NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/soc/culture/british/16337

Internet Message Format | 1992-11-23 | 6.6 KB

Path: sparky!uunet!pipex!warwick!uknet!axion!gssec.bt.co.uk!cwilson
From: [e-mail] (Colin Wilson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Accent and Dialect, the politics there
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Date: 23 Nov 92 15:12:47 GMT
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
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In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Alasdair Grant) writes:
|> In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (Colin Wilson) writes:
|> >whatever Scots is it cannot be _a_ dialect, as the various regions of
|> >eastern and southern Scotland have a variety of Scots dialects. These
|> >_cannot_ be bracketed with the regional dialects of England, for reasons
|> >which I have stated before, but which I will repeat. They include:
|> >
|> >(i)  the fact that Scots was once the official spoken and written language
|> >     of state, with a standard form based on the speech of the capital;
|>
|> I don't see that this means anything.  You (or someone else) have claimed
|> that RP English is 'just another dialect'; why then can the version of Scots
|> used for literature not also be just another dialect?

Literary Scots (which has changed and developed over the centuries) is,
as you say, no different in principle from any other dialect. However,
like standard English, it is a dialect not associated with any
particular region, and thus cannot be bracketed with the regional
dialects of England which (by definition) are so associated.

|> >(ii) the linguistic hiatus at the border between Scotland and England,
|> >     whose effect is that the speech of the inhabitants of Coldstream
|> >     in Roxburghshire has more in common with that of their compatriots
|> >     in Wick, hundreds of miles away, than with that of their
|> >     neighbours in Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, which is less
|> >     than a mile away.
|>
|> Surely that is something to do with the fact that Scotland has its own
|> education system?  I.e. that teachers teaching in Roxburgh will tend to
|> come from Edinburgh while those in Northumbria will tend to come from
|> Newcastle?

Other than in the closed environment of the boarding school, children
acquire their accent and dialect from the community around them, rather
than in the classroom. Generations of Scottish teachers have, to their
shame, tried to eradicate Scottish aspects of pupils' speech, although
fortunately with limited success.

|> >Again, you are making the same mistake of seeing Scotland as a
|> >locality, in the same way as London or Lincolnshire. A writer who
|> >writes in Scots is using a national language, appropriate (for the
|> >purpose of fiction) to a character from any region or nation. For
|> >instance, in a novel with the action set in Russia, it would be as
|> >appropriate for the dialogue to be in Scots as in English, German, or
|>
|> If Scots were a language in its own right, this _would_ be appropriate,
|> and people would have done it.  Since they manifestly have not (other than
|> when the characters are Scottish, in which case the same arguments apply
|> as for Geordie, Cockney etc.) I think you've disproved your own claim.

This must be some meaning of the word "disprove" that I haven't met
before. In any case, it is possible to buy translations of Aesop's
Fables, Homer's Iliad, and of course the New Testament, in which the
narrative and the dialogue are in Scots, without any attempt to portray
the persons involved as Scottish. Dramatic works, originally written in
French, have been performed in Scots (I have seen one called in Scots
"The Guid Sisters" - I do not know the original title), again without
any attempt to present the characters as Scottish.

|>  Of course, it is also possible for a writer of Scots to use
|> >local dialect to locate characters to particular areas of Scotland.
|>
|> But this can be done for any large area, e.g. 'the North', 'the West Country',
|> 'the Midlands' etc.; sometimes these areas are treated as units, and
|> sometimes they are broken down further.

That's quite right. I pointed this out only to emphasise the fact that
the distinction between local or regional dialect, and the literary
language, exists in the case of Scots as it does for English.

|> >Let's see then: if the dialects of Scotland and those of England
|> >(including standard English) really are all dialects of one language,
|> >then it follows from this that the name "English" is a misnomer, as the
|> >language belongs equally to Scotland and England, having an equally long
|> >history in both nations.
|>
|> Yes, it does belong equally to Scotland and England, but I'd hardly call
|> it a misnomer, any more than England ('Angles land') is.  Or even Scotland -
|> Shetlanders don't regard themselves as Scots (plural, not adjective), but
|> as Norsemen.  (Hence 'Norman' Lamont, everyone's favourite Shetlander.)

You really think that it would be acceptable, then, for something that
belonged equally to Scotland and England to be described as "English"?
I suppose that you'll be saying next that it's acceptable to describe
the UK as "England".

|> I quote from Lynch's "Scotland - a new history" (emphasis mine)
|>
|>  "Gaelic, which had formerly been 'Scottish speech', was overtaken by
|>   _a brand of English_, which had been called 'Teutonic speech' and now
|>   became known as 'Scots'. It fast became the language of the court
|>   and government and Lowland society."
|>
|>  "It was the Lowland perception of Gaelic rather than the extent of its
|>   usage which was changing: by 1450 Lowlanders were calling it Erse rather
|>   than Scotice. They termed their own speech _'Inglis'_; by 1500 they called
|>   it 'Scottis'."

This is fairly common knowledge. What do you think it shows? I would
suggest that, in referring to "a brand of English", the writer of the
above passage is using the name "English" indiscriminately.

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