Scottish Lakes
Scotland has very few natural water bodies actually called 'lakes'. The Lake of Menteith, an Anglicisation of the Scots Laich o Menteith meaning a "low-lying bit of land in Menteith", and applied to the loch there because of the similarity of the sounds of the words laich and lake. The Lake of the Hirsel, Pressmennan Lake and Lake Louise are other bodies of water in Scotland which are called lakes and all are man-made.
The word "loch" is sometimes used as a shibboleth to identify natives of England, because the fricative sound is used in Scotland whereas most English people incorrectly pronounce the word like "lock". However, due to increasing Anglicisation and globalisation, today not even all Scots can pronounce the fricative and in attempting to say the word "loch", they instead make the sound of the word "lock" - i.e. they pronounce it the incorrect English way.
Read more about this topic: Loch
Famous quotes containing the words scottish and/or lakes:
“Our noble King, King Henery the eighth,
Ouer the riuer of Thames past hee.”
—Unknown. Sir Andrew Barton. . .
English and Scottish Ballads (The Poetry Bookshelf)
“The Indian navigator naturally distinguishes by a name those parts of a stream where he has encountered quick water and forks, and again, the lakes and smooth water where he can rest his weary arms, since those are the most interesting and more arable parts to him.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)