LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.09 (01) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: Andy (Scots-Online) <andy at scots-online.org>
> Subject:  LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.07 (08) [E]

I agree with all your points but I'd like to expand on one of them.

> "> to the fact that modern Scots speakers who would like to speak
> > the best possible Scots need pointers due to the lack of their
> > education in Scots."
>
> But they need a 'manual' or instruction in order to learn how to
> read their
> own language in the way it is being orthographically represented with or
> without diacritics.

This is very true, and of course with Scots not being taught
in schools every writer should have a pronunciation guide in
their book. It seems even more to the point when you consider
that for many people reading a book in Scots, this may be the
only book they'll ever read in the language, such books being
very thin on the ground. The only writers I can think of who
do provide a pronunciation guide are the Lorimers and Robert
Louis Stevenson.

Of course, some people just skim over reader aids and prefaces
and everything, and ignore any scholastic annotations such as
footnote, ibid's, vide's and diacritics, which isn't to say
that these things bother them at all.

Now imagine such a Scots speaker reading Lorimer's New
Testament. He hasn't read all the small print but he comes
across unexpected spellings such as matrèss. It clues him
in to the fact that this has a special pronunciation in
Scots and he thinks, "Crivvens, that's richt, my mither
wisna sayin things wrang, she wis juist spaekin guid Scots."

So later he's talking to someone and he uses the word
'matrèss'. The chap he's speaking to tries to correct
this, but our reader says, "Na, na, I'v read Lorimer an
that's the wey he writes it, an that's the wey my mither
sayed it." Who knows? He might even be interested enough
to go back to Lorimer and study the pronunciation guide
after all!

Of course it's important to remember that the diacritics
as I'm proposing wouldn't be part of the spelling (part
of the orthography, yes, but that's a different thing)
and different publishers could use them even more sparsely
if they wished (for that matter, they could invent extras,
for example, for learners' books).

The system could be simplified in this order:

1. the 'bull' diacritic (just realised that's a good name
for it - it looks like a bull's horns! I wonder if Hunter
thought of this?) could be dropped.

2. the 'y\' diacritic could also be dropped and a description
of how to pronounce 'forby' &c added to the pronunciation
guide - such words are limited enough for all of them to be
listed (at this point a Web monkey can also stop bothering
with unicode).

3. all diacritics other than grave can be dropped.

At this point we have a system which is pretty much within
the realms of accepted English/Scots orthography and would
barely even be considered a diacritic system or need any
special explanation at all. It would only occur on certain
words such as the second syllable of matress, novel, program,
convict, illustrate, walcome &c.

Having presented the fictional scenario above, I think I
should also describe the real-life incident it's based on.
When I was a kid my mother always failed to pronounce 'h'
in 'hospital'. I was always trying to correct her but she
wouldn't have it (note that urban-British-English-style
'h'-dropping isn't a feature of Scots or Scottish English).
Imagine my surprise to discover later that 'hospital' is
one of a very few words in Scots that begin with an 'h' in
English but not in Scots. Of course I corrected my
pronunciation, hence my familiarity with the
semi-fictionalised conversation given above.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

----------

From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: Dan Prohaska [daniel at ryan-prohaska.com]
> Subject: "Orthography"
>
> Alright you Scots speakers out there - give it to me. No in all honesty
> I`m looking forward to reading what you think.....

Dan, your ideas are quite sound but I think almost all of
them have already been extensively discussed in one form
or other on the list.

You might want to try searching the archives using
"Orthography" in the subject line and, unless you're
really in a mood for hours of hard reading, a 'from'
date of perhaps January 2002. This gets 115 messages,
and I note that practically all the stuff on Orthography
on the list is about Scots orthography!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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