LL-L "How do you say ...?" 2002.04.16 (06) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "How do you say ...?"

> From: Matthew McGrattan <matthew.mcgrattan at brasenose.oxford.ac.uk>
> Subject: LL-L "How do you say ...?" 2002.04.16 (02) [E]
>
> I'd love to know what other Scot users of this list think... perhaps I
> am
> being overly dogmatic and "Oof" is acceptable in some dialects.

I think you're being overly dogmatic.

The SND lists all alternative forms of "wolf" as obsolete,
but I'm certainly familiar with the form "woof", so there's
no reason to take it as gospel (the SND does sometimes list
things as obsolete which most definitely aren't).

The phonetic processes leading from "wolf" to all the other
forms are known in Scots, though I'm not sure which of these
are productive (ie which operate actively to alter the
pronunciation of words in some dialects as opposed to having
become fixed only in the words in which they occur).

I think it's important in this context to remember that _all_
languages that have received any sort of standardisation, even
the rough sort of standardisation in Scots writing, are artificial.
Traditional spoken languages vary drastically both in using
completely different words for the same thing (compare any set of
dialects, Scots or English, as they are spoken traditionally rather
than as they are written or taught in schools), and in differing
applications of phonological processes (for example, how the
English "heath" might be pronounced in at least four ways in
England: "heath", "eath", "heaf" or "eaf", although this truth
is completely obliterated in writing.

> When other Scottish or Northern Irish participants post to this mailing
> list I can usually understand most of what they say, and can recognise
> what they write AS Scots even though there may be times where they use
> vocabulary I am not familar with or grammar which differs from mine. I'd
> be the first to concede that perhaps my own idiolect is closer to
> Scottish
> English than "proper" Scots than some others, nonetheless, I do feel
> that there is a common core with which I am familiar.

Yes, there's a common core, but this is artificial: it's an
accepted way of writing Scots. On top of this there are
phonological processes, so that, for example, where I write,
"We'v twa-three weys o sayin some things", I actually say,
"Oo'v tway-shree weys o sayin some hings". This is enough to
account for the differences that arise from phonological
processes such as in wool/ool/oo/woo or indeed wolf/oof/wowf/
woof, and yet you might never, or rarely, come across some of
these variations in writing.

Sometimes it's surprising just how many ways common words can
be pronounced. Consider the number system in Scots:

ane/yin
twaw/twah/twae/quaw
three/shree
fower
five
sax/six
seeven
aicht/eicht/aucht
nine
ten

or question words:

wha/faa/whae
what/whit/fat/fit

or various common words:

water: wauter/watter/waiter
little finger: crannie/creenack/curnie/creemie/
               wee finger/winkie/creenie/kittie
splinter: skelf/stab/splice/stob/splinter/spell/
          speel/spelk/spilk/skelb
spider: speeder/netterie/nettercap/nettercrap/
        weaver/wyver

The last three examples are from The Linguistic Atlas of
Scotland, and are fairly typical of the results of the
questionnaire, ie it's normal for an everyday word to
vary drastically between dialects, and in the written
language this variation is mostly ignored by writers,
most of whom feel more comfortable using what they've
seen written down before, and what they feel their
readers will be familiar with - which is to say, that a
written tradition both builds and constrains over the
centuries.

But the true nature of spoken language is that it varies
every few tens of miles. Standard or semi-standard
languages like English and Scots are artifices built
up over the years by writers and educators.

This is why I say you're being too dogmatic - the
vocabulary of spoken language just isn't something
you can be dogmatic about.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

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