Re: The whole dialect business

On 24 Nov 2005 02:38:19 -0800, "Iain" <iain_inkster@xxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>
>Michil=EDn wrote:
>> On 23 Nov 2005 11:45:33 -0800, "Iain" <iain_inkster@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>> >I thought long and hard about this, and concede that the Scots dialect,
>> >if spoken in its entirety, is a language.
>> >
>> >But it hardly is. Sometimes Dutch is more similar to Standard English
>> >that Robert Burns, but although that sort of vocab' lives on, it is not
>> >as dense nor prolific as once it was.
>> >
>> >In demographics, the odd person who says "wee" or "ken" is counted as
>> >speaking the Scots dialect.
>> >
>> >I would say rhyming slang is a language if it was applied to every
>> >second noun, but it is only ever spoken piecemeal.
>> >
>> >Ye ken? Even the prepositions and common words perfectly twin Standard
>> >English words in their usage. Scots' only real grammatical difference
>> >in terms of validity rather than idiomacy is probably "for to", as in
>> >Middle English.
>> >
>> >~Iain
>> >
>> On the contrary there are many more, including the instantly obvious
>> difference between the English "I won't" and "I wouldn't" versus the
>> Scots "I'll not" and "I'd not" and all the variations thereof.
>
>No no -- That's just preference. "I'll not" is grammatically correct
>Standard English -- A Scottish way of using Standard English.
>
>~Iain
>
You'll pardon me for saying this but you're bluffing instead of
speaking from pure knowledge and I find it exasperating.

Firstly, the "I won't" versus "I'd not" pairing is recognized in all
linguistic studies as a clear marker between Scots and English, bith
of which are descended from the same original source, namely
Northumbrian, but became distincly different after the Norman Conquest
when English adopted about one-third of its modern vocabularly from
Norrman-French.

Scots did not, as Scotland was never conquered by the Normans
militarily, but only socially as is demonstrated by those like you
with no real handle on Scots who show a preference for English because
you think it will give you a leg up socially.

Scots is as separate from English as Dutch is from German or Norwegian
is from Swedish and is a clearly a fully developed and competent
language in its own right.

In case you ever wonder (and with your grasp of linguistics, I doubt
that you ever will unless I point it out) this is why English has so
many unnecessary (except as class markers) duplicate words for the
same thing; one Germanic and one French and sometimes one Norse. For
example; spectacles vs. glasses; commence vs. begin, etc.

There is a set of Norse words in both languages, such as skirt, skip
and skipper which originally duplicated shirt, ship and shipper.

For an excellent series of posts on the diferences between Scots and
English, use Google - Groups to track the posts of Allan Connochie,
who has spent several years straightening out people like you.






Murchadh
.

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