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Resources for Lowland Scots? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
 Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes  Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 49 of 69 05 August 2010 at 12:13pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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I'm actually inclined to accept true uncompromising Scots as a separate language, but according to my own experiences it is just SSE that is the common ground for the population in Scotland, and SSE does not deserve to be seen as a language. It's a dialect of English.
That being said, the division line between languages and dialects is not one of my prime concerns, unless some political authority use it to define how you can speak in school, when dealing with the local administration etc. It is more important for me that I couldn't get a decent nonfiction book in Scots during my last holiday there because the editing houses don't expect to earn enough money on such projects. Whether Scots is a language or a dialect is not important for me in that situation, I just want to see it on the shelves of the bookstores. Why isn't there a guide to Stirling Castle or Edinburgh Castle in Scots? Edited by Iversen on 05 August 2010 at 12:16pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 50 of 69 05 August 2010 at 12:39pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I agree entirely. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 51 of 69 05 August 2010 at 1:41pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I'm not sure whether I quite buy this argument. A dialect can have a number of sub-dialects and yet still be a dialect, can't it? (For example: in Bavaria there are a number of different sub-dialects of Bairisch - yet Bairisch is still generally thought of as a dialect and not a language, I think.)
Hmm... I just have a feeling we are playing with semantics here. I believe someone once said 'a language is nothing more than a dialect with its own army and navy'! Let's consider Norwegian: Before Norway became independent from the Danish Kingdom, Norwegian could (I guess?) have been described as a "dialect". But after Norway became fully independent it seemed natural to call it a "language". Yet what had actually changed in real terms!? I am more than happy to think of Scots as a language rather than a dialect - but I don't see that it makes much difference other than in purely political terms... 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Iversen Super Polyglot Moderator Denmark berejst.dk Joined 6704 days ago 9078 posts - 16473 votes Speaks: Danish*, French, English, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Esperanto, Romanian, Catalan Studies: Afrikaans, Greek, Norwegian, Russian, Serbian, Icelandic, Latin, Irish, Lowland Scots, Indonesian, Polish, Croatian Personal Language Map | Message 52 of 69 05 August 2010 at 2:38pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
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OK, let's consider Norwegian. If you check on its history it is not even seen as a member of the same segment of the Nordic languages as Danish or Swedish, but lumped together with Icelandic and Faroese in the Westnordic group. In spite of this, centuries of common history with Denmark and influence across the border from Sweden has kept Norwegian moving in synch with these two languages, so that the natural dividing line now is between the 'continental' and the 'insular' Nordic languages.
On top of this general movement (which never has brought the status of Norwegian as a language into jeopardy, just given it some other affiliates) there was a strong Danish influence especially in the Oslo area (or rather the Kristiania area). At the end of the 19. century written Norwegian was almost undistinguishable from written Danish, even though the spoken language must have been closer to the other kinds of Norwegian (or even Swedish) than to Danish. Ivar Aasen tried to make a 'second' written standard for Norwegian based on the most conservative dialects and came up with Nynorsk; however Nynorsk has been declining slowly, but steadily for some time. On the other hand the written standard for Bokmål has been moving slowly away from Danish, and presumably the upper crust of society in Oslo has also moved away from Danish in their speech. Now compare this with the situation in Scotland: Norway's many dialects are alive and kicking, and this includes those that are furthest away from Danish (those on 'Vestlandet'). In Scotland these dialects would correspond to true Scots. The big difference however is that the 'Danification' in the Oslo area was halted (partly as a result of the Aasen revolt), and that even Bokmål writing now is less 'danish' than it was 100 years ago. Why? Because Norway didn't get its culture deliberately crushed as Scotland did after Culloden (not Bannockburne!)*, not even after the Swedish take-over, but also because Norway has been a totally independent nation since 1905, with its own printing houses, own TV, own newspaper AND own schools. And a nationalism that is at least as strong as that of the Scottish, but with consequences even for its language and dialects. Norway could in principle have slided along the SSE path if the union with Denmark had continued, but history pointed into another direction. Edited by Iversen on 19 March 2012 at 11:24am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Romanist Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5283 days ago 261 posts - 366 votes Studies: Italian | Message 53 of 69 05 August 2010 at 4:32pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Well okay. Nevertheless, written Bokmål and written Danish are still about 90% the same thing, aren't they?
Okay, but so what..? I didn't say that there was an exact parallel between the situaion in Norway and the situation in Scotland - that isn't my point.
Aha. Okay. I see. Iversen, I'm not suggesting that the Danes went around deliberately crushing other people's culture like we English did, okay? I'm not suggesting that you guys were bad and evil people in history like we English! ;-) I'm just pointing out that the distinction between a 'language' and a 'dialect' is often largely political. You don't like the example of Norwegian? Fine, then let's take Jiddisch. Is that a dialect of German? Or is it a language? (My opinion: it could be either or both, it doesn't matter very much!) Edited by Romanist on 05 August 2010 at 10:43pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 54 of 69 05 August 2010 at 5:17pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
I didn't say they weren't. The dialects of English are dialects of English whether or not the dialects of Scots are dialects of Scots or English. Is it offensive to the dialects of Italian to say that the dialects of Occitan are not dialects of Italian, or that the dialects of Catalan (North Calatan, Valencian, Balear, Algherese and Central Catalan) are not dialects of Italian? Does this put them "on a pedestal"? The borders between these languages are defined mostly linguistically. There is a certain political "fuzziness" with regards to where Italian dialects end and Occitan dialects begin, but the border between Occitan and Catalan is anything but political, in that it occurs in a country that officially resents the fact that either language exists (France). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 55 of 69 05 August 2010 at 5:24pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
"Dialect" is generally a politically loaded term anyway. While linguists talk of the standard form of a language as the standard dialect, most lay people just call it "correct", and take dialect to imply a deviation from the correct form. The word should be avoided wherever possible, as it has become offensive through use. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Cainntear Pentaglot Senior Member Scotland linguafrankly.blogsp Joined 6012 days ago 4399 posts - 7687 votes Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic Studies: Catalan, Italian, German, Irish, Welsh | Message 56 of 69 05 August 2010 at 5:49pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Bannockburn was when we kicked out the occupying English. Scots started coming under pressure after the Union of the Crowns in 1606 when the royal court moved to London and King James started issuing court documents in English only. (Admittedly the Presbyterian movement in Scotland has already adopted the Book of Common Prayer and the English Bible by this point and very few religious texts were ever produced in Scots.) You're probably thinking of Culloden in 1745, but the outwash of that was a suppression of Highland culture, as it was familial loyalty within the Gaelic-speaking clan system that allowed Charles Edward Stewart to move freely within the Highlands. Scots wasn't strongly affected by this. However, it wasn't until the Union of the Parliaments in 1707 that Scots ceased to be the language of government and of the law in Scotland. Even after this, Scots was still in use in academia, although David Hume put a lot of time into reforming Edinburgh University in the mid-18th century to make it English-speaking rather than Scots. The process was slow, and depended on the individual lecturers concerned, and the other universities followed at a similar rate. All told, Scots ceased to be an official language less than 250 years ago, and 250 years as a purely vernacular language isn't that long -- there are plenty of languages that have survived through similar periods. In fact, most of the languages of modern Europe evolved as purely vernacular languages without any official recognition whatsoever for hundreds of years before becoming accepted literary languages, and longer yet without official status. Edited by Cainntear on 05 August 2010 at 5:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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