LL-L "Language varieties" 2008.08.29 (01) [E]

Fri Aug 29 19:26:30 UTC 2008

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L O W L A N D S - L - 29 August 2008 - Volume 01
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From: caennmohr at aol.com
Subject: LL-L "Language politics" 2008.08.28 (03) [E

I have just returned to lowlands after an absence of several years, and it
is a delight to be back!  I am a bit rusty on procedures, however, and
although I suspect this posting may belong in a different thread since it
veers down a side street, as it were, I will post it and await your judgment
on where -- or if -- it belongs.

With respect to the mention of Geordie and Glaswegian as virtually
unintelligible to most people outside the British Isles, my husband, who is
Glaswegian, was brought up speaking a very "proper" form of English, and
even he cannot understand true Glaswegian.  We were discussing this thread,
and and I was tracing some of the sound shifts from German to Scots to
English, and his comment was that some of the origins of both Geordie and
Glaswegian are often attributed to the workers in the heavy industries --
especially shipbuilding -- developing a type of slurred shorthand patois
that could easily be shouted over the din of the clanging machines to
communicate with one's mates.

Carolyn [Wood]

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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Language varieties

Hello, Carolyn!

Welcome back on the List, and congratulations on your debut as a "poster"
(which it is, I believe)!

As for the rules and guidelines, you can refresh your memory here:
http://lowlands-l.net/rules.php

I don't know a whole lot about it, though I worked with a grumpy "Weegie"
old-timer in Australia and got my baptism with fire then. Some people could
not understand him at all, and he is known to have given some people written
notes, because after over twenty years in the country his "Weegie patter"
was still "the best English" he could manage. He had a short temper, so he
barked and tended to run off in a huff when people said they could not
understand him. He would often mumble what I later learned were Weegie
swearwords (such as "aw' bawbag tha'") in reference to such people. Only one
person in the team, an Englishman, could understand him perfectly, and he
said that that was because he had lived in Glasgow for a good while.

As far as I can tell -- and I'm not the authority here, as I said -- the
problem with understanding Glaswegian is that it is simply not English, that
it is basically working-class Glasgow Scots with Scottish English and Irish
English adstrata. So in my book it is not even a type of English as
Missingsch is a type of German (on Low Saxon substrata), but it is a type of
Scots with specific English influences and a "sophisiticated slang" system.
Since Glasgow is so important an urban center, people elswhere, not only in
Scotland but throughout the UK, encounter it at least occasionally. And this
takes us back to the days when the official line still was that Scots was
"slang," i.e. a type of "vulgar" or "debased" English. Well, it ain't no
English, at least no Modern English, and that's official now. This is very
similar to the situation in which Low Saxon was still seen as a type of
low-prestige German and people therefore expected to understand it. German
speakers that are exposed to it for a good deal of time but cannot use it
themselves can understand some of it; newcomers understand very little, if
anything.

I just looked up what our own Andy Eagle wrote about Glaswegian (
http://scots-online.org/grammar/glasgow.htm). Here is the beginning:
Glasgow Scots

Fondly known as 'the Patter', Glaswegian is spoken in the city itself and
well established in the surrounding towns such as Clydebank, Paisley,
Renfrew and Rutherglen, and increasingly gaining influence around the Firth
of Clyde in Cambeltown, Dumbarton, Gourock, Greenock and Rothesay. An east
Lanarkshire variety is spoken in Airdrie, Coatbridge, Cumbernauld, Denny,
Motherwell, Strathaven and Wishaw. An Ayrshire variety is spoken in
Carstairs, Irvine, Kilmarnock, Leadhills and Prestwick.

Like all urban dialects Glaswegian suffers from a loss of much particularly
Scots vocabulary, though very innovative at coining new terms e.g. boggin,
malkie, stotter, bampot and heidbanger, many becoming quite widespread.The
pronunciation of Glasgow Scots is essentially west central
Scots<http://scots-online.org/grammar/wcscots.htm>.

Andy's description reminds me of Hamburg Low Saxon: it lost much
particularly Low Saxon vocabulary and uses a good number of German calques
(i.e. loan translations) instead.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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