LL-L: "Code switching" LOWLANDS-L, 07.MAR.2000 (01) [E]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 07.MAR.2000 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Language varieties" LOWLANDS-L, 01.MAR.2000 (14) [E]

Ron wrote:

>You will also frequently encounter this type of code switching between Low
>Saxon (Low German) and German in Northern Germany.  You might start off in
Low
>Saxon and then switch to German to say something about, say, technical or
>bureaucratic matters.  This might lead you to continuing in German for a
>while, but a change of topic or a more "relaxed" turn in the conversation
>might lead you back to Low Saxon.  I would expect similar situations in cases
>such as Afrikaans <> English, Low Saxon <> Dutch, Frisian <> Dutch, and Dutch
><> French, perhaps also Scots <> English, in our Lowlandic subject area.  I
>have been known to slip into this type of Low Saxon <> German and German <>
>English code switching myself (and I refer to it as "loose switch").  I have
>noticed that it is very common in virtually all immigrants' groups where
>everyone knows both the ancestral and new language.  Few people seem to be
>able to stick to one language.

This offers a very interesting example of the difference between the way I
use Shetlandic and the way I use Scots. Many people I know - my wife, for
example - will use Scots in some contexts and English in others, more or
less as described above (except that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or
reason to her code-switching) and when I'm talking to people like that I
tend to automatically do what they do - that is, I tend to reply in
whatever language they are speaking to me at the time. This includes a
hybrid Scots/English which my wife tends to speak, which I don't speak to
anyone else, and which I would call 'garbled nonsense' were I to hear
anyone else speaking it!

This is in complete contrast to how I use Shetlandic. In Shetland, talking
to my brother for example, I would _never_ use English, no matter how
technical the subject was. In extreme cases the vocabulary might be mostly
international Latin and Greek, but the phonology, morphology and syntax,
and any relevant non-technical vocabulary (e.g. the familiar pronoun _du_,
and relevant cognates such as 'haem', 'lang' or 'doon') would definitely be
Shetlandic rather than English. The situation in certain areas of the North
East would be the same. This fact - that Shetlandic and some Scots speakers
use Shetlandic or Scots whatever they are talking about - is not
appreciated by some (mostly amateur) commentators on Scots, who seem simply
to _assume_ that everyone talks English when they are speaking about
serious topics, because, never having lived or worked in an environment
where Scots is a real community language, used by practically everyone of
any level of education, such a situation is simply beyond their experience.

This creates considerable misunderstandings, because it leads to
assumptions about the scope and capabilities of Scots being made by people
whose only experience of the language is of situations where it is already
marginal. The prevalence of Labovian sociolinguistics as a sort of
orthodoxy for the study of Scots as a whole is the academic side of the
same tendency.

Another thing which many Anglophone Scots don't seem to understand is that
there are many people, especially older people, in Shetland and the North
East who are monolingual Scots or Shetlandic speakers. That is, although
they can manage a few words in English to make a point, they cannot speak
it fluently; and when they try to, the results are often comical. It is a
moot point how far real bilingualism in areas such as this is the exception
(mostly people who have been 'Sooth', usually to University, and have
returned to work e.g. as teachers); how far the survival of the native
languages is related to lack of the need or ability to be fluent in
English; and whether, in a situation where there is no bilingual education
as such, the native tongue must automatically be squeezed out as people
become more conversant with English. In other words, in a situation where
only English is taught as a language, do local speech forms survive only by
default?

Related to this - seeing someone was mentioning David Crystal - is his
description of Shetlandic (I've mentioned this on this list before) where
he gives an example of speech, from a sixty year old man in Lerwick, to
show that much spoken Shetlandic is little different from standard English.
Anyone actually familiar with Shetland would know that only a handful of
Shetlanders of that age would actually speak like the example given, even
in Lerwick - one or two oddballs known derisively by locals as 'knappers'
(affected speakers of English). The first impression is that this is
someone doing his level best to speak English in order to be understood by
a foreigner (the example came from research done by a Swede, Bengt
Orestro"m). Moreover, reference to the actual source of the example shows
that Orestro"m's research was exclusively on syntax and intonation, and he
had a deliberate policy of Anglicising everything else in his examples so
that they would be easily readable by non-Shetlanders (the results, to a
Shetlander, are sometimes bizarre to say the least). That Crystal could
accept, as genuine Shetland speech, an example elicited by a foreign
researcher who had a stated policy of Anglicising his texts is remarkable -
rather like the practices of the 19th century 'armchair anthropologists',
who were held up as an example of how not to do things when I was at
University. I hope his information about Australian - and The Inchkeith
Experiment - is more reliable.

John M. Tait.

----------

From: John M. Tait [jmtait at altavista.net]
Subject: LL-L: "Code switching" (was "Language varieties") LOWLANDS-L,
01.MAR.2000 (15) [E]

Sandy wrote:

>Does anyone else who speaks two languages with what might be seen as equal
>proficiency still feel what I feel, that there is a fundamental difference
>between the two that enables you somehow to still tell that one is your
>native tongue and the other "foreign"? After speaking only Scots for the
>first 17 years of my life and then 26 years speaking mostly English, I still
>find that when I speak Scots I'm mostly unaware of my actual speech, but
>when I speak English, I'm mostly conscious of the words and grammar I'm
>using. In Scots I can just let my mouth express what's on my mind, whereas
>in English I seem to have to keep listening to myself as if having to check
>that it makes sense.

I don't find this at all, Sandy. I find that I talk unconsciously (perhaps
that doesn't quite have the connotation I was trying for!) in English,
Shetlandic or Scots, as long as the person I am talking to is talking back
in the same language. (Similarly, I've automatically replied to this in
English because the question was in English.) I find difficulty, however,
talking to people with North East accents who speak English, because my
inbuilt code-switching device is confused as to whether I should be
speaking English or Scots. I have to deliberately decide what to speak and
then deliberately do so. I also find it very difficult to know how to speak
to Orcadians. To Scots from other parts of Scotland, I simply speak Scots
if they speak Scots and English if they speak English. There's no way,
though, that I would ever even consider speaking English to anyone with a
Shetland accent. This is probably partly because Shetlandic is obviously
more natural to me than NE Scots, and partly because of the greater
opprobrium attached to 'knappin' in Shetland - at least until recently - as
compared to the NE. I remember the total horror of my brother and a friend
when, home on holiday from university, I used English to ask a passer-by
for directions in Lerwick.

This situation - that is, the traditional situation of Shetlandic in
Shetland and of Scots in parts of the North East - is very different from
that described by Ian in Northern Ireland, where people may start off
speaking English; or by Ron in Northern Germany, where the language
obviously has a lower status in the  eyes (or ears!) of those who speak it.
I would predict, however, that it won't be long before the situation in the
NE has deteriorated to fit that of Low Saxon, which already seems to be the
situation in much of Central Scotland. In Shetland, it would seem at the
moment that Shetlandic is likely to die out altogether in the space of a
few generations rather than to survive as a sociolect, the dichotomy being
town/country rather than social.

One thing that my wife notices, however, is that I can talk to strangers in
Shetland much more easily than I can in Scotland or England. The reason, I
think, is that they immediately recognise by my language and accent that I
am a Shetlander, and we can therefore express ourselves using the full
range of our common linguistic and cultural heritage. The subtle nuances of
language which express the dry Shetland sense of humour are a case in
point. This doesn't work in modern day Lerwick - where one comment I had
from a young person with a Shetland accent but no Shetlandic, surprised to
learn that I lived 'Sooth', was 'they say that people who move away keep
their accent (aka language - he couldn't tell the difference) better than
those who stay.' Perhaps it is the case that Shetlanders of my age who live
in the town have had to Anglicise their speech so that the predominantly
English-speaking youth can understand them - I hear of older folk
complaining that their grandchildren can't understand what they say.
Conversely, at a class reunion I had this year, all my former classmates
who now live outwith Shetland can still speak their native tongue just as I
do.

John M. Tait.

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