LL-L: "Multilingualism" LOWLANDS-L, 02.NOV.1999 (02) [E]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 30.OCT.1999 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Multilingualism" LOWLANDS-L, 31.OCT.1999 (01) [E]
Sandy wrote:

>I think this can be broken down further. There are different disciplines in
>learning a language - reading, writing, speaking, listening - and people
>tend to learn only those which they really need. Thus when English-speaking
>Scots try to learn Scots they usually have some sort of
>political/nationalistic agenda in which speaking Scots is unimportant but
>they meed to look as if they can write it. Here a further subdivision of
>linguistic disciplines comes into play - they don't _need_ Scots grammar to
>give the _appearance_ of being able to write Scots, they just need the
>vocabulary (though a bit of anti-English orthography helps too!) and as a
>consequence they "nivver rax the geggie whaurlins thai kin crack or even
>scrieve Scots whilk hamel bletherers cud thole" (ill-chosen Scots words
>copyright Chambers' Concise English-Scots Dictionary :)

Yes - and of course, when the main purpose of written Scots is essentially
cosmetic, all other considerations go out the window.
Roger wrote:

>
>From: Roger P. G. Thijs [roger.thijs at village.uunet.be]
>Subject: LL-L: "Multilingualism" LOWLANDS-L, 30.OCT.1999 (06) [E]
>
>> From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
>> Subject: LL-L: "Multilingualism" LOWLANDS-L, 27.OCT.1999 (04) [E]
>> This is a very accurate description of what happens when English-speaking
>> Scots try to learn Scots (which in most cases means, learn to write it -
>> few try to speak it.) It is an almost unsurmountable problem, largely
>> because of the fact - which you point out - that hardly anyone would be
>> prepared to plough through the exercises which would be necessary to gain
>> proficiency when they understand practically everything already.
>
>Can you reverse this? Is it possible for a "real" native Scots speaker from
>the countryside, raised in an homogeneous Scots environment (hardly to
>realise nowadays with an omnipresence of TV and radio), to become a speaker
>of English at a level of a BBC TV newsreader? Or will he (virtually)
>repeatedly be misled and continue to interject Scots idioms while speaking
>English?

This is complicated by the fact that there is a form of English, called
Scottish Standard English (SSE), which is already different from English
English. Even middle class Scots are often not aware that many of the
constructions, and some of the vocabulary, they use are characteristic of
SSE and different from English as spoken in England. The interjection of
Scots idioms is not necessarily wrong in SSE - it all depends what kind of
idioms you are talking about.

On the other hand, it is quite common to see people - usually connected
with football - being interviewed on TV who use constructions which are not
part of SSE either. There are perhaps several forms of this. One form is
apparently accidental, and usually involves the use, in otherwise English
speech, of convergent preterite/past participles (e.g. I've gave/came)
which are not in fact part of traditional Scots grammar either (though this
view would be disputed by those who hold that anything spoken North of the
border is Scots.) The other form involves the apparently deliberate
interjection of whole Scots phrases, or 'set pieces' (e.g. 'it's a sair
fecht') into otherwise English speech, which is a common feature of
conversation in Scotland anyway. Thirdly, you get people who try to speak
English but keep lapsing into natural Scots.

Also, although some Scots grow up in a Scots-speaking environment, all
Scots are supposed to be taught to speak English at school. This doesn't
always work, and I know several Scots and Shetlanders who can hardly speak
English at all, to the extent that, on foreign trips, their friends have to
translate their speech into English. There are many Shetlanders who cannot
speak English without 'falling through it' all the time - for example,
using the verb 'to be' to form the perfect tense. This was almost universal
amongst Shetlanders of my parent's generation. The reason is simple - in an
environment where practically everyone speaks Shetlandic, and even the few
who don't speak it understand it perfectly, there is never any reason to
speak English, and thus no opportunity to practice it enough to become
proficient in it.

It is my personal opinion that the English of many Scots is severely
handicapped by the fact that they are not taught their own language, and
are taught English, not as a second language, but as if it ought to be
their own.

In general, though, it is relatively easy for a Scots speaker to learn
English, because we are surrounded by it all the time. It is not easy for
an English speaking Scot to learn Scots, however, because most who want to
do so work in middle class jobs where Scots is not spoken, and the
prerequisites of learning it formally do not exist.

John M. Tait.

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