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<p class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: center;" align="center"><span style="font-family: Arial;">===============================================<br>
<b>L O W L A N D S - L - 20 March 2010 - Volume 01</b><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><br>
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<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br>
From: <span class="gd"><span><span style="color: rgb(121, 6, 25);">jmtait</span></span></span><span class="gi"> </span><span class="go"><<a href="mailto:jmtait@wirhoose.co.uk">jmtait@wirhoose.co.uk</a>></span><br>
Subject: <span class="gi">LL-L "Names" 2010.03.18 (08) [EN]</span><br>
<br>
Mark wrote:<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: blue;">>.From: Mark Dreyer <<mailto:<a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net" target="_blank">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>><a href="mailto:mrdreyer@lantic.net" target="_blank">mrdreyer@lantic.net</a>></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 12pt 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: blue;"><br>
Subject: LL-L "Names" 2010.03.18 (02) [EN]<br>
<br>
>.Dear John:<br>
<br>
.Subject: LL-L "Names"<br>
<br>
.>You say:<br>
>.Well, people from Shetland are not normally referred to as 'Shelties'.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-left: 0.5in;"><span style="font-family: Arial; color: blue;">>.Well, I beg to differ with you there, but times change, &
usages too. My sources may be two generations or so your elders. You talk
about merchant ships - well, when once all trade & transport abroad went
by sea, the sea was the Shelties' natural habitat. I have heard a couple of
your Shelties of the older persuasion note that once there were more Shelties
standing on water than there stood on land. & they manned the vessels of
ship-owners & masters of all the nations of the North
Sea. One was glad to take their articles. You could rely on them.</span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: 12pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial;"><br>
Hi again Mark.<br>
<br>
Yes - but what people are called in a specialised situation far away from home
can't be called 'normal.' Sheltie is a form which has been coined by outsiders,
not by Shetlanders, as the metathesis of t and l (Shelt- rather than 'Shetl-)
might further suggest. I would seriously advise against coming to Shetland and
referring to the inhabitants as 'Shelties'!<br>
<br>
Actually there is no problem with a word to describe people from Shetland -
they are known as 'Shetlanders'. The problem I'm talking about arises in that
there is no readily available word to describe whatever it is they
traditionally speak, because there is no separate adjectival form from
'Shetland' as there is from, say, England (English), Orkney (Orcadian) or
Glasgow (Glaswegian).<br>
<br>
There was just a big discussion about this on Shetlink in the thread started by
Michael Everson (most of the threads in this section are now started by
outsiders - Shetlanders rarely start any.) I'll try to summarise it, because
it's an interesting feature of the English langauge.<br>
<br>
First, it's not unusual for internal areas in the UK not to have specific adjectival
forms. Some do - Cornish, Glaswegian, Orcadian, Liverpudlian, etc - and some
don't seem to (or at least not ones that come easily to mind) - Yorkshire? Somerset? Edinburgh? Shetland. Which ones do and
which ones don't seems to be almost accidental.<br>
<br>
Secondly, even where adjectival forms do exist, the usage tends to be
different. In the case of countries we would usually talk about English rather
than 'England' beer, the
Welsh rather than the 'Wales'
language, and the French rather than the 'France' delegate. A few places in
the UK
have a similar usage - Cornish (pasty) and Manx (cat) were mentioned. But even
where there is an adjectival form, it would be quite natural to talk about a
Yorkshire dialect, an Edinburgh pub, a Liverpool
poet, a Glasgow
policeman, or Orkney cheese. Therefore, the usage for internal areas tends to
be different from that for countries, and the use of the name of the place as
an adjective is natural.<br>
<br>
Where there is an adjectival form it is also used to describe the people,
although again there is variance in usage - Liverpudlians, Orcadians,
Americans, the English, the French, the Cornish, etc. Here the actual usage
seems to be related to the form of the adjective rather than the political
status of the place.<br>
<br>
Shetland is one of the places - like Edinburgh
and Yorkshire (as far as I can think) where no
adjectival form has - for some reason - ever evolved or been developed. The
people are known as 'Shetlanders' which can't be used as an adjective.<br>
<br>
The native usage in Shetland is to use the name of the place - Shaetlan,
variously spelt - as the adjective. So Shetlanders would naturally speak about
'Shaetlan fock', 'Shaetlan wadder', and 'Spaekin Shaetlan,' much as a Yorkshire
person might talk about 'Yorkshire folk', 'Yorkshire
weather', and quite possibly 'Speaking Yorkshire.'<br>
<br>
The problem with this expression is that, whereas it sounds perfectly natural
when you are speaking the native tongue itself, it does not translate well into
standard English. To write about 'Speaking Shetland', or to use the word
'Shetland' as a description of the Shetland tongue both confuses it with the
place (eg: 'The Shetland accent' - are you talking about accent in the place in
general or an accent specifically associated with the traditional Shetland
tongue?) and sounds unnatural and illiterate. (And there is also a question as
to whether Shetland in the expression 'Speaking Shetland' should be regarded as
an adverb - 'speaking in a Shetland manner.')<br>
<br>
The only option, then, is the expression The Shetland Dialect - which itself is
question begging because, and as Shetlanders themselves will be only too keen
to point out (in the dogged determination of many to prove that it is
impossible to write 'dialect' as a single entity) Shetland has a wide variety
of dialects. So do you use Shetland Dialect, which refers to this as a sort of
mass of variation rather than an entity? The semantic problems are not thereby
solved; and even if The Shetland Dialect were satisfactory in, say, academic
usage, it is too cumbersome an expression to use in everyday writing - by, for
example, an organisation which is writing about it frequently, like
ShetlandForWirds. Therefore, it tends to be reduced to 'dialect.'<br>
<br>
Ironically, this is partly because even ShetlandForWirds write mainly in
standard English. Their e-mailings for example are mostly in standard English.
If they had written in 'Shaetlan' then the problem need never have arisen,
because there the term 'Shaetlan' would have done. As it is, however, because
they use the term 'dialect' in their writing they have started to transfer it
back into their spoken Shetland speech as well. You thus have the ironic
situation where 'dialect' promoters are more likely to refer to it as 'dialect'
than traditionaly speakers, who are still quite likely to refer to it as 'Shaetlan.'
(This was demonstrated by the fact that the incoming speaker at Dialect '04 had
picked up this term from everyday speech, and so used it in her talk, whereas
Shetland speakers were more likely to refer to it by variations on (the)
(Shetland) (Dialect).<br>
<br>
Related to this problem of diglossia (or a non-bilingual perception) is a
spelling question. If you were to decide to use the term 'Shaetlan' how would
you spell it? Because the tongue is perceived as a dialect it has normally been
spelt by alterations to standard English spelling, with the sole exception of
the o" (O-Umlaut) vowel which has traditionally been perceived as 'Norse'
(although in fact it usually represents the Scots UI phoneme, albeit with the
Norse phonetics of the Shetland accent.) Exceptions which have spelt it with
Nordic conventions - usually for ideological reasons and with no solid
phonological basis - have never caught on.<br>
<br>
In this type of spelling, the form AE has arisen by reversing the letters in
English words like 'peat', 'meat', etc, which are pronounced [e] rather than
[i] in the Shetland dialects. However, the next step - to accept that as the
default 'Shaetlan' spelling for the phoneme and use it even in words without
<ea> in English - seems to be a step too far in popular spelling (and
would probably be derided as 'purist' by the intelligentsia.) So while
spellings like 'paet', 'maet', and such are common, and while 'dyke' is often
spelt 'daek' (it would be difficult to think of any other way to spell it)
'laek' (Eng. like) is often spelt 'lik', even though does not rhyme with
'pick' in Shetland speech, simply because it can be formed by dropping the
final 'e'.<br>
<br>
This leads to various problems:<br>
<br>
In the case of 'Shaetlan', because the 'official' name 'Shetland' does not have
an <ea> in the spelling, the AE sound tends not to be regarded as a
distinctive sound, but just a 'dialect' pronunciation of the 'proper' E sound
in the 'proper' word. I was once told that 'Shaetlan' looks like a spelling
mistake - presumably because the English form doesn't have an EA. The actual
sound is quite like 'i' in standard English, but 'Shitland' - the most obvious
ad hoc change - obviously doesn't appeal. Added to that the fact that the
unstressed vowel (shewa) in the final syllable is close to the sound of the
phoneme [I] in Shetland. So those who want to spell 'phonetically' tend to
insist that the second syllable be spelt 'i' whereas those who are reluctant to
deviate more than necessary from the 'proper' spelling want to keep the 'e' in
the first syllable even though it isn't pronounced that way. And the fact that
the D at the end is commonly dropped in speech.<br>
<br>
Ensuing spellings might be: Shetlan(d), Shitlan(d) Shitlin(d) Shaetland),
Shaetlin(d). You thus have the bizarre situation where it is not at all obvious
how to spell the name of a tongue even when you are writing in that selfsame
tongue, and where everyone and their dog will object to any spelling other than
the English one which does not represent the pronunciation. The ideological opposition
to any spelling standardisation, or regarding anything other than the o"
sound as a phoneme in its own right, ensures that this problem can never be
overcome.<br>
<br>
The need for an expression to describe the tongue in standard English has
probably been felt for a long time. The word 'Shetlandic' goes back at least as
long as the 20th Century. However, because it has never been used for anything
other than the tongue (because 'Shetland' is the natural adjective, as with 'Yorkshire') it has never become a part of normal usage.
This is probably because of several factors:<br>
<br>
1. Because Shetland people until recently spoke 'Shaetlan' they therefore used
the word 'Shaetlan' to describe it, where it sounds natural. The problem of
what to call it in standard English scarcely arose, because hardly anyone ever
did it, and ad hoc variations on (The) (Shetland) (Dialect) would do for
occasional use when speaking to outsiders or writing in standard English.<br>
<br>
2. Where the term 'Shetlandic' was adopted by a small group of people - I would
imagine, almost exclusively editors of and writers in the New Shetlander - it
did not pass into everyday usage because (ironically) the Shetland Dialect was
so strong at that time that there was no need for such an expression in popular
usage because everybody called it Shaetlan.<br>
<br>
3. Closely related to the above is another peculiarity of the perception of the
tongue as 'dialect.' This perception is what I will describe as non-bilingual,
although the linguistic description is diglossia. That is, in contrast to an
obvious 'language' like Gaelic where you either speak Gaelic, or English, or
both, and if you speak both you are bilingual, the Shetland dialect was
perceived as a exclusively a spoken form, the written form of which was
standard English. Just as there was no need for the native tongue to be written
- because you wrote in standard English - so there was scarcely any need to
speak standard English. Almost everyone spoke 'Shaetlan' and because it was
closely related to standard English incomers learned to understand it in a
matter of months. Apart from people who had been 'Sooth' or who worked in
occupations such as teaching, many Shetlanders of my father's generation spoke
ropy English, peppered with Shetland constructions and hypercorrections. There
being no perception of bilingualism, then, no need was felt of a 'translation'
of the word or concept 'Shaetlan' into standard English. Insofar as there was
interest in the Shetland dialect - and there was - it was mostly confined to
its use in verse, and to an ongoing obsession with (and reaction against) its
Norn origins, much of which can be described as mythology. To most people,
however, the local speech was not an issue - it was just what you spoke, and
did not therefore require an 'official' designation.<br>
<br>
This has another outcome in that, now that the Shetland 'dialect' forms are
dying out, some Shetlanders see this (whether favourably or unfavourably
depends on taste) as a necessary adoption of the standard form. That is, those
who are in favour of the tongue dying out see this as a transition to the
'proper' form which is identified with education and advancement. On the other
hand, those who resent it tend to see it as an unfortunate necessity of
circumstances. Neither has any perception of bilingualism - that is, that you
can both speak AND write both varieties, rather than one being the spoken and
one being the written form. The insistence of people who are concerned is
typically on the survival of the 'dialect' as a spoken form without any
interference from the areas which are traditionally the preserve of standard
English. Where written 'dialect' is used, it is seen mainly a way of bolstering
the spoken form, and not - except in the restricted area of literature - as a
written medium in its own right.<br>
<br>
The need for a discrete standard English term for the tongue was therefore felt
only by a minority of people beginning at the start of the 20th Century, and I
became familiar with it mainly from the New Shetlander, and also from its use
outside Shetland in Scots language publications and by Scottish linguists. John
Graham, long time editor of the New Shetlander, used both 'Shetland Dialect'
and 'Shetlandic'. His editorship of the New Shetlander spanned the 'oil era',
when the native tongue could be seen to be dying out at an accelerated rate,
and it was clear that the traditional position of the Shetland tongue as a
spoken dialect in a diglossic relationship with written English would not
continue. There was considerable emphasis in the New Shetlander at this time on
developing the written language (although the emphasis was still on literature,
towards prose writing away from the traditional emphasis on poetry.)<br>
<br>
I suppose it could be said that, in the term Shetland Dialect, it would at this
time have been possible for either the Shetland part - the part suggesting the
identity of the tongue with a place - or the Dialect part - the part suggesting
its subsidiary status - to be emphasised. Use of the term 'Shetlandic'
emphasised the former. But with the retirment of John Graham, and the emergence
of a series of editors of the New Shetlander who are firmly within the pericope
of mainstream Scottish literary and linguistic thought, the 'Shetland' emphasis
has waned and the 'Dialect' part has come to be emphasised. The opprobrium
which is now attached to its usage has arguably come about largely since I
started to use it, although it was never popular. In other words, whereas my
intent - and, I'm sure, the intent of those who started to use it - was to
enhance the status of the Shetland tongue, Shetlanders as a whole have reacted
against this, with the result that use of the term is now regarded as
despicable.<br>
<br>
Examples can again be found in the thread on Shetlink started by Michael
Everson. One correspondent said that the term Shetlandic was an attempt to make
the speech look Nordic, and was offputting because it was 'obviously
political.' Michael pointed out that only a small number of the Nordic tongues
have endings in -ic, and I pointed out that terms like 'dialect' are political
as well - it's just that they express the political views of the establishment
whereas 'Shetlandic' challenges those views. Unfortunately, when these facts
are pointed out, the originators of the comments do not continue the
conversation.<br style="">
<br style="">
</span></p>
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