LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.04.14 (03) [E]

[Lowlands-L List]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 14 April 2009 - Volume 03
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From: jmtait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2009.04.12 (01) [E]

Andy Wrote


<<
John wrote:
I think the main point is - what do the people who speak it think it is?

I think it is probably safe to say that the majority of Scots speakers will
consider themselves speakers of a dialect of English.

As you say, there are many who talk about the Scots language but their
actions seems to indicate what they really mean is Scottish dialects (of
English). Standard English being the roof variety under which the Scottish
dialects are to found. In that scheme of things dialects have their place
and should stay there. Exactly the kind of marginalisation that leads to
dialect decay in the first place. Decay you may say. "Language has always
evolved and changed". Yes, but replacing Scots dialects with standard
English is something different. More akin to language death. Though I
suspect that some are of the belief that if standard English is  spoken
with a Scottish accent and the Scots word of the day is used then they
consider it to be a variety of the Scots language. So now with my best
Highland accent, and my Gaelic word of the day, I am proud to announce that
I am a glay vah Gaelic speaker. Now don't come at me about spelling glay vah
wrong. This Gaelic thing is a developing language there's no 'standard
spelling', I'm going for the authentic voice.

>>


This also extends to writing - when some people say that Lewis Grassic
Gibbon wrote Scots. By that criterion, Agatha Christie was writing French
when she gave Hercule Poirot a form of English influenced by French syntax,
with the odd Mon Dieu or whatever thrown in.


<<

 Shetland Fudge Advert:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_1lCZaPWHM


This one shows how the word 'Shaetlan' is pronounced.

I just heard a little Scots speaking girl saying 'Shetland' in a Shetland
accent. What does that <ae> in 'Shaetlan' represent that I can't hear to be
adequately represented by <e>. Simplification of <nd> to /d/ is fairly
common in many varieties of Scots.


>>

You mean simplification of <nd> to <n>? Actually, this isn't very common in
Shetland. In my own accent, it occurs only in 'Shaetlan' and one or two
other words such as 'fin' (find). I pronounce words like 'roond' and
'Scotland' with a final 'd'. Some people pronounce 'Shaetland' with a 'd',
but I think the variant ending in 'n' is more usual. I notice from writing -
although I haven't noticed it in speech - that some people drop more 'd's
than I do, but it still seems to be sporadic - I'm not aware that anyone
does it consistently, as they do in the Doric accent of the North East of
Scotland where I live.

The 'ae' sound can't be adequately represented by written <e> because it's a
different phoneme. In other words, it's not just the Scots or English E said
with a different accent, it's actually the phoneme which in Scots more often
becomes EI (in words like breid, deid) which is realised as [e] rather than
[i] in some Scots dialects. However, Shetland has a short-long phonological
contrast between, eg: 'gaet' (BEAT words) and 'gate' (MATE and BAIT words)
which has disappeared - or is realised differently - in most mainland Scots
dialects, and so the distinction of 'ae' from both 'e' and 'i' is probably
quite difficult for mainland Scots speakers to hear. For example, in North
East Scots 'haet', meaning heat, rhymes with 'hate' as [he:t] but in
Shetland it doesn't, one being /het/ realised typically as something like
[hIt], and the other /he:t/ realised typically as [he at t], or in some regions
as [hE:t].

So the difference between the pronunciations 'Shaet-' and 'Shet-' is not
just a difference of accent (as it would be if E in this environment was
always pronounced this way.) It is a difference which can potentially carry
meaning. The fact that it is the BEAT rather than the BET phoneme is
illustrated by the fact that Scots speakers in the North East of Scotland
pronounce the word 'Sheitan' rather than 'Shetlan' - in other words, the
underlying 'ae' is Scots, whereas the official <e> is an approximation to
English spelling.

Listening to the video again, I've noticed something rather interesting. The
first pronunciations of the word - right at the start of the song - seem to
sound less like the traditional pronunciation of AE than the ones further
through the song, where the singer is getting more into the 'swing'. I
suspect that, right at the beginning, she's thinking of a written 'Shetland'
which is conflicting with the natural pronunciation. She pronounces an <e>
sound in the words 'perfect' and 'plenty'. There is a contrast between these
two sounds in her, as in general Shetland, pronunciation.

To me, the actual sound in a word like 'Shaetlan' is more like the Scots or
Scottish Standard English (SSE) [I] <i> than like the SSE [E] <e>. (In the
linguistic atlas of Scotland, I think it's often represented as [e+] - ie,
closer than cardinal [e].) It's often represented in casual dialect writing
as 'Shitland'! This is how one English girl I met, who had learned to speak
Shaetlan very well, naturally perceived and wrote it. However, the phoneme
[I], in a wird like 'sit', isn't pronounced like that in this environment
either.

To hear the quality of the 'ae' sound, listen to the word 'laeks' (likes) in
the Rabbit Lullaby at 1:17. Here, the singers pronounce the sound longer
than usual to suit the metre of the song, which gives a better opportunity
to hear it than in normal speech, where it is usually much shorter. You can
hear the normal - short - pronunciation in the word 'naething' in Lowrie
sells his Oo at about 0:15, and also in the word 'kaese' (case) at 1:08.

In Shetland there is a phonological contrast between the following groups of
words. I've given <my spelling>, /phoneme/, [some phonetic realisations -
regional - in this environment], (Sampa)

AE     <ae> /e/ [I] - Shaetlan, paet, maet, haet, gaet, haep, glaep, laek
(like), daek (dyke), etc.
E       <e> /E/ [E] - set, met, net, kep, lep, seck, jeck, etc.
I         <i> /I/ [3] (I hope - my SAMPA is rusty) - sit, hit, flit, hip,
tip, pick, stick, strick, etc.
AI      <ai,a-e> /e:/ [e@], E:] - fate, hate, bait, gape, rape, rake, bake,
cake, laik (leak), etc.
EE     <ee, ie> /i/ [i] - feet, street, weet, greet, pleep, steep, neep,
reek, steek, seek, etc.

Some minimum pairs:

AE/E: paet/pet; saet/set
AE/AI(A-E): haet/hate, gaet/gate, laek (like), laik (leak)
AE/I: saet/sit, haep/hip
AE/EE: laet/leet, laek/leek

In another type of phonetic environment (usually before voiced consonants)
all of these vowels except EE are fronted and/or raised, so the
pronunciations are different. In this case, AE merges with E in some
Shetland dialects and with EE in others. In others - such as my own - it
remains distinct.

AE  <ae> /e/ [e, EI, i] - haed, laed, daed, laeg (leg), baeg (beg), haem,
baen (bone), etc. (BEAT words)
E    <e> /E/, [EI] - bed, led, sed, ben, hen, dem, men, etc. (BET words)
I     <i> /I/ [I] - sid, did, lid, rig, big, sig, lib, sib, etc. (BIT words)
AI  <ai, a-e> /e:/ [e:] - saide (saithe), maide (maggot), caib, fable,
stravaig, whaig, staig, etc. (BAIT and MATE words)
EE <ee> /i/ [i] - need, dreed, treed, green, dastreen, heem, seem, etc.
(BEET words)

Any Norn words, although they are not strictly speaking BEAT words or such,
are incorporated into the same phonological system. Before /k/, some words
with the /@I/ diphthong in Scots have the 'ae' sound.

(Again, listening to the Shetland Fudge advert, I've noticed that the girl
doesn't pronounce <i> before voiceless consonants as [3] but as [I]. This
may create a potential conflict with the pronunciation of AE in the same
environment, possibly destroying a distinction. I don't know whether this is
a Lerwick thing - I'd have to find out who the girl was and when and where
it was recorded. The more usual pronunciation - which I have represented as
[3] - can be heard in the words 'lift' and 'winter' in the Cradle Song. (In
'winter', although the following consonant - n - is voiced, the quality of
the sound is determined by the following voiceless 't'))

Shetland writing conventions have partly evolved to suit these contrasts -
but only partly. The <ae> spelling is common in words like 'paet' and
'haet', where English has <ea> and any Shetland speaker can see that to
write 'pet' or 'hate' would represent the wrong sound.. But there is a
reluctance to use it in the word 'Shaetlan', perhaps because the English
spelling doesn't have an <ea> that you can simply swap around, and it's felt
to be too much of an innovation. Also, perhaps, the word 'Shetland' is felt
to be too 'official' to have a 'dialect' spelling. This is an example of how
approximations to English orthography can disguise the underlying phonology.

Notice these excerpts from the Scots and English versions of the Shetland
article on the Scots Language Centre website:

"We might say 'Shetland dialect' or 'the dialect' when spaekin English.
'Shetlandic' is an English wird, aa right for usin in written or spokken
English. But for wis at spaeks it, among wirsels, da wird for da spokken
tongue is 'Shaetlan', sam as da name o da plaece. "

"When using English, we say 'Shetland dialect' or just 'the dialect'.
'Shetlandic' is an English word, acceptable when speaking or writing
English. But, for dialect speakers among dialect speakers, the word is
'Shetland' (pronounced 'Shaetlan'). The name of the speech and the name of
the islands are the same. "

Notice how the writer uses ae in words like 'plaece' and 'spaek' as well as
'Shaetlan', recognising a common sound. In the English version, she uses
this spelling to indicate the sound (although, of course, non-Shetlanders
wouldn't know what sound she was trying to convey!)

Actually, what the writer says above is no longer true in my experience.
Shetland speakers increasingly use the word 'dialect' rather than 'Shaetlan'
even when they're speaking Shaetlan. I've even heard one person say
'Shaet....dialect' - that is, beginning with 'Shaetlan' which is what he
would naturally say, and then changing it to 'dialect' in mid-word,
presumably owing to some perception that this is (now) more acceptable.

I've suggested elsewhere that this is owing to a shift of perception - that
whereas the tongue used to be a mark of Shetland identity, this is no longer
felt to be acceptable, and it is more acceptable to emphasise its dialect
status.

Before voiced consonants, where the dialect realisations differ, the AE
phoneme is not normally recognised and varying dialect spellings are the
rule even where English does have an <ae> - ie, even habitual dialect
writers (such as poets) will often write 'hed', 'heyd' or 'heed' rather than
'haed' (for Eng. head).

<<

 Some countries have dialect policies. For example Bavaria
http://www.isb.bayern.de/isb/download.aspx?DownloadFileID=75639926d839284f848ae3084c6d5bd4(In
German) I haven't read the whole thing but apparently: "Ihr Ziel ist
es,
den bayerischen Mundarten den ihnen gebührenden Stellenwert einzuräumen
und die Verbundenheit der Schülerinnen und Schüler mit ihrer bayerischen
Heimat zu stärken gemäß Artikel 131 der Bayerischen Verfassung." which
translates roughly as "The aim is to give the Bavarian dialects their due
weight and to strengthen the pupils' bond with their Bavarian homeland
according to article 131 of the Bavarian constitution."


I'm not sure if there's a policy for Swiss German dialects but Wikipedia
tells us "The reason "Swiss German" dialects constitute a special group is
their almost unrestricted use as a spoken language in practically all
situations of daily life, whereas the use of the Alemannic dialects in the
other countries is restricted or even endangered.

The dialects of Swiss German must not be confused with Swiss Standard
German, the variety of Standard German used in Switzerland."


>>

I think there's a difference between a dialect policy in a country, and a
policy for a given dialect. It's only too easy for a country to declare that
dialects should be valued; it's quite another to put measures in place which
can 'preserve' forms of speech which have no stable written form that can
act as a phonological, grammatical and lexical reference to contrast with
that of the dominant language or standard variety. It's the latter that I'm
saying is doubtful as to its possible efficacy - a policy for a specific
dialect rather than an overall national policy on 'dialect' which is
probably merely a box-ticking exercise.

It seems to me that Scotland has a dialect policy which masquerades as a
language policy, in the case of Scots. A case in point might be the demand
of Tavish Scott - MSP for Shetland - that Scots should not be given a
standard form, as that would threaten local dialects. I don't recollect the
MP for Shetland ever demanding that standard English should be abandoned
because of its effect on local dialects!


<<

 A 'standard' form need not be as prescriptive as those of English or
French.



>> Quite so. Another point is that most languages have registers - Welsh,
for example, has a formal register which is (said to be - I don't know
enough Welsh to judge) much further from spoken Welsh than formal English is
from colloquial English. Modern Welsh speakers are prone to despair of this;
but it is almost certainly largely this formal register which saved Welsh
from extinction. But, as the Welsh example shows, just because a language
has a formal register doesn't mean you have to use it. Scots, on the other
hand, is increasingly identified only with the lower registers which it has
occupied by default.


----------

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

Thanks for all of that, John.

You wrote:



It seems to me that Scotland has a dialect policy which masquerades as a
language policy, in the case of Scots. A case in point might be the demand
of Tavish Scott - MSP for Shetland - that Scots should not be given a
standard form, as that would threaten local dialects.


It's precisely the same situation and attitude in the case of Low Saxon. In
other words, it's officially recognized as a regional language but is
treated as a group of dialects. In other words, people are really talking on
both sides of their mouths. But they can't wrap their heads around the basic
concept.


Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

Seattle, USA

•

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