| Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] | What language do they speak in Scotland? Thread poster: Monika Rozwarzewska
|
|---|
Textklick 
Local time: 14:28
German to English
+ ...
In memoriam | Which Queen? | Feb 19, 2007 |
Martin Jones wrote:
Thanks for the thought-provoking question. Of course, Non-Queen's English.
The last Scots queen, perforce, whose mother tongue was French?
| | | | patyjs
Mexico
Local time: 07:28
Spanish to English
+ ...
| regional dialects really difficult to understand | Jul 3, 2007 |
Just by way of interest, I was born and brung up in the north of England. I still remember a TV series called "aufedersein, pet" about a bunch of laborers from an area on the border of England and Scotland (Humberside?)where the accent is notoriously thick. We had to record the program every week so we could play it back several times so as not to miss any of the dialogue.
And we only lived about 60 miles away.
By the way, according to Webster's, there are more diff... See more Just by way of interest, I was born and brung up in the north of England. I still remember a TV series called "aufedersein, pet" about a bunch of laborers from an area on the border of England and Scotland (Humberside?)where the accent is notoriously thick. We had to record the program every week so we could play it back several times so as not to miss any of the dialogue.
And we only lived about 60 miles away.
By the way, according to Webster's, there are more differences regionally in the British Isles than there are between contintents.
 ▲ Collapse
| | | | kmtext
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:28
English
+ ...
| The jury's out | Feb 13, 2008 |
I'm a native speaker of Scottish Gaelic and Scottish English. I have no trouble at all understanding what is being said in English throughout most of Scotland. However, I've spent quite a lot of time in northeast Scotland, mainly around Aberdeen and also down in Kirkcudbright (pron. Kircoobry for those who don't know) and have had problems understanding what's being said in both areas to the extent that I've needed to ask for translation! It was fine when people spoke English, (which people do o... See more I'm a native speaker of Scottish Gaelic and Scottish English. I have no trouble at all understanding what is being said in English throughout most of Scotland. However, I've spent quite a lot of time in northeast Scotland, mainly around Aberdeen and also down in Kirkcudbright (pron. Kircoobry for those who don't know) and have had problems understanding what's being said in both areas to the extent that I've needed to ask for translation! It was fine when people spoke English, (which people do out of politeness to visitors) but when they switched to Scots, I was lost.
Previous posters have used the lack of standardised spelling as an argument against Scots being classed as a language in its own right. Well, I'm sorry but that just doesn't wash. It doesn't have a standardised spelling because it's primarily an oral language. You only have to look at English texts from a few hundred years ago to quash that argument. For example, how many different spellings of his own name did Shakespeare use? If one person couldn't decide how he wanted to spell his own name, how can you expect thousands of people to agree on the way to spell a whole range of words overnight?
I'm not sure if it's a dialect of English or a related Germanic language, but given that the sentence structure, grammar and vocabulary are different from those of Scottish English, so I'm inclined to come down on the side of it being a separate language. It may be a dialect of English which has been heavily influenced by the Nordic languages or it could be a separate language in its own right. Who knows, there may even be relics of the Pictish language in there somewhere. I don't know. I'm not an expert, and even they can't agree on this subject. If you ever want to start an arguent in Scotland, this is as good a topic as religion, football or politics! ▲ Collapse
| | | | neilmac
Spain
Local time: 15:28
Spanish to English
+ ...
| "A Scotsman can be recognized by"... | Apr 26, 2008 |
his burberry bermudas and pasty pallor (AKA the pub suntan).
What, are there no ladies up there Mr. Abercrombie, or did you just never look under the kilts?
Ignorance is bliss:)
Lallans Scots (the language in which Burns wrote), a variant of the Scots word lawlands meaning the lowlands of Scotland, was also traditionally used to refer to the Scots language as a whole. More recent interpretations assume it refers to the dialects of south and central Scotland and Doric, a term o... See more his burberry bermudas and pasty pallor (AKA the pub suntan).
What, are there no ladies up there Mr. Abercrombie, or did you just never look under the kilts?
Ignorance is bliss:)
Lallans Scots (the language in which Burns wrote), a variant of the Scots word lawlands meaning the lowlands of Scotland, was also traditionally used to refer to the Scots language as a whole. More recent interpretations assume it refers to the dialects of south and central Scotland and Doric, a term once used to refer to Scots dialects in general, is now generally seen to refer to the Scots dialects of north east Scotland. Both Robert Burns and Robert Louis Stevenson used it to refer to the Scots language.
THIS WAS OVER A CENTURY AGO. It has nothing to do with what we Scots speak nowadays, which is simply Scottish English, similar to Scally, Yorky or Geordie, etc. and no more other-wordly than, for example, US or Australian English, with their own diversity of regionalisms,.
What the Polish friend was referring to in the modern context is no more than what is experienced by someone going from Madrid to Cadiz, for example. Regional variants ( I hesitate to use the term "dialect" to avoid crossing more swords than necessary) exist everywhere.
Now Gaelic is another story... and that's all I have to say on this!
[Edited at 2008-04-26 15:05] ▲ Collapse
| | |
|
|
|
neilmac
Spain
Local time: 15:28
Spanish to English
+ ...
| Note about The Scottish Parliament website | Apr 26, 2008 |
[quote]Richard Creech wrote:
"The Scotish parliament's website is available in Scots...
Scots: "We want tae mak siccar that as mony folk as can is able tae find oot aboot whit the Scottish Pairlament dis and whit wey it warks."
This is in fact what is widely known as "Oor Wullie" or "DC Thomson" Scots. Often confused with "teuchter".
Some folk might talk in a similar fashion, but to transcribe/invent a quasi-phonetic othography and hang it on the "official" website is quite simply absurd. Comparable to "ebonics" in USA.
Anyone interested in taxing their English language comprehension faculties should try the BBC TV comedy series "Absolutely", "Rab C Nesbit" or "Still Game", all available online...
| | | | Jessie LN
United Kingdom
Local time: 14:28
Spanish to English
+ ...
| | Scots: the vernacular language of Scotland | Sep 24, 2008 |
Hi there:
I've just come across these postings, even that they're from two years ago. I hope someone out there finds it too and keeps on commenting, as the topic is very interesting and could be discussed endlessly.
I am only asking for a little rigour when speaking about certain matters, because we are all language professionals and there are certain basic facts that we should all know and, above all, we should all show respect when making judgements on languages / c... See more Hi there:
I've just come across these postings, even that they're from two years ago. I hope someone out there finds it too and keeps on commenting, as the topic is very interesting and could be discussed endlessly.
I am only asking for a little rigour when speaking about certain matters, because we are all language professionals and there are certain basic facts that we should all know and, above all, we should all show respect when making judgements on languages / cultures, especially when they're not out own. Please be a little sensitive!
Instead of answering directly one of the original questions in this forum about the Scottish language (what is it? a language? a dialect? bad English?) I'm going to remind you all of that linguistics class that you didn't attend in uni - maybe you were off sick that day:
Every language is made up of some/several/many dialects. A dialect is not a self-standing thing that is just inferior to a language. A dialect is a GEOGRAPHICAL VARIETY of a language. There are other varieties within a language: social varieties, register varieties (diatypes), etc. All these varieties can be combined and, together, they make up what we call "a language". What some people mean, when calling something "a language" is in fact "the standard variety" of that language: the standard geographical variety, the standard register variety and the standard social variety. Each language generally has one standard variety, depending on its historical and political evolution. Sometimes, there is more than one standard. This is the case of English: within Britain, the standard English is that of a certain part of England (not Scottish, Welsh, Northern Irish, for example) but within the U.S., which also speaks English, the standard is taken from a certain variety (and other varieties of American English are subordinated to the standard).
Strictly speaking, what we call "English" is not so, but "English English" (English from England), as opposed to "Scottish English", "Irish English", "American English", etc. But we tend to simplify by calling "English English" just "English". But that doesn't mean that the other varieties are inferior. They all belong, EQUALLY, to the same language, labelled "English". The same happens with many other languages, such as French and Spanish.
After centuries of evolution of a language, especially when spread around the world and finding other languages (commonly, with different roots), new languages are born. This doesn't happen overnight, obviously. But meanwhile, the "differences" arising from this reality are just new, non-standard, varieties of a same language, and they are not inferior or "a bad version" of the standard variety.
And in fact it is funny, because Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Catalan, etc., they were all "bad Latin" in the beginning, and after several centuries, we are now discussing whether Andalusian Spanish is "bad Spanish", whether Brazilian Portuguese is "bad Portuguese" and so on.
And, just in case someone is wondering, one of the key factors in "converting" a "bad version of a language" into "a language" is STANDARDISATION. This is a complicated process, that involves time, social and political factors. In Catalonia, for example, Catalan was standardised. In Scotland, however, there has been some attempts to standardise Scots but it hasn't quite been successful (despite the great efforts of the Scottish poets of the Renaissance and, today, some writers and University lecturers at Univ. of Glasgow, etc.). So, even that there is quite a solid base for standardising Scots (basically: written and coherent rules to put spoken Scots into writing), this has not been completely fulfilled, as it has been in the case of Catalan. And, because of this, Lallan Scots is often seen by ignorants as something "inferior" or "a bad version of English".
In short, SCOTS IS THE VERNACULAR LANGUAGE OF SCOTLAND. They don't need to try to sound "English" or anything. Scots was there first, and they were there first. You may not read it in many books (even that there are books and poems written in Scots) but it is the language of people there, the one that is spoken everyday and everywhere, and we owe it as much respect as any other language or variety.
As someone suggested, there are dictionaries of Scots and some very interesting and thorough research works, as well as a very rich literary tradition in the Scots language. Some of the best references are:
- http://www.scots-online.org/dictionary/engscots.htm
- http://www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/
- Slang Scots: http://www.firstfoot.com/php/glossary/phpglossar_0.8/index.php
- Scottish Grammar (you really thought it was only down to a weird pronunciation? no! they have their own grammar, vocabulary, syntax...:
http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/sse.htm ▲ Collapse
| | | | Henk Peelen
Netherlands
Local time: 15:28
Member (2002)
German to Dutch
+ ...
SITE LOCALIZER | aye, pinkie, kirk | Oct 22, 2008 |
Kim Metzger wrote: ... Some examples (Bähr, 1974: 138; Crystal, 1988: 219; Ohff, 1992: 152-155): Scottish English Standard English aye yes janitor caretaker loch lake wee small wheesht be quiet pinkie little finger mind remember dram drink (of whisky) bonnie good, nice, beautiful kirk church stook plaster Special attention should be paid to the mentioned word loch. It is pronounced , thus with a sound that an Englishman thinks uneasy to pronounce. This sound occurs in words like technical, technique as well (Abercrombie, 1979: 71). There are other phonological habits particular to Scottish English, stemming from Scots. Scotsmen do not distinguish between and , they always say. The StE diphthongs are monophthongised, r tends to be kept in all places and rolled (maintaining vowel contrasts the r-coloured vowels of English have dropped; Aitken, 1979: 101), the sound of w is kept apart from that of wh, the latter being voiceless. There are distinctions in vowel length StE does not know: agreed [ ] is different from greed [ ], brewed with the long vowel from brood with a short one, tied [ ] distinguished from tide [ ] (Aitken, 1979: 101). Besides, a Scotsman can be recognized by his intonation pattern. In many situations, this intonation pattern will be the only reminder of the Scottish descendance of the speaker, e.g. in the media. http://www.linguist.de/reese/English/scotland.htm
Scottish has a lot in common with Dutch and, to a lesser degree, German. Not surprising, because Scottoish is less influenced by the Saxon "versus" French influences that created English, let's say thousnaf years ago. 2000 years ago English didn't exist and on the continent a language "Proto-Germanic" was supposed to be spoken. "Supposed to be" because untfortunately it wasn't written down. Probably Dutch, the low-German dialects and Fries are the most direct descendants of it, whereas German Nad English have a little bit more changed, due to teh second German sound shift respectively the mixing up with French and (a) Celtic language(s). So, Scottish less influenced by "London" somstimes looks a lot like Dutch and German.
Scottish.........Dutch........German
aye................ja..............ja
pinkie.............pink
kirk.................kerk..........Kirche
Two important distinctions between Dutch and German compared toe English and Fries are:
g (X-sound like in loch) to y, w, k
k ("hard" voiceless one) to tsj
German........Dutch..........Fries.........English
Weg.............weg............wei...........way
Gelb.............geel.............................yellow
Küche...........keuken........................kitchen
Kirche...........kerk............tsjerke......church
Käse.............kaas...........tsjiis..........cheese
The voiceless k, which in my opinion doesn't sound well within the English language and the rolling r also in Dutch are very common.
I won't be surprised if Scottish stook was akin to German Stück and Dutch stuk, meaning piece, that is a piece of textile or so to cover a wound. Just a hypothesis.
Bonnie, on the other hand, must be of French origin. No wonder, Scotland had an extra French impuls around 1800.
The distinction between w and wh also is logical from Dutch perspective. Compared to Dutch, German has a lot of h's; just compare meer and mehr (more), whereas English has much more of them. A sentence consisting of "Germanic" English words sounds, especially in American English, sometimes sounds like a lot of h's glued together by vowels.
Actually, all Germanic languages ain't bad spoken variants of each other nor dialects of each other, but simply seperate developments of the (?) unfortunately unknown Germanic language, hence called Proto-Germanic.
| | | | | Pages in topic: < [1 2 3 4] | To report site rules violations or get help, contact a site moderator: You can also contact site staff by submitting a support request » What language do they speak in Scotland? | CafeTran Espresso | You've never met a CAT tool this clever!
Translate faster & easier, using a sophisticated CAT tool built by a translator / developer.
Accept jobs from clients who use Trados, MemoQ, Wordfast & major CAT tools.
Download and start using CafeTran Espresso -- for free
Buy now! » |
| | Wordfast Pro | Translation Memory Software for Any Platform
Exclusive discount for ProZ.com users!
Save over 13% when purchasing Wordfast Pro through ProZ.com. Wordfast is the world's #1 provider of platform-independent Translation Memory software. Consistently ranked the most user-friendly and highest value
Buy now! » |
|
| | | | X Sign in to your ProZ.com account... | | | | | |
Login to reply/comment 
