LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.16 (04) [EN]

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From: Michael Everson <everson at evertype.com>
Subject: LL-L "Language varieties" 2010.03.15 (06) [EN]

> From: jmtait <jmtait at wirhoose.co.uk>

> Actually “Shaetlan” is off bounds as well, in my opinion! The entity, or
rather non-entity, in question is not now permitted to have a name at all!

"Permitted"? That's ... I can't think of a word ... absurd?

> The reason I say that “Shetlandic” does not exist is because that term is
not accepted, and indeed is actively resented, by most people in Shetland,
including many of those who see themselves as proponents of “dialect”.

The speech variety exists whether or not it has a name. And like all speech
varieties it has its own grammar, which may be the same or differ from other
related languages.

> As both the term “Shetlandic” and its native term “Shaetlan”, have fallen
out of favour, being replaced by the unqualified term “dialect”, I think it
is fair to say that the concept they embodied (that is, a concept of the
Shetland tongue as a whole and in contradistinction to other forms of
speech) does not exist, because the loss of the terms suggests that that
concept no longer exists in the apprehension of Shetlanders.

Seems to me that the apprehension of Shetlanders on this matter may be
something that a bit of education could expand.

> A fairly typical comment by a well-known Scottish broadcaster living in
Shetland is as follows:
>
>> “How much of a gesture is Shetlandic, to give the varying forms of
dialect a jarringly jargonistic name?

There is nothing "jarringly jargonistic" about it. Iceland. Iceland-ic.
Shetland. Shetland-ic.

>> It will never be a consistent set of grammatical rules and pronunciation.
It is not and never has been, though there have been various attempts to
control it, to render it in some kind of set form.”

The well-known Sottish broadcaster obviously knows little about linguistics.
He could do worse even than looking at this stub:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shetlandic

> This clearly states the position of the established Shetland/Scots
Anglophone hegemony - that “dialect” is simply “varying forms”, and that any
suggestion that it might have a distinctive grammar or pronunciation is the
attempts of purists and prescriptionists - such as myself - “ to control,
and by implication, stifle it. (This is more or less an echo of the views of
the most prominent proponents of Scots, although they continue to use the
term “Scots.”) Linguistically this is, of course, nonsense; but as mythology
it serves the purpose of making certain that the speech forms of Shetland
can never rise to a level which would threaten the total and absolute
domination of standard English - which, of course, is the area of competence
of Scottish broadcasters living in Shetland.

It sounds to me as though it is the myth that should be exploded, rather
than let spread unopposed.

> And a comment from the Shetlink forum:
>
> “I also despise people calling the dialect “Shetlandic”. I don”t know why,
I just don”t like that word. One of my flatmates is from Turriff and told me
she”d heard someplace that this was the “proper” word for it - to which I
replied that no one I know refers to the dialect with this term.”

And so... what? So suddenly it shouldn't be recognized at all? Suddenly it
should be ignored and denied a name? The commenter on Shetlink should -- to
be fair -- learn that terminology can be applied even where there is a
vacuum.

Many of the world's languages have no "native" names, and their English
names would translate as "what we say" or the like. I think Inuktitut means
"like an Inuk does" and the same is the same for its sister languages.

I went to Shetlink, though, and I find
http://www.shetlink.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=31 this forum which doesn't
suggest to me that the myth is completely widespread.

> Because of comments such as these - and in case it was my website which
misled the flatmate in question - I have not only stopped using the term,
but have removed my website with this - and all its other - offensive
content.

I'm horrified. I've spent so many years working to help smaller linguistic
communities, that to hear you say that you're ... capitulating to ignorance
makes me want to weep.

I visited your site the other day, John, at the behest of Sandy Fleming, who
is translating Alice's Adventures in Wonderland into Scots. I was telling
him that it looks as though an Ulster Scots translation will also be going
ahead, and he suggested that I ask you if you (or someone you knew) might be
interested in putting it into Shetlandic. I was sad to see that your site
was down (and didn't know why it was down) but I did download it, and I have
to say -- it's an excellent site!

> I should explain that the late John J. Graham (regarded as the “doyen” of
Shetland dialect promotion) used both “Shetland dialect” and “Shetlandic” in
his writings on the subject. But public opinion has clearly rejected the
term Shetlandic, with its connotations of status and identity, in favour of
the umbrella term “dialect” (now often used without any qualification such
as “Shetland dialect” or even “the dialect”.) So I often see or hear simply
“talking dialect.” Of course, you don”t hear anyone referring to the use of
standard English as “talking language.” English has a name and identity,
“dialect” does not.

It's really hard to think anything but that this is an area where public
opinion has simply gone the wrong direction.

> The term “dialect” has also taken over substantially in speech from the
native term “Shaetlan.” Interestingly, at a dialect conference I attended in
2004, the only speaker I can recollect using the term “Shaetlan”, apart from
myself, was a young incomer from England who had learned to speak it very
well. She had obviously picked up the term as used by native speakers, and
had not picked up on the fact that it was now (apparently) politically
incorrect to refer to it as anything other than “dialect”. I have even heard
people say “Sh-dialect” - ie, starting to say “Shaetlan” and then altering
to “dialect” in mid-word.

Education!

> With regard to the general apprehension of “dialect” as a written medium,
the following comments were made by a well-known public figure (native
“dialect” speaker and PhD in a literary subject) recently in the Shetland
Times, with regard to why Shetland has never produced a prominent novelist
(Orkney has produced two, and one prominent poet.)
>
> “And it is not really suitable for writing, the Shetland
dialect....writers in dialect irritate. X can make it readable, by some
magic, but most add unjustifiable emphasis and archaisms, and in any case,
English is our written tongue, the one we are trained to read.”

Well, this is just wrong. There is a place for both. Look at Switzerland.
Standard German is used of course. But "dialect" (or Schwyzertütsch) is also
used. Same in mainland Scotland. There is room for pluralism!

> With this comment, the writer was dismissing by implication a number of
highly regarded (not only in Shetland) Shetland dialect writers - unless,
that is, they were also possessed of the “some sort of magic” which enables
dialect writing and which is out of the reach of ordinary irritating
mortals, or were exempted owing to being dead. The fact that there were no
replies to this in the letters page next week, and the only article in reply
concentrated only on the literary aspect and scarcely mentioned “dialect”,
demonstrates how widely this view of written dialect is tacitly accepted in
Shetland.

But surely something can be done to improve the situation. Surely --
something must be done.

> This illustrates the value of the unqualified term “dialect” to the
mouthpieces of the prevailing Anglophone hegemony. Because it is “dialect”
and not “language” it can be exempted from all the characteristics of
“language”. Not only does it have no grammar, but if a writer in it is found
to be irritating, this is attributed to the medium rather than the writer,
because “dialect” is per se unsuitable for writing. And if someone is found
who does not irritate, then, as this cannot be attributed to competence
because written competence in a medium which is not suitable for writing
would be a contradiction in terms, it must be attributed to “magic.”

Now, I **really** want to ask you if you or someone you know would consider
a version of Alice....

> As, then, the terms “Shetlandic” and “Shaetlan” are offensive to the
perception of Shetland society, as reflected in the unchallenged comments of
its intelligentsia, I take the view that these terms, and the offensive
concepts they embody, can fairly be said not to exist.

I wouldn't agree. Its intelligentsia need to be challenged.

> However, I made this off the cuff and deliberately have not offered it to
Lowlands-L for the same reason that I have removed my website. As an
expatriate Shetlander, I have no right to misrepresent the views of resident
(or other) Shetlanders by presenting material on the internet which appears
to give “dialect” written status, and which Shetland society as a whole is
therefore likely to find offensive.

I'm sorry, and hope I do not offend... but I have to criticize this
approach. Ex-patriate or not, if you love the language, haven't you a right
AND duty to help dispel the myth? No "intelligentsia" has the right to tell
people that their dialect/language/speech-form ought not to be written. I'm
going to spend some more time reading that ShetLink forum, but already just
in the thread titles I see the word "Shetlandic" appear alongside other
forms, and

> At the dialect conference I attended, the first speaker (the Shetland
archivist, himself a Shetlander) used some of my writing as a bad example,
describing it as a “horrible abortion” because of its use of the term “lay
up” (make, establish) outside of the fossilised phrases he (probably as an
archivist) had encountered it in, as referring to (1) socks, and (2)
riddles. More recently, a clergyman who has translated parts of the Bible
into “dialect” from English has commented that “translating Greek and Hebrew
into Shetland dialect doesn”t really work.” As the owner of a former website
using the jarringly jargonistic term “Shetlandic”, and contained irritating
writing in that unwriteable medium including unworkable translation from
Greek and the odd abortion here and there, I have taken the hint.

All I can think to say is that I (yes, I know: who am I that you should
listen to me?) hope that you will re-think what you're doing. Seems to me
that the hint that you've taken is related to a pernicious form of
"political correctness". Oh my! Heaven forfend that someone be "offended"!
Well, you know what? It's OK to offend people, especially when they hold
mistaken views due to ignorance. It may jog them out of their current
abstractions. It may be just collateral "damage" caused by your expression
of your love of the language -- which is more important than whether
somebody likes the word or not. If they don't want to read Shetlandic, they
don't have to. That shouldn't be a reason to pretend it doesn't exist, to
pretend that the word is offensive just because some wag put the words
"jarring" and "jargonistic" together in a sentence.

Some words are offensive, in a way that matters. Lappish is offensive to
Samis because it means something they really don't like: an oppressive
denigration from their Germanic neighbours. Shetlandic isn't anything like
that. OK maybe the road back to language-pride is via a phrase like
"Shetland dialect" > "Shetlandic dialect" > "Shetlandic" but, John, as a
minority language activist for nearly two decades I just have to say that
your current approach is, in my view, not the right one.

> As to how the dialects of Shetland should now be labelled on Lowlands-L, I
am afraid I have no idea. The only safe avenue, it seems to me, is not to
mention them at all.

I can't agree.

> From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
>
> My head is still reeling. I'm not yet sure which is to blame for me having
a very hard time wrapping my head around the goings-on: my aging mind or the
apparent bizarreness of the story. It seems even more bizarre than people
under French-speaking hegemony having been conditioned to call patois every
indigenous non-French language variety under French-speaking hegemony, but
at least there you get away with specifying them as things like patois
normand or patois alsacien when you are in a different location.

Not only that. The French establishment have nearly succeeded in killing of
Breton by labelling it as a "patois" even though it's not even a dialect of
French.

> So it seems to me that Shetland's popular concensus is that what people
like you and I used to call "Shetlandic" does not officially exist, and that
it is verboten to specify "dialect" even in terms of location so as to
deprive it of any modicum of legitimacy. I assume that as a result "dialect"
will cease to exist (apprently this being the intent). As they say, "that's
one for the record." (Might this be how the Norn language became extinct?)
Will Shelanders in, say, a hundred years ask (in English of course), "Why,
oh, why did our ancestral language disappear?" and the answer will be
"People decided it didn't exist."

Sounds to me as though Shetlandic needs our help.

Michael Everson * http://www.evertype.com/

----------

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

Thanks, Michael.

By and large, and certainly in principle, I agree with your take and
sentiment. However, although I certainly wish that this thing could be
turned around, I also respect John's position and have compassion. I base
this on the assumption that there's a long, tedious, frustrating and tiring
history behind it.

At the moment, my head is still spinning and busy trying to find logic in
the seeming bizarreness of it all.

As you alluded to, Michael, it is quite common for people to refer to
minority languages in terms of *patois*, *idioma*, *Mundart*, "dialect", and
so forth. In most cases this requires no qualification when the ethnic and
geographical context is clear. So, for instance, when people that live in or
come from Southern France refer to *patois* it is usually implied that they
are talking about Occitan and not to, say, Alsatian, Gallo, Norman or
Breton. However, when they talk to outsiders they will specify it at least
in terms of locality, even if they do not use the name Occitan. Similarly,
people in, say, Drenthe, The Netherlands, might refer to Drenthe Low Saxon
as *dialect* when the context is clear. Outside the context they are likely
to specify by town (e.g. *Hoogeveens*), if not more general *Drents*, even
if they do not use the name *Nedersaksisch* (or don't have any concept of
the language as a whole).

I assume that all of this is based on the view that "dialect" (even if it's
a language in its own right) is inferior to whatever is the dominant and
therefore "good" language. Yes, and all too often "dialect" speakers
themselves come to internalize this view, even come to despise their own
language. In most cases this is the result of the old opinion that diversity
is detrimental, that loyalty to a state must be expressed by using only the
national standard language -- the old "one country = one ethnicity = one
language" ideal.

The question is if people in Shetland have thought things through. If they
prefer to call Shetlandic "dialect" within a back-home context, what do they
call it when talking to outsiders outside the Islands? It seems to me that
some sort of specification would be in order, such as "dialect of Shetland"
or "Shetland dialect". If I didn't know someone came from the Shetland
Islands and I asked him, "What do you speak with your family?", then just
"dialect" wouldn't do.  Or is it more likely that he answers "English,"
considering Shetland dialect a sub-category of English, and also considering
the specifics not my business? Which begs the second question: Is Shetlandic
being made into some sort of *lingua specialis*, a secret type of language?

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

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