from or immigrated from Scotland but entirely lacking the thick accent I've heard in Glasgow and Edinburgh and express astonishment: am I Canadian? "Far more of us Scotch there than in Scotland!" In a less recent time there was of course the account of John Kenneth Galbraith having not quite enough to do as John F. Kennedy's US ambassador to India and took some time writing a memoir of his upbringing in -- well yes, southern Ontario, but thirty years previously, he having spent subsequent years in California, Washington, New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts: the book was entitled The Scotch and London publisher insisted on changing that for UK readers. More recently a cousin's daughter who is herself from Tennessee married an officer at the Scottish parliament in Glasgow and expressed puzzlement as to whether it was wise to switch from using "Scotch" to "Scottish" when there, the former being universal among family on both sides in both the US and Canada. And Tommy Douglas, long the Premier of Saskatchewan in the 1940s and '50s and then federal leader of the New Democratic Party was by recent Canadian Broadcasting Corporation survey declared to have been the greatest Canadian: he was from Scotland and was there until his 'teens. And always referred to himself as "Scotch." For that matter the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation broadcasts both radio and television in Scotch Gaelic in the province of Nova Scotia. My children are maternally German, Austrian and Polish Jews by not-too-distant ancestry, their grandparents having survived the Holocaust and moved to Australia after World War II; but look 100% Scotch. It is the same with offspring of an ethnically Japanese Canadian friend. Not necessarily the loveliest people on earth as to looks, but clearly very strong genes. All this raises a query with me as to the validity of "Scotch" having a "pejorative sense" as suggested here as to elsewhere than southern Ontario. Surely the statement is not entirely accurate.Masalai (talk) 19:05, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Here he is, inter alia using the term as to himself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IE5fOJfKRNk Masalai (talk) 19:20, 21 April 2012 (UTC)

Scotch In Scotland
I live in Northern England and as a child was taught that the 'correct' usage of 'Scotch' was only for the drink. But I've since realised that this is not true. Many Scottish people I know commonly use 'Scotch' to refer to anything Scottish. And the OED says it is good, if now slightly archaic, Standard English. How the 'polite myth' that 'Scotch' for 'Scottish' is somehow incorrect is worthy of an article of its own - it feels very like an early form of PC thinking, or perhaps of U and non-U lexical snobbery. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.12.61 (talk) 09:52, 8 May 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts on requested move
I'm surprised to see the move request failed, especially when the only refutation given is that the OED supposedly "debunked" this "mid-nineteenth-century nationalist figment". "Scotch" as an adjective has nearly died out now, except for certain historical terms, and by usage, the primary topic clearly is the whisky. --C S (talk) 22:04, 5 September 2013 (UTC)