Note: I just returned from 10 days in Shetland. I'll post a trip report when I can but I'm still jetlagged and dealing with bird photos, so it'll have to wait a bit. Pam's trip report is great and beat me to the punch! This post is just about...language.
Shetland is part of Scotland, Scotland is part of the United Kingdom, so everyone that a vistor might encounter there speaks English. Sort of.
Shetland has its own dialect, though it's not widely spoken. Locals have accents that to my ear sound very Scottish (makes sense, it’s part of Scotland). Local folks can probably easily tell the difference, but to my ear, the English I heard in Shetland sounded similar to that which you might hear in Glasgow or other parts of Northern Scotland. To me (a native American English speaker) it was generally easily understood; my wife, not a native English speaker, had more trouble. Occasionally I would hear someone whose accent was quite strong and required me to listen carefully so I caught every word. But I had one encounter that exceeded my ability to understand what was (I think) simply strongly accented English.
One day we pulled into the Tesco parking lot to pick up some groceries (Tesco is a major supermarket chain throughout the UK, the largest and best-stocked grocery store in Lerwick). We went there often.
On this day, the weather had been remarkable and spectacular, with clear, sunny blue skies, balmy temps in the 80s - unprecedented weather that had the locals buzzing in shock, awe and other reactions.
I parked in the Tesco lot and hopped out. A gent was sitting in his car next to us. I got out of my car and he out of his at the same time. We looked at each other. The guy was roughly the same age, size and shape as me (which is to say, of-a-certain-age, stout, relaxed, dressed very casually in a t-shirt and shorts). He had a scraggly short gray beard, was grinning from ear to ear, with a twinkle in his eye, staring at me, and smiling. I nodded to him and smiled back.
He said something to me, a sentence or two, then paused. I had no idea what he had said - I heard it, but hadn’t understood a single word. He was looking at me as if he was expecting a response. I replied something banal and upbeat, hoping it would fit as a response to whatever he had just said: “Beautiful and glorious day, isn’t it?” I looked up, gestured at the blue sky, waved my hands at the landscape around us, and smiled back. He said something else, this time going on a bit longer, another 2 or 3 sentences, chuckling at the end. I nodded in agreement, but still had not understood a word. We both smiled. I said something banal back at him, feeling like I was a human Chat GPT. “We don’t get this very often”, I said, adding “We all have to take advantage when we can, right?” He nodded, kept smiling, and then rattled off a long string of completely unintelligible prose - this time he went on a good long time (30 seconds or so), occasionally waving his hands, pointing out to sea at the horizon, he balled up a fist, smacked it into his other open hand, cocked his head to one side, then pointed at me. I laughed, smiled, nodded, and said “Yes, you got that right! Surely we live in amazing times, with miracles all around us!” We went back and forth with small talk like this for a couple minutes. Finally he winked at me, shrugged his shoulders, said something else I couldn’t understand, turned and walked away. I shouted at him something like “Enjoy your day, mate!”, he waved once more and disappeared into the store.
I stood there, realizing that I had just had a 2 to 3 minute-long conversation with a local, and had not understood a single word he said. My wife got out of the car and asked what we had been talking about. I confessed I had no idea. She just gave me that look. Then we went shopping.