LL-L "Orthography" 2002.03.10 (01) [E/S]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 10.MAR.2002 (01) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: "John M. Tait" <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2002.03.06 (01) [E/S]

Sandy wrote:

>Remember we had a discussion on Lowlands-L where (I think) John
>Magnus and Colin were talking about the problem of getting people
>to discard English and learn Scots from the basics? It may be that
>this orthography would make it necessary to concentrate on Scots
>and forget English while learning - so what seems to be a difficulty
>may actually be a blessing!
>
Guidsakes! Tak yer een aff Sandy for a twa-three days an see whit he
gits
up til! Whit wis ye daein thon hale year I wis awa, Sandy...?

I think this is partly true - that if it were possible to concentrate on
Scots as Scots, and ignore English spelling, it would be more effective.
The problem, as we all know, is that those who are in positions of
influence are operating in a philosophical arena where - however much
they
may use the phrase 'Scots Language' - Scots is studied under the
umbrella
of English. There seems little point in pursuing a radical approach when
much less radical proposals are not only rejected, but derided, by
literary
and academic figures with their own vestment interests for retaining
Scots
within the niche which they have provided for it.

_Per se_, the type of orthographic approach Sandy is using reminds me of
the one Sir James Murray used in his Biblical translations, the purpose
of
which was to put over the pronunciation of his own border dialect.
Samples
are available in the (now also out of print) _History of the Scots
Bible_,
by Graham Tulloch.

A few comments (apologies if my cursory glance has missed some of the
adaptations from the original proposal):

1. The original proposal seems to have some confusion of phonetics,
phonology and morphology. The omission of the /O/ phoneme, for example,
is
another of those features which tend to standardise in favour of Central
dialects. If /O/ is a phoneme in some dialects, I don't see how it can
not
be represented, particularly in an underlying orthography which others
can
be derived from. On the other hand, is it necessary to distinguish
between
final plural [s] and [z], when they both express the plural morpheme?
Similarly, the short and long pronunciations of the phoneme in _time_,
_byre_ is usually determined by the SVLR, and where it isn't is subject
to
dialect variation. Both of these considerations suggest that it is best
to
use one grapheme for it, because native speakers will know how it is
pronounced in their own dialect, whereas a distinction is redundant
where
it is determined, and intrusive where there is dialect variation. Surely
if
we'r talking about diaphonology, we first need to implement a
phonological
rather than phonetic approach. At any rate, it should be clear which
elements are phonetic, which phonological, which diaphonological, and
which
morphological, and which of these principles is used where.

As regards plurals, I would suggest that there's a back-influence from
English orthography. Because English uses <s> for /z/ (the phoneme)
sometimes, as well as <s> for [z] where the difference isn't
phonological,
we may have a tendency to change _all_ <s>s to <z>s even where they both
represent the same morpheme, rather than just where the /z/ is a
phoneme.
You could argue, I suppose, that there's no reason why the plural
morpheme
shouldn't be written phonetically, but I would suggest that this would
create problems, ultimately involving rules for writing it (a bit like
we
have to do with the preterite morpheme <-it>, <t>, <ed> because the
influence of English means that we can't trust people to pronounce a
single
spelling the Scots way.)

2. The representation of Shewa and Aitken's Vowel is a problem. I find
the
use of <u> as initial Shewa very odd - my pronunciation in this case
doesn't sound like [V]. This is bound to be a problem in any orthography
where the graphemes have exact values. There isn't the scope for the
sort
of dialect variation which isn't regular. How do you decide when to use
<u>
and when <i> for an unstressed vowel?

And what about variation in stressed vowels - for example, I say
["antr at n],
but in the NE it's - to my ears - ["Vntr at n]. The well-known tendency of
some Central dialects to pronounce classic Scots <i> as [V], and of NE
ones
to pronounce classic Scots <a> as [V], raises questions about exact
representation, in an approach which doesn't take account of the
probability that the historical spelling represents an original
pronunciation which has then become merged with other phonemes in
certain
dialects, but not in others.

This brings out another problem. This type of orthography enables Scots
to
be read semi-phonetically, as Ron says - but to some extent the result
is
or suggests a particular Scots pronunciation, and relies on the phonetic
representation of elements - such as [@I],[aI] and plural [s], [z] -
which
are allophones or single morphemes, and shouldn't need to be represented
in
a viable orthography.

A similar question arises with the spelling of the [W] sound. In a
from-scratch orthography, it would be silly to use <wh> for this, when
some
other diaphonological spelling (q, qh, quh, fh) could be used to
accommodate both the usual [W] and the Northern [f] pronunciation, and
sever the mental connection of <wh> with the SSE pronunciation for
Northern
readers.

What about other dialect variations, such as the frequent [e]/[E]
variation
in words like _fairm_, the [a]/[ai] in words like _haimer_, and [a]/[E]
(possibly [a]/[e]/[E) in words like _acquant/acquent_? Traditionally
these
have been spelt either with dialect pronunciations, or inconsistently
using
whichever form was either (a) most similar to English (acquaint) or most
different from it (fest) depending on predilection. How could these be
handled in an orthography which aims at a more exact representation? Not
that the traditional spellings handle this problem any better.

3. The real problems arise with the attempt to process the original
orthography into a more traditional form. The best illustration is
'dangerous' - a Romance (Old French) word borrowed with its French
spelling. The automatic 'traditionalising' process works well with
Anglo-Scots words, but, whereas the phoneticological (!?) spellings of
words like 'dainjiris' look all right in the context of other 'weird'
spellings, they stand out like a sore thumb when in the company of other
words which look 'normal'. This is why, in my opinion, any orthography
which sets out to have a traditional appearance must use etymological
and
morphological spellings as well as phonological and diaphonological
ones.

As regards the acceptability of any such approach, the first question
which
must be addressed is the unacceptability of _any_ orthography, other
than
the _ad hoc_, to those who largely represent Scots in Edinburgh.

----------

From: "John M. Tait" <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2002.03.08 (05) [E]

Sandy wrote:

>John,
>
>But don't you think that a completely English-independent
>orthography like I've been devising would be an answer to
>this problem?
>
Well, as I've said elsewhere recently, firstly I think that the
circumstances for this approach being an answer to the problem don't
exist
(in fact, the circumstances for anything being an answer to any problem
don't exist, because those who control the circumstances regard the
underlying problem  - the endemic illiteracy of Scots speakers - as an
advantage to their position as the high priesthood of Scots illiteracy)
and
secondly, the BEAT word class problem is open to the same approach
whether
you use a from-scratch or adapted traditional orthography. You still
have
to use either one or more than one grapheme to represent what I
previously
described as the /e+/ phoneme, and there's nothing to stop you using
<ae>
and/or <ei> for all these words. If, however, people are reluctant to
accept the idea that either both or one of these should be used rather
than
<ea> with its connotations of SSE pronunciations, then they're going to
be
an order of magnitude more reluctant to accept the idea of a completely
new
orthography. The reaction to Derrick McClure's 1->1 proposals for a
Scots
orthography (where he proposed using <ae> for the /e+/ phoneme) are an
example of this - they are completely forgotten.

>I don't think it really matters how clever you get with
>diaphonemics, if you're still going to insist on making
>your Scots English-like, then the problems aren't going
>to go away.

But what are the problems? The problems with the /e+/ phoneme are, (1)
the
fact that the pronunciations are not as consistent by region as e.g. the
/2/ phoneme, a problem which is going to exist whatever convention you
use,
because you're always going to have the possibility that in some places
two
sounds will be represented by the same grapheme, and (2) the
unacceptability of the idea of using a diaphonemic approach to this, (a)
because of the fact that people who say [i] don't see any need to change
from <ea>, and (b) because of the general unacceptability of any sort of
orthographic reform to people who only want to 'turn to' Scots to
express
forms of unrespectability readily understood - as unrespectability - by
English speaking readers.

The nub of the problem is that a very radical orthography would solve
certain problems, but only if everyone learned and used it, as with
Faroese
for example, which requires it to be accepted at a national level. For a
small number of people to use such an orthography would simply mean that
nobody would bother to read what they write. This can be partly seen in
the
Shetlandic poetry of Robert Alan Jamieson, who uses a pseudo-radical
orthography ('pseudo' because it is based on an ideological attempt to
give
Shetlandic a certain type of appearance rather than on an understanding
of
Shetlandic phonology.) Nobody else is going to use this, so all it does
is
make his writing difficult to read - even I find myself staring at words
for seconds at a time before I recognise them. Thus I find myself
reduced
to the basic illiteracy of the typical Shetlandic speaker who cannot
read
his own language in any written form.

In short, a radical orthography like this would work if everyone used it
-
but the same is true of _any_ orthography. Look at English. The
orthography
eventually accepted for Faroese - after several failed attempts - was
one
based on Icelandic, including letters no longer pronounced in Faroese.

John M. Tait.

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