Contributions by Steve Long

[Gordon Selway]

At 3:50 am 4/10/99, Robert Orr wrote:
>I've only just read the first part of Larry Trask's posting, so this is a
>bit impertinent, but there is a comment that can be made right away on one
>of his points.

>>Is Scots a variety of English or a separate language?  Well, a number of
>>Scots have argued that it is a separate language, and, if it had not
>>been for the Act of Union in 1707, we might all recognise Scots as a
>>distinct language today.  But, because of that Act, we don't.  There are
>>no linguistic considerations here: just political ones.

>Actually, there is a linguistic consideration.  Scots used to have a large
>number of distinctive lexical items, differentiating it from "English".
>Many of these are now rare in everyday speech, thus reducing the amount of
>differentation.

>Due to the Act of Union (what about the Union of the Crowns?)  Perhaps.
===
[Though it is distinctly tangential, this may be of interest.  It also
reminds us that speech exists in communities, I suppose, and that different
forms of language, registers, &c may co-exist within one community -
whatever that may be : people who are in touch with each other?  people who
recognise each other when they meet?]

A complex story.

There are still differences at several levels (and some of them no doubt
enabled a master to identify where my family had recently come from when I
was a schoolboy, even though to a casual hearer I would probably have
seemed to speak standard RP English), some of which in specific cases
certainly parallel Gaelic idiom.  [Eg cia mar/what like?]

Given that the other family input into my idiolect is distinctly
'mummersetshire', I can effectively become incomprehensible (and weave a
fair number of local dialect peculiarities into my speech on occasion) in
both western English and south-western Scots (or indeed Ulster Scots).
Though it's easier to be the passive recipient than the active instigator
of discourse in Scots.  A definite problem can be my intonation, which may
be what can baffle people in England, even when the words and the 'accent'
are standard English.

There was a conscious change towards standard English after the
Reformation, possibly because there were no available translations of the
bible in Scots.  The metrical psalms were also in the same language, even
where they had Scots authors.

On the other hand, the language of civil administration and the law
continued to be Scots rather than English well after the Union (of the
Parliaments, that is).  The movement in 1603 was of folk off to London with
Jamie, not of the English to Edinburgh and beyond.  [And btw when the Edict
of Nantes was revoked by Louis XIV in 1685, the French calvinists moved to
England and parts of Ireland, rather than to Scotland where they would have
been among co-religionists, in any numbers.]

There certainly are distinct differences between the vernaculars in Glasgow
and London, and the differences in Scotland may be being cultivated.  Being
in an institutional distinct country may assist.

Gordon
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>