LL-L: "Place names" LOWLANDS-L, 08.APR.2001 (07) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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  L O W L A N D S - L * 08.APR.2001 (07) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: "Ian James Parsley" <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
Subject: LL-L: "Place names" LOWLANDS-L, 07.APR.2001 (04) [E]

Criostoir,

I think we are always likely to agree to disagree on this one. You are
speaking as somebody who believes in a united, independent Irish
State, whereas I am speaking as somebody who can see Scotland out of
his bedroom window!

However, the situation for 'Ulster Scots' vis-a-vis 'Scottish Scots'
is quite different from the situation with the Gaelics. Scottish
Gaelic arrived in Scotland about 1000 years before Scots became fully
established in Ireland (the latter happened around 1600). It wasn't
until around 1500 that literary Scottish Gaelic was generally viewed
as a separate language from literary Irish Gaelic, i.e. the best part
of a millennium after it arrived in Scotland. Furthermore,
geographically it was much further away from Ireland than Ulster Scots
is from Scotland - in Antrim and Down it is spoken in coastal areas
where you can see Scotland and only a certain distance inland from
there, and in Donegal it is spoken in areas where people regularly
left to work in Scotland during the summers and/or had regular
Scottish visitors until well into the 20th century.

The other issue is that Scots in Ireland is undoubtedly part of a
continuum, both in terms of its literature and linguistics. There are
few things I could describe as 'typically Ulster': the dentalization
of 't' and 'd' occurs only in some Ulster dialects, not all; the
tendency to say 'A pit the licht aff' rather than 'A pit aff the
licht' may be shared in some western Scottish dialects; in fact the
only clear division in usage I can think of off-hand is the Ulster
tendency to use 'taak' where Scottish speakers use 'speak' (e.g. 'A
taak Scotch'). As that last example shows, speakers in Ulster still
use 'Scotch' to describe their own speech - which would indicate it is
a perfectly acceptable unifying term.

Terminology is interesting actually. 'Ullans' (and 'Ullanization') is
now becoming somewhat derogatory among academics and linguists in
general here, referring to the ill-advised lexical and orthographical
inventions, false analogies, incorrect/inconsistent grammar and
bizarre neologisms that appear in many modern texts which are passed
off as 'Ulster Scots'. I was surprised on a recent trip to Scotland to
find that some people used 'Lallans' and even 'Lallanization' in the
same derogatory or mocking way - is this the experience of Scots on
the list?

You asked:

> What is the relationship of Ulster-Scots (insofar as
> it is abused as a political tool) to "Northern Ireland
> nationalism"? Do some loyalist groups see it as the
> ethnic language of their community, with the inference
> that in a theoretical independent "Northern Ireland"
> state Ulster-Scots would be the official language?

I think you would have to ask them about that, although the parallel
has been made or suggested on many occasions, and there's seldom smoke
without fire.

Without wishing to get too political, there is no doubt that
'Britishness' is becoming a term which is harder and harder to define,
and *some* Unionists are finding it difficult to be 'loyal' to
something they feel they can't define properly. Thus their
'anti-Irishness' (where 'Irish' is synonymous with 'Gaelic Irish') has
become dominant over their 'pro-Britishness', and the best way to make
the 'anti-Irish' case is to promote the differences between Ulster and
the rest of the island. Ulster Scots would no doubt be seen as part of
that. But I should add that people thinking that way would still be a
very minor group within the 'Unionist' population of NI.

ATB,
Ian.
---------------------
Ian James Parsley

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