Varieties of English

[Aaron E. Drews]

At 7:47 PM +0800 12/8/00, Laurence Horn wrote:
>In the Dialects of English course I co-teach

Obviously, there are many of you on this list that teach a similar
course. I'd like to mention the launch of a new science-fiction novel
written entirely in Scots.  It is called _But and Ben a-go-go_ and it
should be available on Amazon.  While I'm leery of classifying Scots
as a dialect, Scots is certainly a variety of West Germanic very
closely related to English and has a common ancestor in Old English
and therefore might be useful in a course such as Larry's.

A local review said it might only be accessible by those living in
Scotland.  I would disagree. I would say it is as accessible as
written AAVE, Twain's rendition of slave speech, Chicano English and
the like.... once you get used to it.  Of course, there are the
social implications of having a contemporary piece of fiction in a
<pejorative> dialect </pejorative>.

If anyone is interested in a review copy for a course, let me know.
If anyone is interested for the sake of interest, I'm sure you have a
bookmark for Amazon.

--Aaron


--
________________________________________________________________________
Aaron E. Drews                               The University of Edinburgh
http://www.ling.ed.ac.uk/~aaron      Departments of English Language and
aaron at ling.ed.ac.uk                    Theoretical & Applied Linguistics

  "MERE ACCUMULATION OF OBSERVATIONAL EVIDENCE IS NOT PROOF"
        --Death