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Resources for Lowland Scots?

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Cainntear
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Scotland
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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
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 Message 65 of 69
10 August 2010 at 3:18pm | IP Logged 
tracker465 wrote:
I looked up Blind Harry's Wallace, and to me it just looks like Middle English, as opposed to Scots. Instances such as the above really just make me question the whole idea of Scots and English being not one and the same, just dialects or varients.

edit: Just to extend my thoughts on this a bit more, since I did not have much time when I made the above post. If Scots and English are different languages, I find it interesting that these pieces such as Wallace can be considered both Middle English and Scotts. That would lead one to believe that the languages are not so divergent as some suggest.

However, linguists describe Modern English and Middle English as two distinct languages. A dialect of Middle English is not a dialect of Modern English, and vice versa. "English" is the term used by laymen to describe what is known to linguists as Modern English.

By this token, Scots cannot be a dialect of "English" as it is more similar to Middle English than to (Modern) English.
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Teango
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 Message 66 of 69
10 August 2010 at 5:11pm | IP Logged 
Silvance5 wrote:
I thought it might be neat to study Lowland Scots, but I can't seem to find any resources on it anywhere. Has anyone here learned it? Where did you get your resources?

I think the Scots Language Centre is a great little website, and would recommend starting here.

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tracker465
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 Message 67 of 69
11 August 2010 at 12:24am | IP Logged 
Cainntear wrote:
tracker465 wrote:
I looked up Blind Harry's Wallace, and to me it just looks like Middle English, as opposed to Scots. Instances such as the above really just make me question the whole idea of Scots and English being not one and the same, just dialects or varients.

edit: Just to extend my thoughts on this a bit more, since I did not have much time when I made the above post. If Scots and English are different languages, I find it interesting that these pieces such as Wallace can be considered both Middle English and Scotts. That would lead one to believe that the languages are not so divergent as some suggest.

However, linguists describe Modern English and Middle English as two distinct languages. A dialect of Middle English is not a dialect of Modern English, and vice versa. "English" is the term used by laymen to describe what is known to linguists as Modern English.

By this token, Scots cannot be a dialect of "English" as it is more similar to Middle English than to (Modern) English.


Well I know that Middle English is considered to be a different language than Modern English, Old English, Anglo Saxon, etc. I honestly felt that on a language forum people would know about the different periods of English without being mentioned, but I guess not. We can leave the term layman at home, I personally find it a bit condenscending just as some dislike the word dialect, with which I have no problem. I've read my share of Chaucer and Gawain in the day, and I think that these things really go without saying. I shall explain further.

I am not sure how the Scotts language/dialect is broken down, in terms of its history. Whether the stories I mentioned are considered to be "Old Scotts," "Middle Scotts" or (modern) Scotts, I really do not know, as I am not sure how the division is drawn. What I am saying though, is that these first writings in "Scotts" seem to be not so different as Middle English. (modern) Scotts and (modern) English are also not terribly different from these varieties, and are fairly comprehensible without much trouble. Modern Scotts and the Wallace story (Middle English/"Scotts") are different from each other, just like Modern English is to Middle English - the languages evolved, just as all languages do.

A bit of a long-winded explanation I guess, but here is my point. The Scotts in the Wallace poem is not much different from Middle English, and some even consider it to be Middle English and not Scotts. Modern English and Modern Scotts are not so different either. Of course since the language was being used in different areas, it is bound to evolve slightly differently in different parts of the world. Examine English throughout the world and there are differences, due to evolutionary changes and such. If Scotts and English began as being almost the same, and then evolved to be mostly the same as well, then on what basis is there to say that it is a language and not a dialect?
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Cainntear
Pentaglot
Senior Member
Scotland
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Speaks: Lowland Scots, English*, French, Spanish, Scottish Gaelic
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 Message 68 of 69
11 August 2010 at 10:10am | IP Logged 
tracker465 wrote:
Modern English and Modern Scotts are not so different either.

What do you mean by Modern Scots?
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BartoG
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 Message 69 of 69
18 March 2012 at 10:27pm | IP Logged 
I'll resurrect this with a note and a question. The note: From what I've seen of Scots, including the autobiography, "Thi lyfe an tyme's o an enshoar loon," I find it not significantly easier to work through than Dutch. We can argue till the cows come home if it's a language or a dialect, but if you want to read or speak it, it would be a colossal waste of money and time to hire an English teacher.

The question: Kynoch's Teach Yourself Doric openly admits to be for entertainment as much as education. But it doesn't strike me as any worse than a lot of serious textbooks made by people who really aren't language teachers. Any opinions from anyone who actually knows the Doric and has encountered the book?


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