LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.04.03 (01) [EN]

[Lowlands-L List]

===============================================
*L O W L A N D S - L - 03 April 2010 - Volume 01*
lowlands.list at gmail.com - http://lowlands-l.net/
Posting: lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org
Archive: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/lowlands-l.html
Encoding: Unicode (UTF-08)
Language Codes: lowlands-l.net/codes.php
===============================================


From: jmtait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.30 (02) [EN]

 Mark Dreyer wrote:

 Subject: LL-L "Language varieties"

>Well, John, I did warn you I'd call you & continue calling you(plural)
'Sheltie' & your language 'Sheltie' until you gave me a name to call you by,



Ah, well, I can't argue with that!

 John, if I were the only Boertjie on the list I would write in Afrikaans &
(they have done it) a generous handful of Lowlands speakers would respond in
the same or their own dialects, for the sake of understanding & in good
faith that I would in an amateur scholarly way be as intrigued as they by
the points of contact between their 'dialects' & mine. Pleeeeease do the
same! You have my unqualified licence to respond to all my Afrikaans in
Sheltie. If I strike a snag I shall ask Ron, or better still, Sandy, to
help.



Well, I can't understand Afrikaans at all, so I'm not going to be replying
to it! And in the case of Scots, if I was a Shetlander living in Shetland I
would respond in my own dialect, but since I live on mainland Scotland this
just wouldn't occur to me.

 I think I've shared this on the list before: Robert the Bruce goes to mass
in Dumfries, & who should he see at the alter-rail beside him but his deadly
enemy. In a passion of outrage he draws his dirk & runs him through. But
remember, Our Robert is a Christian & Penitant, & riven with sorrow he turns
away & walks out. His leutenant Douglas Dubh is standing guard outside, &
asks him (having seen some of the action), "Khwat maccur?"

Â


Robert: "Ik think ik had a man geslacht."

Â


Douglas: "Think? Think! Then I'll mak siccur!"


What language is Bruce speaking here!? The version I'm familiar with goes:

Bruce: I dout I hae killed the Comyn.

(Comyn being his rival's name)

Kirkpatrick: Ye dout? I mak siccar!

John M. Tait.



----------



From: jmtait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.28 (01) [EN]

 Sandy wrote:

> From: jmtait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.23 (03) [EN]
>
> The first is the real aversion to the word Shetlandic among many
> ordinary Shetlanders. This can probably be put down to simple lack of
> familiarity, owing to it not being used in print, and ridiculed when
> it is (see below.)

>Which doesn't stop us from using it, at least until Shetlanders make up
their minds. You were originally talking in terms of not calling
Shetlandic anything at all on this list.


Well, no, it doesn't stop you using it - just me!

>I'm beginning to wonder if you aren't doing Shetland attitudes an
injustice here. Are these highly vocal book, magazine and letter writers
really representative of the native Shetland-speaking populace?


I think so. I remember at the dialect conference I met a woman in the local
bookshop, who had been attending the conference when she could get away from
work and so had missed my paper. One of the first things she said was 'I
hate dis 'Shetlandic' dey spaek aboot.' (Which demonstrates both the fact
that the term was used - ie, not only by myself - and the aversion to it
which, I suspect, is emergent - in other words, I think that, although the
term has never been popular, the actual reaction against it is relatively
recent, fuelled by precisely those people who fear its 'political'
implications.)

But it's not just the term, it's also the way of thinking that acceptance or
rejection of such a term would and does signify. I think that had that
entire approach been adopted, a younger generation lacking the prejudices of
the establishment might have adopted it. Since that approach was rejected -
perhaps to some extent in deference to the vocal characters you refer to -
the opposite is the case.

In summary I would say that the vocal characters pick up on an existing
trend and influence the general population further in that direction.

 > Well, yes - but to use a term outside Shetland which is disowned by
> Shetlanders is self-defeating.

>Why? We need a term for the language here, we can use it whether
Shetlanders acknowledge it or not. Perhaps we can put them to shame :)


Well, yes, you can use it (I'll stick to circumlocutions.) Remember,
however, that anything talked about on lists like this is completely
irrelevant to what goes on on the ground. The same could be said for Scots
in general.

>I think these are simply psychological phenomena and that the real
problem here is in the science, or lack thereof. Psychology and
linguistics are sciences, and all this sort of thing is governed by
their laws, which although they're now crawling out of their dark ages
are still not widely understood by those not actually working in these
fields.

>How do you get to a point where people understand things well enough to
do the right thing for a language instead of clinging to destructive
beliefs? Language change is pretty much inevitable because that's how
things work. If we want to have more control we need better science but
the relevant sciences are still poorly understood outside of the
disciplines themselves.

>In the future I think people will say that we destroyed many languages
because we didn't have the necessary scientific understanding of
language change and psychological attitudes to language, or how to
snapshot a language, or what the consequences were of losing a language,
and other such technology and understanding.


Well yes, I think that's exactly the point. Whereas advances in both science
and education have highlighted race, gender and environmental issues, for
example, language is an area that has seen no significant popular or
establishment recognition of underlying science or advancement in attitudes,
other than - in the UK at least - a wider acceptance of regional accents in
the media.

Unfortunately, few people (and this is perhaps even more true of
institutions) learn new tricks. In other words, most people are enlightened
only insofar as they have been taught that enlightenment consists in being
enlightened about certain things that society at large has already become
enlightened about! (I did say I was going for a circumlocution award!) In
the case of language, it is still possible for celebrities, radio presenters
and others to run programs with titles like 'Gaelic - who needs it?'. One
case was the occasion when Ann Robinson suggested putting the Welsh into
Room 101, and Paul Merton, presenter of the show, perceptively commented
that he couldn't put the Welsh into Room 101 for speaking their own
language. To the Welsh this is a well-known incident, but to someone viewing
from elsewhere in the UK - including Scotland - it would simply have seemed
like the exchange of two fairly unimportant individual opinions. And
minority language issues seem to be in conflict with both the traditional
right wing emphasis on propriety and individual betterment, and the
traditional left-wing emphasis on one-world humanism. The preservation of
species or historic buildings is accepted without a murmer (unless you
happen to live in one of said buildings!) whereas societies like the Welsh
who struggle for their language are widely regarded as ridiculous. So the
idea of conserving language, where it isn't seen as simply silly, can easily
be represented as retrograde rather than progressive.

John M. Tait.



===================================================
Send posting submissions to lowlands-l at listserv.linguistlist.org.
Please display only the relevant parts of quotes in your replies.
Send commands (including "signoff lowlands-l") to
listserv at listserv.linguistlist.org or lowlands.list at gmail.com
http://linguistlist.org/subscribing/sub-lowlands-l.html.
===================================================
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listserv.linguistlist.org/pipermail/lowlands-l/attachments/20100403/4b7e89f3/attachment.htm>