LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.06 (02) [E]

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L O W L A N D S - L * 06 August 2006 * Volume 02
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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.05 (02) [E/German]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Language proficiency
>
>>I suppose there are productions in the US and the UK as "Brave Heart" in
>>Lallans and "Scots-ized" English, but we in the German-speaking countries
>>only see but never hear them, because all these films are dubbed.
>
>Oh, no, Karl-Heinz! It's barely even Scottish English! Most of it is English
>with fake "Scottization," as far as I am concerned. There was definitely no Scots
>there that I could discern.
>
At the very beginning there's a little boy running around shouting "Da!
Da! Da!".

This was the only Scots I noticed in the whole film.

Some other gaffs: Historically, the Braveheart is Robert the Bruce, who
is made out to be some sort of coward in the film; In Blin Harry's poem,
the Wallace is described as being about eight foot tall and covered in
scars, not five foot two with designer woad :)

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.03 (10) [E/LS]

>From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>Subject: Language proficiency
>
>Funny? Sure! But there's a serious side to it. I believe that our
>Scots-speaking friends can relate to it, because what is very often presented as
>"Scots," "Lallans," etc. in the media is nothing more than somewhat "Scots-ized"
>Scottish English, and these misrepresentations tend to create or encourage false
>expectations among non-Scots.
>
I think the Scots equivalent of Missingsch is probably Glaswegian or
"Weegie" (don't Germans abbreviate things the way we do? :)

Glaswegian is often represented as Scots, and English people and other
foreigners often clearly imagine it to be Scots at its most
incomprehensible.

In fact, Glaswegian is just English with a Scottish accent, though many
speakers will also use a few Scots words or phrases, sometimes
mispronounced (for example, "lock" [lOk] instead of "loch" [lcx]/[lox],
"pockle" [pck=l] instead of "pauchle" [pQ:x=l]).

Famous speakers of Weegie are Rab C Nesbit and Shrek. Many features of
the dialect are no longer confined to Glasgow, however, and it could be
said to be spoken by non-Scots speakers in much of the west of the
Scottish Lowlands.

Scots is quite a different thing. Although you may be able to make out a
lot of written Scots, if I use it down here in Somerset, I can be
perfectly confident of not being understood.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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From: Sandy Fleming <sandy at scotstext.org>
Subject: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.02 (02) [E/LS/German]

>From: LL-L 'Language proficiency' 2006.08.01 (02) [E/German]
>Subject: LL-L 'Names' 2006.08.01 (06) [E/LS]
>
>My late brother, who lived in Holland and Germany for about 30 years, used to
>tell me that the English perception that "Europeans are so much better at
>languages than us" is often misplaced. He reckoned it is relatively easy to give
>the impression that you speak a language at a superficial level, but it soon
>falls apart at the first signs of complexity.
>Also, we tend to hear people on television with wide international experience
>(e.g. Boris Becker or Michael Schumacher from Germany - I can't think of any
>Dutch examples offhand) and we imagine that all Germans (for example) are like that.
>
Long ago when I used to chat on writers' channels on IRC there were the
occasional people from non-English-spaeaking countries in the largely
American channels I used to visit. I used to speak to an aspiring writer
who was Dutch, and who kept having to look up his Dutch-English
dictionary for the words I used. I asked him didn't all Dutch people
speak English, and he said he was a carpenter and didn't have that sort
of education.

All the same this is not to miss the fact that a Dutch person who
considered himself relatively uneducated could still carry on a typed
conversation in English quite well.

My problem with multilingualism isn't with language learning but with
language maintenance. Most British people under a certain age will have
done French or another major language at school and even have a
qualification in it, but having left school wouldn't say they could
speak French, except possibly in their CV. I think there's nothing
that'll make you forget a language quicker than sitting an exam in it,
especially if you think you've passed! If the exam was all your
motivation for learning the language, then your brain seems to say, "OK,
let's wipe that."

Conversely, I think there's nothing that'll help you maintain a language
better than if you keep having to use it. It may be that many people in
non-English-speaking countries manage to maintain their English because
they either keep needing to read or speak it, or feel they might need it
at any time.

Of all the languages I've ever attempted to learn, the only ones I've
succeeded with are those I actually had to use: I don't seem to be able
to learn languages that I'm merely curious about. But even the languages
I become proficient in are soon forgotten through lack of use.

Sandy Fleming
http://scotstext.org/

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