LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.15 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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

> From: Ian James Parsley <parsleyij at yahoo.com>
> Subject: LL-L "Orthography" 2003.02.12 (01) [E/S]
>
> Guid Fowk,
>
> Andy and I are in agreement as usual on these issues.
> I honestly think we're nearer a 'standard' than we
> think, especially if you accept a system with
> established variations as 'standard'.

I think this is touching upon why orthographic issues
can be so detrimental to progress in the Scots language
movement - there are so many people who _won't_ accept
a system with established variations as a standard. John
Magnus has sometimes quoted the example of a Scots writer
who, in a Scots spelling committee meeting, had a hissy
fit over whether 'bield' should be spelled that way or as
'bield' (whereas it should actually be spelled 'beeld',
and anyone who thinks otherwise can step outside... :)

Recently I think we've seen that there are also people
who are prepared to use orthographic arguments as a
weapon. In the recent translation effort for the Scottish
Parliament, for example, one group set up such things as
the fact that 'meinister' &c should be spelled 'minister'
as an argument against the rival translation. They seemed
happy to change it to 'meinister' in their own translation
once a certain milestone in their progress had been achieved,
however. I think the important thing to learn from this is
that once we've agreed to use a traditional spelling system
there has to be some tolerance about orthography or else it
just gives some people a way of kicking up a trivial argument
whenever things aren't going their way.

When talking about standards it's also important to notice
that, although more consistent than Scots, English doesn't
have standards - even dictionaries disagree on the spellings
of words. Since there's little in the way of reliable spelling
rules in English, whether a word is correctly spelled can be
an open argument (eg 'supersede' vs 'supercede' - one is a
better for etymology, the other for consistency, or 'realize'
vs 'realise' &c).

The nearest thing to a spelling standard in English is the
idea of "House Styles". Publishing houses, and sometimes
other commercial companies, have their own house styles.
These usually involve a recommended or mandatory dictionary,
rules for punctuation (eg closed or open, double quotes or
single quotes) maybe some restrictions on grammar, and a
register or set of registers usually learned by new employees
and freelancers by studying the existing house publications,
plus, usually, a certain amount of tolerance for the style
of the individual writer (this is before we get into the
realms of literary publication where the tolernce is much
greater).

Some publishing concerns take an experimental approach - for
example, the Chicago Tribune has always aimed at moving the
language towards simpler spellings, and since it's a large
publication, it has had some impact on the spelling of the
language in general.

As long as everyone's reading roughly the same sort of
orthography, this doesn't seem to cause any problems except
amongst those who want to get picky and write angry letters
to the papers about a spelling which they feel threatens
their whole way of life!

Obviously this is a process of evolution - people will only
tolerate so much, so a publishing house has to conform to a
great extent. But there's no call for trying to establish an
immutable standard.

Perhaps in a language that's experienced less evolution in
its written form, wider variation is only to be expected.
It's probably worth noting at this point that even the the
editor of Lallans magazine didn't realise I'd been "improving"
spellings in ScotsteXt until I pointed it out to him - so
perhaps in practice spelling variation isn't as important as
it's sometimes made out, as long as its kept within familiar
parameters. For example, in ScotsteXt, I've kept with the
spelling "a'", "sma'" &c even although I've removed unnecessary
apostrophes in all other cases. This is because any other
spelling in this case would introduce unfamiliarity. While it's
not quite the way I write my own Scots, it's within the bounds
of what a community speaker (to adopt a useful term from the
recent "Call for Papers" posted on this list) would consider to
be familiar Scots orthography.

There's also the question of whether an ill-informed spelling
might cause even community speakers to pronounce the word
incorrectly. This happens, but since it's a case of the writer
passing on his own ignorance, it's hard to see what can be done
about it without an educational system in place. On the whole,
adults aren't easy to educate and to try to argue with a writer
who does this might be a waste of time. However, I think this
shows that it's important to be tolerant in orthography and
to go with house styles rather than standards. For example, if
the Scottish Parliament set up a standard spelling system at
the present moment, it would be a case of the blind leading those
who are too weak to resist. If we accept the well-established
concept of house styles and stop talking about standards then
people who want to be heard on the issue will have a voice - ie
'this is our house style, it has nothing to do with the CPG,
SLD or anybody else. We only change it if it's unpopular with
our readers.'

Sandy
http://scotstext.org/

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