LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" LOWLANDS-L, 24.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 24.JUL.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 From: PBarr21106 at aol.com
 Subject: LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" LOWLANDS-L, 23.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

 In a message dated 7/24/0 4:44:12 AM, John M. Tait wrote:

<<I wonder whether the increasing closeness of dialects - e.g. the fact
that
the speech of Glasgow is now so much nearer to English - leads to a
decrease in competence in the standard form - because the characteristics
of Glasgow speech (e.g. convergent past tenses) are not sufficiently
different from English to cause much misunderstanding, there is little
incentive to become bilingual, as there is with completely different
languages such as English and Gaelic; and therefore, rather than the
Shetland situation where you get some people able to speak only Shetlandic
with accomodation to English where necessary, and others (mostly
professional people) able to code switch completely, in places like Glasgow

you perhaps tend to get either speakers of standard English or speakers of
the local variety, both unable to speak the other (This guess is based on a

recent holiday I had in the Highlands, where instructors from Glasgow
seemed unable or unwilling to alter their native speech - e.g. 'I'v came'
etc - even when speaking to English tourists, though this may have been
affected by the fact that I spoke Scots to them and they may have been
asserting their identity.) To put it differently, does a failure to
recognise bilingualism in education encourage social stratification of
language, and the tendency to regard Glasgow speech as - as the author
James Kelman describes it - the Glasgow variety of English?>>

For me, this resembles the situation between Standard American English and
African-American Vernacular English. People really don't know when they are

speaking AAVE, i.e. they cannot identify grammar as being in contrast to
that
of S.E., and there is little motivation to approach S.E. structure since
misunderstandings are rare. Pronunciation is another matter, but wide
familiarity with AAVE pronunciation makes it unnecessary, in most cases, to

approximate S.E. and there is a strong tendency to maintain one's social
identity through maintaining a "Black" or a "Mexican" accent, even though
ever so slight. There is, in fact, some evidence that AAVE is moving away
from SE rather than assimilating to it, especially in large urban areas. I
see parallels to the situation John describes. We all know what happened to

the Oakland, CA school board when it tried to recognize bilingualism among
their students.
PBarr21106 at aol.com   Pat Barrett    Mesa, AZ

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From: Colin Wilson [lcwilson at iee.org]
Subject: LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" LOWLANDS-L, 19.JUL.2000 (01) [E]

At 07:45 19/07/00 -0700, Criostoir O Ciardha wrote:
>Well, this is the problem of course. I've yet to meet
>an English person who doesn't denigrate Lallans as
>'aberrant English' and I think most English -
>imperialist as they are (generalisation but
>nonetheless valid) - would find it laughable if you
>were to refer to Lallans as a separate language with
>its own literature and writing culture.

I'm not sure that the situation is as dark as COC is presenting it.
The existence of literature in Scots is undeniable, and on the whole
I've found that English people have no well-formed views on the
position of Scots, because they haven't given the matter any great
consideration. The positive side of this is that they don't have
the negative prior conditioning that most Scots have.

When the case is explained to them, most will concede that at least
there is a case. Also, this can have unexpected positive consequences.
One English woman whom I met recently, after browsing the manuscript
of my "Stertin Oot in Scots", then went on to say that she spoke
"English and Nottinghamese". I don't really know, of course, but I
suspect she'd never thought in those terms before.

By the way, for anyone interested in "Stertin Oot in Scots", the
book is complete and nowadays I'm writing the script for the
accompanying audio CD.

Colin Wilson.

*********************************************************************
                               the graip wis tint, the besom wis duin
Colin Wilson                   the barra wadna row its lane
writin fae Aiberdein           an sicna soss it nivver wis seen
                               lik the muckin o Geordie's byre
**********************************************************************

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