Yeah, but ignoring spelling and instead listening to how it's pronounced - it's the same. My Swedish grandmother pronounced it pretty much exactly to how Scottish sounds to me.

Not just Scotland, Part of north England I'm from "Bairn" is very widely used (but we had a massive Viking presence that still shows up in place names and such).

My mother's family are from Durham and my grandmother called us 'the bairns'. Also pigs were swine and when we were ill we were 'out of fettle'. I've no trace of it in my own speech now, but still love the sound of it.

I once went to Norway and it seemed to me like they were speaking German with a Geordie accent.

I've always heard 'bairn' and 'barn' pronounced quite differently, with the former rhyming with 'air'

In my (English) head, a Scottish (and even more so Irish) accent does pronounce 'barn' to rhyme with 'air' too though.

Of course I'm probably doing a terrible impression of each in my head.

There are some strong accents that could pronounce them similiarly, the islands / getting close to irish could pronounce the "air" in "barn". But in general / central belt those words are pronounced differently

I was more implying that the Swedish pronunciation of its "barn" is more like English "air". (For some Swedish dialects.) The takeaway, when comparing related languages, don't think too much about spelling. Compare how actual people say words, and you will often find striking similarities.

>Yeah, but ignoring spelling and instead listening to how it's pronounced - it's the same

I’m Scottish and pronounce the two words quite differently. “Bairn” sounds like “bear” with an “n” at the end and “barn” has a much harder “a” sound.

Interestingly, “burn” is a common word for a small stream in Scotland, but I digress.