LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.09 (01) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 09 January 2010 - Volume 01
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.08 (06) [EN]

> From: Marcus Buck <list at marcusbuck.org>
> Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.08 (03) [EN]

> Well, I assume there was no electoral fraud going on. So the numbers
> will be right. But of course pro-independantists are more likely to
> participate in a referendum about this and anti-independantists are
> more likely to boycot it. And of course municipalities with a
> predominantly pro-independantist population are more likely to carry
> out the rederendum early while predominantly ant-independantist
> municipalities will not participate at all. The numbers represent only
> 192,460 votes so far. The full voting population is about 6 million.
> So it's only a tiny fraction. It depends on how "split" or homogenous
> the Catalonian population is, how representative these 192,460 are for
> all of Catalonia.

As I guess you realise, the figures aren't statistically significant and
don't mean a thing.

This won't stop the "95%" result from becoming a part of pro-independent
propaganda, of course!\\

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk>
 Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.08 (02) [EN]

> From: DAVID COWLEY <DavidCowley at anglesey.gov.uk>
 > Subject: LL-L "Language promotion" 2010.01.07 (03) [EN]
>
> A factor which is often rightly said to have been very important for
> Welsh lang is translation of Bible in 1500s: not only did this come as
> an officially, royally approved translation, but Welsh HAD to be used
> in churches in Welsh speaking areas, by law.

> Its often forgotten that these minority lang situations are not
> standing still - there can often tend to be a mix of factors pulling
> different ways; so, whilst Welsh is now used more than ever in schools
> and in official documents, the recent vast choice of new English
> digital TV stations has left the Welsh Channel much more outnumbered
> than it was during the 1980s- 90s (when for many, it was one of only
> four channels at all!).

This is a good point. How much influence would a minority-language TV
station have these days when it's in competition with hundreds of others
in a state lingua franca?

It would seem that Welsh got the timing right on both of these points.
We do have Bibles in Scots but only the New Testament in a direct
translation, and these came far too late in the game.

It's also true that the only language that doesn't change and borrow is
a dead language. So while we have to accept language change, Welsh is
still recognisably Welsh even with a lot of English borrowings, whereas
it takes a lot less to change Scots into something that might as well be
English.

I think something else we can learn from Welsh is that if you have your
own unique orthography, borrowings automatically have less impact on the
perceived character of the language. For example, if you borrow "Yeah,
OK" into Scots, it will be written "Yeah, OK". If you borrow it into
Welsh it will be written "Ie, oce". It still looks like a foreign
language! In this case Scots written tradition is actually against the
language, rather than for it. But it's very hard to change tradition,
especially when to a great extent, the issue is all about tradition.
Welsh history and tradition favours Welsh as a separate language, but
Scots history and tradition is all against Scots as a separate language
from English.

I think this sort of thing can also explain why Welsh activists are
prepared to starve themselves and damage property while Scots activists
are much more easy-going. The Welsh language is strong and everybody
knows what you're talking about when you mention it. This gives
activists much more confidence that there will be people to support them
and that their opponents also know exactly where they stand. Trying to
make a stand for Scots is a much less tangible affair, where even a
simple project can be brought down by factions of activists who are on
the same side ignore each other or even attempt to shoot down each
other's work because of minor spelling variations (and nothing ever gets
as far as raising general awareness amongst the public).

This isn't meaning to be defeatist: rather, you need to understand what
the problems are in order to defeat them. You need to make decisions on
whether it's worth raising millions and devoting careers to setting up a
TV station or whether it's best just to flood YouTube with as much
material as possible (which seems to be what BSL users are doing
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FA1gZqA6pIE  :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

•

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