Broad Scots / Lallans

[acstoon]

let me add...
if ya want folk tae write in English oan this forum...
start wi' the bleedin' 'mericans an their piffle!

"pants" "elevator" "suspenders"!!!

[highlander_Daz]

I think youll find your Legally British Robertson, Being a Scot is something thats in your heart, which Im sure you are taking care of. and you are most welcome , in fact "thats one less of them and one more of us!!"

[MacWage]

Yet, somehow, the thread remains quite active. Apparently I'm a complete failure when it comes to oppression?

Help, help, we're being repressed!

[ChromeScholar]

Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?

[Archangel]

I think youll find your Legally British Robertson, Being a Scot is something thats in your heart, which Im sure you are taking care of. and you are most welcome , in fact "thats one less of them and one more of us!!"

spoilsport.

[ccga3359]

Oh, what a give-away. Did you hear that? Did you hear that, eh? That's what I'm on about. Did you see him repressing me? You saw it, didn't you?

I'm starting to think that Mike1 is reading our posts in an Orwellian type thing. Perhaps we should speak in another language to throw him off.

[highlander_Daz]

http://www.scottish.parliament.uk/vl...cots/index.htm

to me thats just an embarresment, There is a serious point here, how can this be the "Scots language" when it only represents how a percentage of Scots speak, no one from Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee, and especially Edinburgh speaks remotely like this, i

"tells ye aboot the different weys that ye can let the Pairlament and the Memmers o the Scottish Pairlament (MSPs) ken whit ye think."

As Ive said feel free to disagree and Im sure there are plenty of people who belive it, its not the Scots language folks. its a form of English. with some of the words spelt phonetically to reprsent the pronounciation of a lowland Scot, add some slang and some left over Gaelic and thats it.

Its fun its cool yeh but dont pretend its something it isnt its not a a stand alone language.

[slohairt]

I respectfully disagree. Lallans, cannot be considered a dialect of English because Lallans itself contains many dialects (including Ulster Scots - an Irish dialect!). A language can be defined as a collection of mutually intelligible dialects.

The true issue here, is that Lallans has no true written standard like other languages. There is no "official" Lallans. Perhaps this is what the Scottish Parliament and other institutions are trying to do: standardize things. And in the world of languages, that generally means favouring one dialect over another. For instance, the Irish language is broken up into three main dialects (Ulster, Connacht, and Munster), the favoured dialect for most instruction, however, is the Connacht dialect.

Unmolested, Lallans would probably have developed a written and spoken standard with a unified orthography. However, because people (including many Scots) discredit and malign it at every opportunity, it has a long way to go before it is respected as the language it is.

Spelling things phonetically is certainly a more logical method than the current one employed by English! English has one of the worst orthographies in the world! This is because English as we know it today is really Anglo-Saxon with a huge amount of Norman-French loan-words (and a bit of grammar). Since Anglo-Saxon was/is a Germanic language and Norman-French was/is a Romance language, it is easy to see how many problems would arise. Lallans, however, has considerably less Norman-French influence and has retained many original Anglic forms that English lost ages ago. In that sense, one could argue that it is a truer descendant of Anglo-Saxon than English is!

The influence and eventual acceptance of "slang" or local vernacular is a part of every language's growth, and is met with varying degrees of hostility. This is a conflict between the literary standard and how the language is spoken in reality. As for Gaelic 'leftovers', this too, is more correctly called influence, and of that there is little, I'm afraid.

Even a cursory examination of Lallans would inform the layman that it is distinct from English. The fact that English-speakers can read it with little difficultly simply illustrates that they are related languages. The Scandinavian/Nordic languages are a fairly good example of this. As are a multitude of other languages.

While the cynic may say that promoting/recognising Lallans is a political move, so too is denying its validity.

An haes been for aboot 300 years nou.

[MacWage]

Slohairt, I agree.
Also, "English" and Lallans included a strong element of the Britonnic Celtic/Latin blend that the Saxons conquered. Even before the Norman invasion, British English was distinct from the Germanic roots.
So, English blends elements of an early Celtic influenced Latin, a heavy dose of Anglo/Saxon/Jute, come input of actual Norse (from the Dane Law), then an over layering of Frenchified Norse, plus the many, many trading and colonial influences.
Lallan, probably, is related, but has less over layering of the older Celto-Latin/Saxon/Norse blend. (THAT's a HECK of a combo).

[MacWage]

A bit separate, so a different post:

My comments earlier on "Southern" is based on my interest that the language around me may be one of the older surviving forms of the spoken tongue from the "borders" region. There are SEVERAL distinct local and regional "Southern" accents and venacular idiomatic verbage. Even in South Carolina, there are several DISTINCT ones, Charleston is markedly different from the Upstate area.
What is interesting is that the 2 "maligned" accents (if you allow the term for this comparison) share numerous characteristics and characteristics. Of course, they diverged with different influences in the last couple hundred years, allowing for many MARKED word usage differences. However, many odd constructions and phrases are shared by both.
One linguist I talked to said that Appalachia may be closer to the ACTUAL language of Shakespeare than anything present in Britain today.