LL-L "Language varieties" 2001.11.01 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 01.NOV.2001 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
 LS=Low Saxon (Low German) S=Scots Sh=Shetlandic Z=Zeelandic (Zeeuws)
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Language varieties"

> Robert Thiel quoted Dr. William Allbright:
>
> "mutual intelligibility" is of course not a black/white matter (no pun
> intended re ebonics); it's a multidimensional continuum. no two people in
> the world speak exactly the same variety; no single person in the world
> speaks a single uniform variety all the time; every person in the world is
> to some variable degree multidialectal/multilingual. notions like "the
> english language" or "the qubec dialect of french" are IDEOLOGICAL and
> POLITICAL constructs, not linguistic realities."

However, the practical application of such ideas as Dr. Allbright
is putting forward is just as destructive of minority languages
as the ideas that leave him flabbergasted.

This is a particular problem when those who teach Scots as a
subject at the universities (usually not Scots speakers
themselves) are brought together with native speakers. In a
recent incident at the University of the Highlands and Islands
for example, when a well-known lecturer in Scots at Edinburgh
University was brought in to "help" with a project involving
the advancement of standardisation in Scots alongside Gaelic,
the whole project (which had been running for something like
two years, I think) was brought to a halt because she refused
to accept that Scots should be taught as anything but a
disorganised mass of idiolects - so that while the Gaelic
speakers forge ahead with studies on signage, government
use of Gaelic and so on, Scots speakers are resigning in
frustration.

Similarly in the field of Scottish writing, more and more
writers, instead of learning Scots as a language (say, from
the reading of the large body of literature available and the
study of dictionaries and grammars) simply write how they
_think_ they speak, resulting in small, strained pieces of
writing not really accessible outside of their own dialect area.

The truth is that for the survival of minority languages like
Scots, a balance between Dr Allbrights ideas and those of his
"flabbergastors" needs to be achieved: it needs to be standardised
(hopefully in a flexible way) as far as its dialects will allow in
order to make writing and teaching in it as widely accessible as
possible, but the standardisation shouldn't be taken to a national
level just for the sake of having a national language, as has
happened with English.

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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