As you are watching the movie notice how many times the Scotsmen use the word "no" instead of "Nay".
A friend of mine from Aberdineshire, Scotland watched the video with me and he loves it but the number of times they say No instead of Nay bothers him. He says no real Scotsman would ever say No.
I'm Scottish, and I very rarely use the word "Nay", unless saying something like "Nay Bother" or "Nay Trouble".
No Scot would ever say "Nay" in the context of "No thankyou", or replying in the negative to a question. We say "No", or "Naah", or "Nuh"(with a hard "h").
If you're implying that Scots in the thirteenth century would have said "Nay", well, very possibly they would have, but more likely they would have been speaking a form of Gaelic or even Welsh (Wallace does, after all, refer to Welsh roots...)
i totally agree with Tommy on this one. I am also Scottish and i rarely say "Nay" apart from what Tommy has said. People think that Scots go about wearing kilts and saying "Och eye the noo jimmy" while drinking Irn-Bru or whiskey. All these thing including saying "nay" are stereo types
I assume you mean Aberdeenshire by the way - I live there myself, and I certainly wouldn't say "nay" for no in most contexts. Scottish accents vary from area to area anyway, so I wouldn't consider it much of a slip up even if I agreed with it.
If you want to be that technical, the English should sound less British, they would be talking a lot different in that age. I don't mean Shakespeare crap, I mean real old English which had kind of a mix of Norse because the Vikings had quite a bit of influence on the coast of Europe, think about it.
I agree with the "no duh" guy. If you wanna get that technical, the English didn't talk like that in the 1300's. They talked more like us until, I think it was the late 1500-early 1600's when they decided to revise the way they talk to make their language sound beautiful. They decided the way they said "a's" was ugly, so they made it an "ah" sound....they found some other words, but I'm too sleepy to think of them now.
P.S.-for fooling around with their god-given accents, God punished them. Listen to an English person say "banana" or "Anna" they add an r to the end such as "bananar". Oh well, just thought I would add this in.
I agree with all that has been said. Though I myself aren't Scottish, I lived in the city of Aberdeen for a good 3 or 4 years. That was long enough to have listened to quite a few Scotts. I noticed that they used "nay" and no just as equals. Well, pretty much. I wouldn't consider this to be a slip up, because the way languages are used, vary with location. For example, I go to Connecticut a lot to visit my grand parents, and after I lived in Scotland, I moved to Texas. I'm pretty sure there was just a few distinct differences between how Texans spoke, and how New Englander spoke. Just thought I give a bit of an example for ya.
Talk about a mountain of a mole hill. Guys, at the time of Braveheart the Scots would have spoken Gaelic and the "English" nobility would have likely spoken Norman French, so getting hung up on Nay makes Nay sense to me.
If anyone cares...
My dad is Scottish, and I have many friends & family in Scotland, and I was actually lucky enough to go there one time. It really depends on the context. Example: "No, I don't want any," vs. "There's nae bread." But not every Scot uses stereotype Scottish slang.
No English person I've ever met pronounces Anna as Annar? And when you say "English accent" you must referring to "Received Pronunciation". In reality, depending on where you go in England, Standard English is spoken in a variety of accents. The north of England, for example, speak with brighter vowels (i.e. no extra "r"). Not to mention the variation in Scottish, Welsh and Irish accents! Anyway, my point is that the Scottish say no and nay/nae, therefore this is not a slip up.
Others are right--during that time period the Scotts would have been speaking Gaelic (or a variation thereof). And in all likelihood any talk between the English & the Scottish would have been conducted in French, the (world-wide) dominant language of the time (plus neither side would really want to "stoop" to speaking the other's language). So all these nitpick "slip-ups" about the accuracy of certain words being used are rather silly & moot.
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