LL-L: "Orthography" 05.JUN.2000 (01) [E/S]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 05.JUN.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Orthography" LOWLANDS-L, 01.JUN.2000 (03) [E/S]

Sandy wrote:

>Here's an example of John's critique on a snatch of dialect from one of my

>stories:
>
><quote> "Still, yes duin no a bad job". This disna mak sense ti me. Is it
>ye'v or yes'v? Mibbie it
>wad be obvious ti somebodie at wad spaek that wey, but I canna lift it.
>Aiblins <ye's> ti shaw the
>missin v, an shaw at it's no the affirmative? Or is it 'done' as a
>preterite, like 'I done it'? In this case,
>aiblins 'yous' raither nor 'yes' wad dae the trick? Again, wad ye say duin

>[dIn] as a preterite? I'v aye  haurd fowk say [dVn]. This is mibbie like
>cam an came again, suggestin at the convergent tenses is  English lens?
></quote>
>
>[canna lift - "can't understand", aiblins - "perhaps", aye - "always",
lens
>- "loans"]
>
>As you see, my simple dialect sentence, "Still, yes duin no a bad job" is
>only a representation of
>the dialect in a very standard Scots spelling, and yet John finds it
>confusing on account of the
>juxtaposition of two unfamiliar items of grammar that leave the
>possibilities wide open for him,
>although it can mean only one thing to me. And if I'd tried to give a
>faithful representation of the
>dialect, things could only get worse ("Still, eez din no a baud joab").

I think what threw me here, Sandy, was the _mixture_ of narrative-type and
dialect-type spellings. People writing a Central-type dialect would
probably usually write 'din' rather than 'duin' and perhaps 'yiz' or 'eez'
rather than 'yes'. Your "Still, eez din no a baud joab" would have been
obviously dialect spelling, and 'yous duin' would have been a more standard

type of spelling. The real difficulty is how to spell the pronoun here -
'yes' - presumably a logical plural form of 'ye' - being neither a typical
dialect nor a typical narrative-type spelling.

>Dialect writers can also get confused over how grammatical structures are
>used in their own
>speech. For example, I used to struggle with narrative sentences such as
>this in Scots:
>
>"A tak the gate she pynts, but A loss ma nerves whan A keek throu the
>windae an see aa the
>fowk."
>
>Recently John pointed out that a sentence like this should be in the
>present historic tense, which
>is different in Scots from most Englsih dialects:
>
>"A taks the gate she pynts, but A losses ma nerves whan A keeks throu the
>windae an sees aa the fowk."
>
>The strange thing is that this is exactly what I would say in narrating a
>story myself, and in fact I
>can remember attempting to add these "s"es but having given up on them. I
>was incapable of
>writing it properly until the relevant grammatical principle was pointed
>out. I also went through
>similar experiences when reading Purves's Scots Grammar - he would point
>out things that I say,
>but I would never have thought of writing them.

I think it's worth pointing out here what I found odd about the first
version:

"A tak the gate she pynts, but A loss ma nerves whan A keek throu the
>windae an see aa the fowk."

As compared to the second:

"A taks the gate she pynts, but A losses ma nerves whan A keeks throu the
>windae an sees aa the fowk."

The underlying rule - which, as Sandy points out, is natural in Scots
spoken narrative (almost unconscious, which is probably why Scots writers
do not automatically transfer it to writing, being influenced by standard
English norms) is that the historic present in the first person does not
have the ordinary first person present form, but the form of the third
person present. so:

Present: I loss, he losses
Historic present: I losses, he losses

The problem with "A tak the gate she pynts, but A loss ma nerves whan A
keek throu the windae an see aa the fowk" is that it uses ordinary
present-tense present forms instead of historic-present ones, and to my
mind this sounds very odd in a Scots narrative. Past narrative does not
have to use historic presents - it could use preterites ('I teuk the gate
she pyntit...etc), and both can be used in the same narrative, though
perhaps not in the same sentence. It's the present-present tenses which
sound odd - like a half-way house between natural Scots and standard
English.

(By the way, I don't know if this form of historic present is unique to
Scots - doesn't it occur in forms of colloquial English?)

When I say that both 'can' be used in the same narrative, I mean that I can

read a story written in Scots using both historic presents and preterites
without noticing anything odd about it - without noticing anything, in
fact. But mixing them in the same sentence, or using the present-present
form, immediately sounds strange. These 'strange' forms, which are often as

I say a half-way house between Scots and standard English, are the sort of
thing which often gives written Scots an artificial feel. In other words,
my 'can' doesn't refer to an arbitrary prescriptive rule; it refers to what

produces natural traditional Scots.

Sandy's comments about the difficulty of writing as you speak illustrates
the fallacy of the fashionable academic/literary approach to Scots writing,

which emphasises 'naturalness' and 'spontaneity' and scoffs at
'prescriptive' rules for grammar. But, because it is much more difficult
(because of the influence of standard English, which you have read and
practiced, in the back of your mind) to write consistent Scots narrative
without rules and practice than it is to write dialogue without rules and
practice, this means that 'natural' Scots writing is confined to dialogue.
This situation is then used to 'prove' that Scots is not suitable for
writing narrative; whereas in fact the artificialities which support this
conclusion result from a failure to identify and apply in writing the
features of Scots spoken narrative - such as the historic present - which
make it sound natural.

To claim that you can write Scots without rules or practice is a bit like
claiming that real sport can only be played by people who don't train, and
that training spoils talent. As Flanders and Swan said about foreigners
playing cricket, 'they practice beforehand, which ruins the fun.' The
principle of spontaneity leads not to natural flow, but to limping; and the

fashionable scoffing at 'prescriptive grammar' in Scots restricts rather
than liberates.

John M. Tait.

(Bi the wey, Sandy, I'm an 'expert' on the speak o juist twa hooses on the
isle o Burra in Shetland, ane o thaim wi naebodie bidin in it nou!)

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