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Ulster Scots
December 18, 2006, 09:14
goofyUlster Scots
Northern Ireland's Department of Agriculture and Rural Development has information in minority languages on their website, including
Irish and
Uster Scots, which is
spoken by Scots-descended people in Ireland. I had no idea that Ulster Scots had a standard orthography, if this is indeed a standard orthography.
Fairm-airtit figgers, siller- an scance-airtit wittins.
December 18, 2006, 09:29
zmježdI wonder how much Ulster Scots orthography differs from Scots (Lallans, i.e., Lowlands) orthography. I see by the Wikipedia
article that Ullans (Ulster Scots) is considered a variety of the same language.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
December 18, 2006, 13:56
shufitzI see by the same article that "Scots has often been treated as part of English as spoken in Scotland;" a dialect of English, if you will, rather than a separate language.
December 18, 2006, 15:47
zmježdYes, shu, but Lallans used to be the official language of Scotland (or more specifically the Scottish Court) before it united with the English crown. It therefore satsified Max Weinreich's
maxim:
a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un a flot ( A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.) BTW, one of a couple of Wikipedia articles that reference yours truly or my site.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
December 19, 2006, 01:03
Richard Englishquote:
I see by the same article that "Scots has often been treated as part of English as spoken in Scotland;" a dialect of English, if you will, rather than a separate language.
There are two languages spoken in Scotland: English and Gaelic.
Similarly in Wales and the Isle of Man.
The English is accented; the Gaelic is a quite different language.
Richard English
December 19, 2006, 02:31
zmježdYou can see by following the links posted above that Ullans and Lallans are Germanic languages closely related to English, and
Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) is a Celtic language related closely to Irish Gaelic and Manx Gaelic (all three are part of the Goidelic branch of Celtic), and less closely with Welsh and Breton (these two, plus the extinct language Cornish, are part of the Brythonic branch of Celtic. (There is a third brnach, Continental or Gaulish whichis also extinct.) The word Scots in Scotland has meant the English-like language since the 16th century.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.
December 19, 2006, 03:22
Richard Englishquote:
plus the extinct language Cornish
There has been an attempt to revive Cornish (as there has been for Manx) in recent years.
Of course, neither language has been learnt by its speakers at their mothers' knees - the last Manxman with that distinction died last century (but within my own lifetime).
Richard English
December 19, 2006, 06:53
zmježdWhen I was in Cornwall, St Columb Minor, I bought some Cornish books: a history of the death of Cornish, some graduated grammar to learn the language, and a dictionary. (I'd already owned one older dictionary, and this one was essentially an update of that.) The last native speaker died in the late 18th century. Revival was started in the late 19th/early 20th. Not many texts in Cornish exist, so a lot of the modern (revival) vocabulary are borrowings and remoldings from Welsh and Breton, its two closest surviving sister languages. There are probably more speakers of Esperanto or Klingon these days than Cornish.
—Ceci n'est pas un seing.