LL-L: "Grammar" (was "Etymology") LOWLANDS-L, 16.SEP.2000 (02) [E]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Etymology"

> From: Ian James Parsley [parsleyij at yahoo.com]
> Subject: LL-L: "Etymology" LOWLANDS-L, 15.SEP.2000 (02) [E]
>
> Andy wrote:
>
> > Some English dialects use 'were' instead of 'was'. Especially 'up
north'
> > (That's 'down south' to me;-))
>
> Others that are really in the South no matter how you look at it have
> 'was' in all positions, of course.

This is something I've been mulling over for a while now. It seems to
me
that:

   o    even in the very south of England where I live, "was" and
suchlike
are very common; it may be that "was" forms with plurals is more
southwest,
whereas "were" forms with plurals is more southeast (southeastern
English
being more like written English in many ways than other forms);

   o    one thing that the southwest of England has in common with
Scots is
that speakers seem not to be consistent in their use of these forms - I
suspect this is "school English" infiltrating native Wessexian and
Scots
speech patterns.

   o    consistent use of "was" forms with plural nouns seem to be rare
in
tradtional Scots writings, although writers who lean strongly towards
"were"
forms with plural nouns can be divided into certain classes which
suggest
that the use of "were" forms isn't representative of spoken Scots, but
actually a result of schooling which classifies "was" forms as dialect;
the
classes of writers are:

- those who use "was" forms consistently - these writers seem to
represent
the truly educated end of the spectrum, e.g. Montgomerie (sometimes)
and
Lorimer;

- poets who use the form which best suits their current rhyme and
scansion -
Montgomerie does this, as well as billions of lesser and greater poets;

- prose writers who write traditional Scots unselfconsciously, ie whose
grammar is formed mainly from attempts at representing idiom rather
than
either dialect or a literary style; this results in the mixture of both
forms that's heard in spoken Scots today - a good example is Slater's
novel
"Marget Pow";

- prose writers who try to use "were" forms thinking they're more
literary,
but fail to spot the less obvious plurals, particularly those not
involving
an -s ending, eg "bairns are ti be seen an no heard", but "fowk's no
sae
sair aff nou";

- writers who succeed in being consistent with the "were" forms; I'm
not
sure if such writers exist at all in Scots - I suspect they're even
rarer
than those who use "was" forms consistently, if they exist at all.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

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