The Scottish Pairlament wabsite (thanks to Metafilter).

Is this serious? Or is this like Minnesota putting up a Norski page with lots of Oh Ya's and stuff?

Is this serious?

What do you mean? Is the language of Lallans Scots serious? Last I heard, it wasn't even a dialect, but rather a language.

Scots Online

Scots Language Society

Scots Language Resource Centre

und so weiter ...

Oh yes, quite serious. As I remember, the public signs around the parliament in Edinburgh are only in English and Gaelic, and they hadn't brought Scots up to speed yet.

It's even more advanced in Northern Ireland. Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch helpfully explain that "Tha Noarth-Sooth Boord ò Leid is cum aboot frae tha Bilfawst Greeance as yin o tha Noarth-Sooth boords", and under Leid they explain that... um... "Tha ettlins o tha Boord fur this thrie yeir cumin wull maistlie tak on fower sinnèrie ploys". So that's all right then.

Is there a word for this kind of language? It is too like English to be considered a separate language (yet) and it seems too far from the norm to be considered merely a dialect (especially as it seems to have been deliberately and systematically created). The circumstances of its creation seem to rule out a pidgin or creole. What exactly would you call this?

Is there a word for this kind of language?

What part of it's a language do you not understand? It's about as different from English as Norwegian is from Danish. It has a literature that stretches back to the 14th century at least. It was used as the court language by the Stuarts. Seriously, what prejudice stops you from accepting its lanugagehood?

Here's something that's close to English but is considered a separate language. I'd say the that the site neveu gave us is closer to English, in the sense of being much easier to read.

Whan that the Knyght had thus his tale ytoold,
In al the route ne was ther yong ne oold
That he ne seyde it was a noble storie,
And worthy for to drawen to memorie;
And namely the gentils everichon.
Oure Hooste lough, and swoor, "So moot I gon,
This gooth aright; unbokeled is the male,
Lat se now who shal telle another tale,
For trewely the game is wel bigonne.

A challenge: where is this passage from? This challenge is open to all but one, and that one knows who he/she is.

I won't attempt to say where the passage is from, but I feel an irresistible urge to follow it up with ...

"Now telleth ye sire Monk, if that ye conne,
Somewhat, to quiten with the knightes tale."

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What part of it's a language do you not understand? It's about as different from English as Norwegian is from Danish. It has a literature that stretches back to the 14th century at least. It was used as the court language by the Stuarts.

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It's just that I'm suspicious of anything I see on the web, or the wab. It looked too much like Groundskeeper Willie's lines written phonetically (Pairliment, wabsite, 'makkin yer voice heard', Memmers, 'find oot aboot') juxtaposed with phrases like "as accessible as possible".

Also, if someone were to write a Cockney version, for example, I would expect it to look a lot like this: much that's familiar, some things I can figure out, a very few things that are baffling.

Seriously, what prejudice stops you from accepting its languagehood?

The fact that I can understand it.

Seriously, though, I can't understand it when it's spoken. My wife and I went to Edinburgh on our honeymoon. We were in a pub and a song was playing on the jukebox. I asked the bartender who the artist was.

"Roat's Jert" was the answer I heard.

"Roat's Jert?" I repeated quizzically. It was a Scottish-folksy kind of song so I thought maybe this was the name of the group. Maybe Roat was a name and Jert meant a band or something.

He rolled his eyes and shouted "Roat's Jert" again.

"Rot's Jert?" I tried, hopefully.

He shook his head, took a ballpoint pen and on a cocktail napkin wrote "Rod Stewart".

Seriously, what prejudice stops you from accepting its lanugagehood?

It reminds me of phonetic spelling that grammar schools often use to encourage writing, and I believe we had a thread about that sometime.

It is hard for me to see it as another language because I can read it. I don't think it has anything to do with prejudice.

The following extract is written in Tok Pisin, probably the most well known Pidgin of English.

Dispela em I gutnius bilong Jisas Kraist, Pikinini bilong God. Dispela gutnius em I kamap pastaim olsem profet Aisaia I raitem: Harim, mi salim man bilong bringim tok bilong mi, na em I gop paslain long yu. Em bai I redim rot bilong yu. Long graun I no gat man, maus bilong wanpela man I singaut, I spik,. Redim rot bilon Mikpela. Stretim ol rot bilong en.

(Translation taken from The English Language Today by David Crystal)

It's the opening of the Gospel according to Saint Mark.

Tok Pisin while certainly a language of some sort is in fact a Pidgin of English rather than a completely separate language. Pidgins develope first of all as trading languages between people who have no other mutually comprehensible dialects. They evolve into Creoles through wider acceptance and use . It's debatable whether Tok Pisin should be called a Creole. (I think it should but the authorities on the matter continue to refer to it as a Pidgin which is why I have done the same above.)
The extract that was referred to in the thread above is a good deal more comprehensible than this but does in appearance at least resemble a Pidgin or a Creole. As it didn't develop through a need to trade I'm reluctant to accept it as a Pidgin or a Creole. How did it develop and what is the technical linguistic term for this kind of language, if there is one?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: BobHale,

It's not a special kind of language, it's just a dialect of English like any other. The difference is that when Scotland was independent, its dialects were written in an orthography more suited to them, and this is the only dialect of English for which this is true. All other dialects are rendered, if at all, in an ad-hoc respelling, exaggerating some features and not showing others, and only used for comic effect or by a few rustic poets.

Scots English ceased to be a standard written language in 1707, but poets like Burns kept it up. Modern Scots poets aren't that widely known, so standard written Scots looks to us now like an example of the other kinds of dialect rendition we're used to: comic, rustic, and ad-hoc.

So far I've called it a dialect of English, and I think it is (whereas English-based pidgins definitely are not). However there is the political point that for many centuries it did have an army and a navy, so could be called a language; and even today Scotland is a nation and that's the usual grounds for saying that Norwegian or Croatian or Slovak is a language.

But the more linguistic criterion is of mutual intelligibility. On these grounds the stronger dialects of, at least, Glasgow, Newcastle, and London are incipient separate languages, while that of Edinburgh is a comprehensible variety of English. But for political reasons again, no-one wants to call Cockney or Geordie separate languages.

Well, pidgins are another matter entirely, what with the whole language - creole - pidgin continuum. But, as Max Weinreich said: "a shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" which is Yiddish for "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". I'd say that Scots is a language (with several dialects) because, as aput mentioned, it has a literature, it was the language of a nation and still is, though the Kingdom of Scotland has been united with those of Ireland and England for a while now, and there's an orthography of sorts which is different from Standard English. At the other end of the ridiculous spectrum we have separate languages like Mandarin and Cantonese that some insist on calling dialects of Chinese when they are mutually unintelligible. They are united by a writing system (as though saying all of the European languages that use the Latin alphabet are the same language) and the political fiat out of Beijing that they are languages.

As for Tok Pisin, I believe it's crossed over into a Creole because there are folks born in the big cities of New Guinea that have it as their first language. Haitian Krio is another famous creole that you run into from time to time.

As for the quotations from Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, they are in another language. It's called Middle English and it's no longer spoken of written. Take it back another 600 years and you have Old English. Saying that these two historically and genetically related languages are dialects of one another makes about as much sense as saying that Latin, French, and Italian aare dialects.

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Originally posted by jheem: "Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, they are in another language. It's called Middle English and it's no longer spoken of written. Take it back another 600 years and you have Old English. Saying that these two historically and genetically related languages are dialects of one another makes about as much sense as saying that Latin, French, and Italian are dialects."

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Did I say that?

My point was that Middle English, though somewhat comprehensible to a speaker of today's English, has enough "incomprehensibity" that it is considered a separate language. IMHO the Scots excerpt that nevau posted has much less "incomprehesibility".

Query whether Scots' lesser degree of incomprehesibility is nonetheless sufficient that Scots can be considered a "separate language". In that regard compare Elizabethan English, such as Shakespeare's. An everyday modern speaker cannot understand Shakespeare in full (as evidenced by the fact that Shakespeare texts are annotated). Nonetheless, Shakespeare's language is English. It is not incomprehensible enough that we consider it to be a separate language.

Would you say the Scots text is any more incomprehensible than Shakespeare?

Would you say the Scots text is any more incomprehensible than Shakespeare?

I don't find Early Modern English (e.g., Shakespeare) any less or more incomprehensible than websites in Scots. I think that most people have a tough time with Shakespeare because of the syntax and rhetoric rather than the grammar. And I'm not sure that the incomprehensibility is a good test of whether a language is a language or a dialect. I think that the political test is paramount. Followed by the literary: i.e., it has a literature. A good example of the strangeness of this is the Catalan language. It has minority status in the EU, even though it has as many as or slightly more speakers as Danish which is an official non-minority language. There are some dialects of German and Italian that are quite close to the dialect-language threshold.

Also, if a language once was a language, can it lose its languagehood and be reduced to a dialect?

Also, if a language once was a language, can it lose its languagehood and be reduced to a dialect?

With absolutely no authority on the matter, I say yes. Previously you wrote: Seriously, what prejudice stops you from accepting its lanugagehood? Why would it be a prejudice...or are you using the word differently here? Maybe it wasn't a 'preconceived judgment;' maybe it was based on the way someone else analyzes the knowledge base in the field. It may be an different opinion, but I don't see any evidence that it's a prejudice.

It may be an different opinion, but I don't see any evidence that it's a prejudice.

I think that many people make preconceived judgments about language all the time: e.g., they as indefinite singular pronoun, apostrophes, pronounciations of words. Oftentimes these are not carefully thought out but may be reduced to something somebody was forced to learn in school by Mrs Grundy or something that one picked up while learning the language. It doesn't matter if folks use them commonly in speech or if the person understands what's being said: the urge to correct "errors" is a strong one in many people.

What's worse is that people transfer their shock and dismay of hearing somebody speaking a dialect (especially those of lesser prestige) to the people speaking the dialect. In Bonn once, a college educated person (who obviously understood dialect) once berated me after listening to a conversation in dialect that I had with somebody in a pub (collecting vocabulary) for "encouraging these people to speak in dialect". It didn't seem to matter that Kölsch had a longer written history than Standard High German: the second printing press was in Cologne. Sigh ...

I think that many people make preconceived judgments about language all the time: e.g., they as indefinite singular pronoun, apostrophes, pronounciations of words. Oftentimes these are not carefully thought out but may be reduced to something somebody was forced to learn in school by Mrs Grundy or something that one picked up while learning the language. It doesn't matter if folks use them commonly in speech or if the person understands what's being said: the urge to correct "errors" is a strong one in many people.

I wonder though if you could be making that same preconceived judgment. I (and others here, I think) have never made any adverse judgments (consciously or unconsciously) about people who speak with dialects. Also, most of us here don't correct others' grammar or spelling errors or typos...though sometimes that may be done in jest. For example if one of the apostrophe Nazis here makes a mistake with an apostrophe, I might let him know Or, a Freudian spelling error might be pointed out.

I (and others here, I think) have never made any adverse judgments (consciously or unconsciously) about people who speak with dialects.

Sure, people are only human after all. I just don't try to correct these dialect speakers or cut them off in their discourse. I do what I do with standard dialect speakers: wait and see what they will reveal further about themselves through the content of their discourse. Sometimes I am pleasantly surprised.

As for Ziggy and his house dress, oftentimes mistakenly called a slip, yes, pronunciations should be spelled without the extra o. This reminds me of the intentional, but harmless, mistakes placed on maps for copyright purposes. My mistake was all mine, though.