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Language?!?! What's that?!?!
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
in General Chat
Ok, been thinking about this for a bit now.
Posters in poster land, I am going to be asking your opinion on language (again, I know...) but about a few things really to do with social aspects of language, particularly Scots (since I'm a Scot), but other dialects/accents are open for discussion.
Do you see Scots as a dialect (like Yorkshire, Cockney, Liverpudlian etc) or as a language (like German, Spanish etc), or something else? What about different varieties of Scots, Urban Scots, etc? What are your reasons for doing so? Are your perceptions of people altered in any way when you speak to someone who has a strong regional accent such as Cockney or Scots? Does accent/dialect carry any other social information for you?
Discuss
Posters in poster land, I am going to be asking your opinion on language (again, I know...) but about a few things really to do with social aspects of language, particularly Scots (since I'm a Scot), but other dialects/accents are open for discussion.
Do you see Scots as a dialect (like Yorkshire, Cockney, Liverpudlian etc) or as a language (like German, Spanish etc), or something else? What about different varieties of Scots, Urban Scots, etc? What are your reasons for doing so? Are your perceptions of people altered in any way when you speak to someone who has a strong regional accent such as Cockney or Scots? Does accent/dialect carry any other social information for you?
Discuss
0
Comments
I dont alter my views about anyone by the way they speak. I talk weird and i hope people dont think differently of me when i open me mouth!
xxx
Ae weet forenicht i' the yow trummle
I saw yon antrin thing
A watergaw wi' its chiterin licht
Ayont the on-ding;
An I thocht o' the last wild look ye gied
Afore ye deed.
Which is in Scots (lallans), so it should be understandable, would you still say it's a dialect? Consider that Scots has a massive literary body, both historical and modern literature (a thing other dialects don't have), and has a massive population who speak some form of Scots, would you still say its a dialect. Based on these things alone, I would say it's a language.
I know I might have been able to argue my point better, but I'm just not in the mood for a heated debate or whatever...
C'mon goddammit! That's what this whole post was about, to get people thinking and debating again! Too many random, useless threads about! Anyway, separate languages ye say? Ok, Norwegian and Danish are two separate languages, with two separate nations, but the two languages they speak are virtually identical. Same with Scots. One reason that Scots doesn't have recognised status as a language is because of the political situation in the UK. Bah! And Scots (not Scottish standard english) does have its own grammar and stuff, some is the same as English, but not all. But English has similar grammar to french, some german, dutch, etc.
what happened though was various people (The English, the Dutch etc) marched into the regions and stopped the people there from speaking their own language. In Wales this happened not so long ago..Post-Viking anyway.
Kids were not allowed to speak Welsh in school, Welsh books and Bibles were destroyed, towns were re-named.
Its only through the efforts of the Welsh language society and some politicians that we even have dual sinage, for a long time we didn't.
The easiest way to fuch a ciountry up is to destroy its language and culture which is what English people did to Wales Ireland and Scotland.
I AM English by the way...but I still think it stinks!
Hence the Cockney, Liverpudllian, Welsh, Irish, and the Glasgow banter. lmao. We are all interconnected now since we merge more than before, but Scotch in itself has just fallen away from it's roots to an extent. For example, take Spain, since it has been dominated by British Culture, the majority of it's land is overrun by UK holiday makers, and has became more English than ever.. It's just timing making change on something that once was.
...methinks someone's had a recent assignment..
No it's not, and this is a common misconception. Scots (like Glaswegian) originates from a dialect of Old English (northumbrian dialect) and developed from there. That's why it is different. Scots has picked up some vocabulary from Gaelic like ceilidh, scian dhu etc. Scots has had more influence from England due to the union of the crown/parliamant, and the continual English appearance in Scotland.
Scotch?!? That's the drink!!! See this is the thing. I believe Scots is a language, but it will never achieve this status until Scots start to believe that what they speak isn't a dialect of English. By accepting that we're saying our 'language' doesn't deserve thae label of language, and that we should be content just using English. If people in Scotland don't get their finger out, before you know it we'll all be speaking English...
And you would be right