As far as I can remember, I don't think we had definite proof until now that the controversial "Stew" blogger's hostility to Gaelic also extends to Scots, but it's not a huge surprise to learn that it does. Of course it takes a different form in the case of Scots, because whereas he hates Gaelic and regards it as alien and useless and wants it to be totally eradicated, he's merely trying to reclassify Scots as just English in a funny accent. That has the same ultimate effect, though, because if Scots is seen as merely a non-standard variant of English, it becomes acceptable for authority figures to "correct" people's Scots speech and push everyone towards standard English. By contrast, accepting that Scots and English are closely-related but distinct languages means giving parity of esteem to Scots and English words and phrases and treating them as equally valid and legitimate.
It may totally blow Stew's mind that it's possible to understand the words of another language without being bilingual, but it's certainly not news to Portuguese people, who can watch Spanish TV and understand the bulk of what is being said without needing subtitles, simply because Spanish and Portuguese are very closely related languages. That doesn't make Portuguese people bilingual, except for the minority who have taken the trouble to learn to speak Spanish themselves. The same principle applies to Scottish Gaelic speakers, who can generally understand what is being said on the Irish language channel TV4 without much difficulty. But for the most part they are not Irish speakers and are not bilingual in Gaelic and Irish.
So by the same token, most monolingual English speakers in Scotland can understand the fragments of Scots spoken in Still Game because the words are closely related to their English equivalents, and also because everyone in Scotland (except maybe in the Highlands) has been passively exposed to Scots throughout their lives. But what about people who can actually speak Scots themselves, and not just understand it - are they bilingual? Well, yes they are. In most cases they don't recognise that fact about themselves, because speaking both Scots and English is just second nature to them and thus seems utterly unremarkable.
Think about how Scots is used in the real world (and also in Still Game, for that matter). There's probably nobody who truly speaks "pure Scots" (as I discussed in my podcast with Len Pennie four years ago), but by the same token, there's probably well over a million people in Scotland who never speak pure English either. Scots speakers tend to constantly 'code-switch', often within the same sentence. You might hear a sentence like "get aff that floor". The word 'that' is common to both Scots and English, but 'off' and 'floor' are different in Scots. In this case the speaker has used the Scots word for 'off' but not for 'floor'. Does that mean he or she speaks a transitional dialect which incorporates 'aff' but not 'flair'? Nope. He or she knows both versions of both words, but has just semi-consciously chosen in the moment, probably for no particular reason, to use the Scots version of 'aff' but the English version of 'floor'. They know which one is "Scottish" and which one is not, and if you asked them to translate from the Scottish version of each word to the English version, or vice versa, they would be able to do so. But how can anyone "translate" unless Scots and English are different things? How can they pull off the feat unless they're bilingual?
Answers on a postcard, folks (to be sent to Bath).
Incidentally, just as a general observation: why does someone like Stew, who still nominally claims to be an independence supporter (despite regularly urging his readers to vote against independence) want Scotland to be as similar as possible to England? Why does he seemingly want to eradicate all points of difference, of which Gaelic and Scots are prime examples?
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I used to think it strange that an alleged independence supporters would detest those aspects of Scotland that are icon. I used to think Mr Campbell [should he anglicise his Gaelic surname to Bentmouth?] maybe felt Scotland's languages were too stereotypical. Then I realised he's an attention seeker who says silly things in order to be noticed. There are some people who enjoy being ridiculous.
ReplyDeleteStew himsel aince haed a post agin the glaikit assumption that Scots isna a language acause it shares vocubulary wi English: https://wingsoverscotland.com/a-small-vignette/
ReplyDeleteI mind him haein anither aboot Scots and agin the eejits that ding it doon for political reasons, but I canna find it noo.
Seems that like a wheen ither middle aged yoon men, he gets affa huffy and upset aboot Iona Fyfe. Needs tae get oot mair, fresh air'd dae him guid.
I'm going to send him an Iona Fyfe CD as a present for his next birthday. And in the meantime, Stew -
Deletehttps://youtu.be/KlKyFLbuJBg?si=qXEinHgdbd8VAH2c
I was literally in the audience watching her that day!
Interesting, I’m not a great one for folk music, haven’t heard of her before, but enjoyed that song. Quite easy to follow.
DeleteYoutube then offered me this one, which I also enjoyed, but I had to pay a lot more attention to.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tRVHjc1qAUU
I probably got about 50 to 75 percent of it, and would have to listen a few more times to fully figure it out, e.g. I missed what she was saying before going to the blacksmith. I was having to concentrate so much on the words, that the sentences were being lost.
That is for a “monolingual” English speaker, born and raised in England, albeit the North East, so having experience with Geordie and Northumbrian.
I guess I shall have to see about finding some more of her output, Ta.
What happened to the Skye by-election analysis?
ReplyDeleteI jettistewed it.
DeleteScots is a language with a fair few dialects.
ReplyDeleteTalking of sub-samples of UK Polls. SNP at 4% in the new IPSOS poll. No doubt the sample will be small, but a straw in the wind none the less.
ReplyDeleteCampbell is an idiot.
ReplyDeleteAll this means Scottish Football Association as long as another country rules over us and plunders our natural resources.
ReplyDeleteI once read a comment somewhere that said there are more similarities between Danish and Norwegian than there are between Scots And English.
ReplyDeleteI’m not (yet) familiar with Norwegian, but Danish is very similar to Swedish except in the very different pronunciation of many words. It’s pretty uncontroversial that those are different languages. Scots probably shares a little less vocabulary with standard English than Danish does with Swedish, and of course also has a pronunciation that standard English speakers often struggle to understand, even when the words being spoken are similar.
DeleteIf you know English and German then reading Danish is pretty easy. If a word isn’t a cognate in one of those languages then it almost certainly is in the other. You could say the same for Dutch and Swedish. In fact it’s often helpful to know Scots as well when trying to decipher unknown words in all those languages, as Scots has retained a bit more of its Germanic roots than standard English.
All of which goes to show that languages are fluid and don’t respect national borders very neatly. Without perhaps realizing it Campbell is outing himself as a kind of Wings over the White Cliffs of Dover, showing a very insular attitude to languages, as if they are all clean cut and there’s no overlap between them. With a little more exposure to the other nations of the world he might learn that languages tend to exist in a continuum, with shared vocabulary and fuzzy edges between them. The splendid isolation of Blighty that Campbell seems so taken with (all the while talking down the many native languages of his home island) is highly atypical of the rest of the world.
If any further proof is needed I’m writing this in Alsace, where French is now the official language, but where Elsässisch is everywhere you go. Over the river into Germany you’ll find Badisch. A little ways south it morphs into Schweizerdeutsch. Further east it’s Schwäbisch, quite different to the others as it’s a bit of a transition from those pure Alemannisch variants towards Franconian. A standard German speaker would struggle badly to understand any of those variants of German. A little further north and you move into Pfälzisch and Hessisch, both more Franconian with barely any Alemannisch influence.
Are these all dialects or languages? Linguistically they are languages, but as the old saying goes, a language is just a dialect with an army. I might instead say that it doesn’t really matter what label we stick on them. After all, Pluto is still Pluto even if some eejit decided it was a dwarf planet. That said, these variants exist and are incredibly valuable. If securing them the status of a language helps their survival and development then I’m all for it.
But anyway, don’t get me started on languages ;)
Of the two written standards of Norwegian, the more widely used is Bokmål which was essentially Danish with Norwegian pronunciation, while the lesser used Nynorsk was based on rural Norwegian dialects. People who believe Scots is a form of English need to widen their horizons and look at other bilingual and/or diglossic societies.
DeleteThe Bavarian dialect of German is spoken by 12 million people. It really is quite different from standard German, particularly in pronunciation but also in a lot of vocabulary. I'm proficient in German as a second language but I really struggle to understand Bavarian German.
DeleteHowever, Bavarian speakers themselves don't term it as a separate language, but as their local dialect.
Learning Spanish and Portuguese made me realise how Scots is a true language and not a dialect of English. I was always told it was a corrupt dialect at school (many moons ago) but that was in the day of English dominance which I feel has diminished sharply since the 80s
ReplyDeleteThe rev struggles with bi’s. Not that is should matter since he is currently the oldest virgin in Bath.
ReplyDelete