Talk:Scots language/Archive 3

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We seem to have a bit of an edit was between |states=Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and |states=United Kingdom It would be better to discuss it here rather than just revert back and forth. I also think that the discussion would be better on technical and clarity grounds rather than polarizing into Scottish Nationalism and English nationalism/Unionist positions. The intent after all is to show where the Scots language is spoken.--Nantonos 01:41, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Agreed. But whichever we choose (and I'm not too worried which it is) let's make sure it's right. In my opinion the most accurate would be UK and ROI for the states and Lowland Scotland, NI and County Donegal for the regions. -- Derek Ross | Talk 17:58, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

It would seem more sensible to do it by region, since it is a regional language. For instance, Javanese language says it is spoken in "Java (Indonesia)," not just Indonesia. john k 21:05, 23 July 2005 (UTC)

I actually like 84...'s latest edit. It seems to be exactly accurate and I vote that we settle on it as the version to use. -- Derek Ross | Talk 04:10, 24 July 2005 (UTC)

Is it accurate to say it is only spoken in the Lowlands? What language do people then speak in those parts of the Highlands where Gaelic is no longer spoken? john k 05:52, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Because of the clearances, the folk who live in the Highlands are very few in number with a fair proportion of incomers. In the Eastern Highlands you are more likely to find Scots and in the West more likely to find English, so its not strictly accurate to say that Scots is only spoken in the Lowlands but neither would it be accurate to say that it is spoken throughout the Highlands. Note that most Gaelic speakers now live in the Western Isles or on the West Coast (and to a lesser extent in the cities). The Highlands themselves are extremely sparsely populated nowadays and it would almost make sense to say that no language is spoken there. -- Derek Ross | Talk 06:38, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

The Highlands themselves are extremely sparsely populated nowadays and it would almost make sense to say that no language is spoken there - strange, I could swear I hear people speaking every day! The main language spoken by locals in the north and west is Highland English, which is essentially English but with a strong Gaelic influence on vocabulary and grammar. Lianachan 00:09, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, yes. Of course. That's why I said it almost makes sense... But you and I could easily point to parts of Rannoch Moor or the Cairngorms where you'd have to walk twenty miles to find anyone to talk to. -- Derek Ross | Talk 07:16, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

Indeed, but the question was what language do the people that are there speak, not are there any people there..... Lianachan 18:02, 23 March 2006 (UTC)

Out of interest, would anyone consider Scots to be what is spoken by the older generation in North Northumberland? They sound very similar to me!

The British Isles contains an AngloSaxon dialect continuum which can be split many ways depending upon the features chosen to do so. Neighbouring dialects have more in common with each other than those far apart, so it is not surprising that there is a lot of commonality between dialects on each side of the Border. However I don't think that there would be many from Northumberland who would go as far as to say that they spoke Scots, even though the similarities are there. Most would be likely to say that they spoke a form of Northern English. -- Derek Ross | Talk 18:39, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

NPOVing

This article is hugely biased towards the 'Scots is a true language' POV. I happen to agree with that view, but the article as it stands is scarcely neutral.

What is the difference between 'a true language' and 'a not true language'?

Ken Mair 09.08.2005

An army and a navy, apparently. Seriously, though, you're right. The distinction between language and dialect is very, very fuzzy. On the one hand you have languages like Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, which are almost mutually intelligible, and on the other languages like Chinese which have 'dialects' which are as different or more different to each other than English is to German. Where is the dividing line? Well, in the case of Scots, it's quite hard to say. A lot of its speakers would consider it no more than a dialect of English, and yet the Scottish executive recognises it as a seperate language. The problem is that this article leans heavily towards the latter point of view, on no particular evidence. BovineBeast 19:53, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Have you looked at the German article: [1]? In some ways less detailed, but has a sample from the Lorimer Bible with commentary, and on this question it leans to the opposite view. --Doric Loon 05:49, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

That certainly needs NPOVing as well. I would, but I don't have a great deal of time on my hands. BovineBeast 12:36, 4 August 2005 (UTC)

I consider the most useful linguistic argument to distinguish between languages and dialects is the standardization (Ausbausprache), as long as the varieties in question are not completely unrelated linguistically (Abstandsprache), such as—for instance—Spanish and Basque. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 18:03, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Standardisation is undoubtedly important. That is why one of the indications of a language is taken to be a body of literature. Such as Scots has. -- Derek Ross | Talk 18:21, 25 September 2005 (UTC)

Yes, but every dialect has dialect poetry, so unless you are going to declare every English dialect to be a language, which seems to me a bit pointless, you have to look for a broader body of literature than the typical folksy things which people use dialect for. And I'm not convinced that Scots does have that. Apart from the obvious lyric poetry, the odd TV drama about crofting life and a partial Bible translation which is much loved in folksy nostalgic contexts but is seldom read in Church, there is not really a great body of literature in Scots. I would be looking for longer novels, non-fiction books, academic literature, and dramas which are not set in typical dialect situations: plays in Doric which are set in Aberdeenshire farming villages are typical dialect literature; on the other hand, plays in Doric which are set in England with English characters speaking Doric not because they really would do but just because that's the language of the play - now that would indicate a literary language. --Doric Loon 11:48, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

Would you put any date restrictions on the literature that you find acceptable. After all the heyday of Scots would be pre-1603 at which time novels hadn't been invented, and academic literature was written in Latin which rules out two of the three categories that you have suggested. -- Derek Ross | Talk 20:22, 28 September 2005 (UTC)

(Sorry for delay - I've been away!) The problem with that is that pre-1603 no-one was trying to claim Scots was a separate language. Scots speakers called their language Inglis and there was no issue. No, I think if you are claiming the status of a modern rather than a historical language, you are looking for the full range of literary use today. After all, this is not like some third world country without an intellectual tradition: every Scots speaker is literate, and a significant number are in the forefront of every field of European artistic and intellectual life. If NONE of them are writing these kinds of texts in Scots, that suggests to me that its only a daftie fringe of Scots speakers who think of it as a language in that sense. C'mon, you know perfectly well the majority of Doric speakers would not thank you for making them fill out their tax forms in Doric. Which is not to say they don't value and revere it on another level, of course... dialects are precious! --Doric Loon 20:02, 7 October 2005 (UTC)

I don't think that it's strictly true that no one was trying to claim Scots was a separate language prior to 1603. Elizabeth I is said to have claimed it as one of the languages in which she was fluent. So I think that Scots can be fairly claimed as a historical language. In fact our own Scottish literature article gives a good starting point for a historical literature search. As to the modern status of Scots as a language, there's no doubt that the range of published modern literature is much smaller than for most langauges. However, as I am sure you are well aware, there are strong reasons (financial, cultural, political, etc.) why someone wanting to make their mark is more likely to publish in English rather than Scots. At its most basic, no one will ever get rich writing best-selling novels in Scots. However that's not to say that it isn't possible to write well-crafted novels at all. Just that it isn't a good idea from the individual author's financial or "status" point of view (unless they love the language so much that they are in danger of being accused of belonging some daftie fringe in any case.) Derek Ross | Talk 18:58, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

My point precisely! Of course it would be possible to use Scots for all these things, but for the most part the native community is not motivated to do it. --Doric Loon 19:31, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

Well, Loon, it's nice to see that we agree on why Scots literature tends to be a bit thin on the ground since 1707 but I thought that we were discussing whether it is reasonable to claim Scots as a separate language from English or not. And I don't see how the native community's lack of motivation fits in to that. After all Gaelic speakers don't have any more motivation to publish in Gaelic than Scots speakers to publish in Scots, yet no one is in any doubt that Gaelic is a language. The only reason that I brought up the lack of motivation issue was to indicate why it might be a bit difficult to come up with modern examples of the type of evidence that you are looking for. -- Derek Ross | Talk 02:41, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

Sure. The lack of academic writing doesn't stop Gaelic being a language. But the problem with Scots is that linguistically it CAN be thought of as a dialect, and therefore a claim of separate language status needs special pleading. All I am saying is that it is a weak argument to use the literary tradition as evidence for this. --Doric Loon 17:05, 9 October 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Derek Ross that because the literature is sparse now doesn't mean it's not a language--Navajo has an equally sparse literature, and yet no one would argue it is not a language. Now, I realize that Navajo is clearly not a dialect of neighboring English either, and no one sane would argue it was. In terms of linguistics, genetically speaking, Scots became as separate language when Middle English started going through the Great Vowel Shift and Scots did not. This means that Early Modern English was likely not mutually intelligble with Scots, and would bet that Current Modern English is not either.Kaibab 06:10, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

The reason why Navajo is considered a separate language is because it qualifies as Abstandsprache which Scots does not. The lack of the use of a Scots Ausbausprache, that is to say, its lack of use as modern literate language in all domains of a literate language and not only in some restricted folkloristic domains, cannot be explained by financial, cultural, political, etc. reasons, as Derek Ross claimed on october 8th, since there are languages that have fewer speakers than Scots, but nevertheless are used as perfect Ausbausprache in all domains, e.g. Estonian language (1.1 million speakers according to Wikipedia), Latvian language (1.4 million speakers according to Wikipedia – compare with Scots having more than 1.5. million according to Wikipedia). -- j. 'mach' wust | ✍ 12:22, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Better sample: Icelandic language, 300 000 speakers. -- j. 'mach' wust | ✑ 17:00, 19 November 2005 (UTC)

Regulated by

No doubt the SND carries great weight with linguists as a record of both written and spoken usage. It however does not regulate the language or even attempt to. It is a record of usage nothing more.

The language is not regulated by onyone. People are free to choose how they write and speak it. Social pressure to comform to any notion of a standard, especially in the written form, is as good as non existant.

Evidence for its existence as a separate language

The article said the following:

Evidence for its existence as a separate language lies in [...] the substantial lexical, grammatical, and phonological differences from other Anglic varieties.

I have deleted that particular argument because these differences are not substantial and because languages don't need any substantial lexical, grammatical or phonological differences in order to be considered seperate languages (as in the case of Serbian and Croatian); dialects may well differ lexically, grammatically and phonologically from a standard language (like in the case of German and Swiss German which seems to be quite similar to the case of English and Scots). If the differences really were susbstantial, then there could be little doubt about the existence of Scots as a seperate language, think for instance of Spanish and Basque, Finnish and Swedish, German and Sorbian, Scots and Scottish Gaelic. -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 11:33, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Were I to contribute to the English Wikipedia using Scots instead of English, I would be reverted immediately for using ungrammatical sentences, bad spelling and strange vocabulary and generally being incomprehensible. That implies that the differences are much more substantial than those between the different varieties of English which are accepted here or between Swiss, Austrian and German German all of which appear to be acceptable on the German Wikipedia. The differences do not need to be as substantial as the ones that you have chosen where each language comes from a completely different family. You may not believe that the differences are substantial enough to be evidence but other people do. So you should not have erased the claim. You should instead have attributed it to those who believe it. The fact is that linguistic differences may not be the only indicators of a separate language but they are certainly one of the indicators. -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:52, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

Swiss German is certainly not acceptable at the German wikipedia. Those who wish to write in Swiss German can do so at the Alemannic wikipedia (Swiss German is Alemannic). The German wikipedia accepts only the different varieties of the standard language, but not the dialects. It's the same on the English wikipedia: Non-standard varieties are not acceptable either, for instance Norfolk English, Newfoundland English or African American English.

Back on-topic: "Substantial" linguistical difference (in related languages) is not correlated with the division into different languages. Therefore, it is logically impossible that it would be an argument for the division into different languages.

Proof that there's no such correlation: Related varieties that are considered different languages can either have or have not "substantial" linguistical differences (Dutch—German vs. Croatian—Serbian); related varieties that are considered the same language can either have or have not "substantial" linguistical differences (Standard German—Walser German vs. Received Pronunciation—General American). -- j. 'mach' wust | ‽ 22:11, 15 October 2005 (UTC)

As someone who lived in Scotland for 15 years and never heard Scots outside a Burns Supper, I agree that Scots is a language: but it's a dead one. Scottish schoolchildren speak "Scottish English" with a few words of Scots.

Exile 20:57, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Inaccurate map

(The following is a duplicate of comments I made here: Talk:Scottish_English#Inaccurate_map.)

The following map has been applied to the English English page, and to Scottish English:

Diagram showing the geographical locations of selected languages and dialects of the British Isles.

It appears to have one major flaw, and several quibbles:

• Where on earth is the Scots language? Its ommission seems particularly inappropriate considering the debt owed to Scots by Scottish English. Somewhat bizarrely, only one dialect of Scots is included, and that is the tiny number of Ulster Scots speakers, only about 2% of all Scots-speakers! I know that the map is titled "Selected languages", but it is baffling why the only language the auther has "selected" not to include is Scots!
• Why on earth have two distinct languages, Scottish Gaelic language and Irish language, been shown as a homogenous blob?
• Highland English is missing: another rather stark absence on this Scottish English page.
• Why are several subdivisions of English English shown, but only two of Scottish English? The differences between the Fife dialect and Aberdonian are just as big, if not bigger, than the differences between Brummie and Yorkshire dialect.
• Where on earth did Shetland go? A stunning ommission, considering that it is one of the most distictive linguistic groups in the entire British Isles?

I find it very depressing to hear that a German textbook publisher wants to use it in textbooks for 600 schools. No wonder many people grow up with a very strange perception of the language situation in the United Kingdom.--Mais oui! 10:31, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

That's absolutely bizarre. One can take the view that Scots is a language or the view that it isn't, but it seems distinctly perverse to claim (as the map does) that Ulster Scots is a language/dialect (solid border) and completely ignore Scots, letting "Scottish" just be an "accent"! I suppose this is another result of the unco situation we have where Ulster Scots has more legal recognition than Scots -- Mendor 11:44, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

Still outstanding: Mais, could you organise getting a draft for discussion listing languages / main dialects that we want included, perhaps with clarifying notes and pages to be linked. Once agreed, this could be taken up with the author of the original map, or a new (ping format) map put together using one of the commons base maps. Quickly pleads being a bit busy just now myself, ...dave souza 15:39, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

Only just spotted your comment, one month on. "a draft for discussion listing languages / main dialects that we want included, perhaps with clarifying notes and pages to be linked" on WP:SCOWNB presumably?--Mais oui! 01:16, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Oh my god there are so many things wrong with that map. Who did it? I could strangle them! It seems Welsh is not spoken in Wrexham. Welsh is just one language and ignores the north / south split. And Scouse gets a mention. Apparently Sunderland and Middlesbrough speak Geordie (try telling that to a local and be attacked!). Poor, poor German students.--Luccent 15:14, 3 April 2006 (UTC)

Origins

I think there is a mistake in the section on "origins". It states that the people of Lothian were "English" before the Wars of Scottish Independence and did not become "Scottish" till after these conflicts ended. Not only is this false, but it contradicts information from another article stating they were already a part of Scotland (taken from an article on the history of Northumberland): The Scottish king Indulf captured Edinburgh in 954, which thenceforth remained in possession of the Scots. His successors made repeated attempts to extend their territory southwards. Malcolm II was finally successful, when, in 1018, he annihilated the Northumbrian army at Carham on the Tweed, and Eadulf the earl of Northumbria ceded all his territory to the north of that river as the price of peace. Henceforth Lothian, consisting of the former region of Northumbria between the Forth and the Tweed, remained in possession of the Scottish kings.

I wanted to just post this on here before I change the section on "Origins" on the Scots page.

It doesn't say that at all. It says that the inhabitants of Lothian were largely regarded as English (ethnically). - Calgacus 22:39, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I think the current information should be changed to coincide with other entries from articles such as the one on Northumbria. The current info. on this article says "As a consequence of the outcome of the Wars of Independence though, the English of Lothian who lived under the King of Scots had to accept Scottish identity." I don't understand this if as shown above, Lothian had already become part of Scotland poltically in 1018.

Oh OK, the reasons for this are very complex. One is that previously the Scottish king was a vassal to the English king in some respect (although not for Scotland), and the two realms were closely connected. Alexander II of Scotland paid homage for Lothian (though not for Scotland), and there is little reason why this would have changed during the reign of Alexander III. The Scots ruled Lothian previously, true, but that doesn't mean the inhabitants stopped being considered English (although by 1300 they were also considered Scots, not ethnically though). Witness the attribution of Adam of Dryburgh, describing Lothian as the "Land of the English in the Kingdom of the Scots". Lothian itself contributed almost nothing to the Wars of Independence, instead being a loyal staging post of English invasions, an almost indifferent region re-conquered by the Scots by force and with little local aid. The English would constantly try to reclaim the region thereafter, but the antagonism thereby provoked made the identity of Lothianers unambiguously Scottish (even though they didn't speak the language). What choice, after all, did they have but to be Scottish. The Wars of Independence severed the interconnections between the two kingdoms, and it was impossible thereafter to be both. - 02:11, 29 January 2006 (UTC)