From: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Subject: Re: Accent and Dialect, the politics there
Reply-To: anw@maths.nott.ac.uk (Dr A. N. Walker)
Organization: Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
Date: Fri, 20 Nov 1992 18:38:08 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.144846.15747@gssec.bt.co.uk> cwilson@gssec.bt.co.uk
(Colin Wilson) writes:

>[...]

	Others have responded adequately to much of Colin's article.  I'd
just like to make my own position a little clearer to him.  I neither know
nor pretend to know whether, by some definition or another, Scots is a
separate language, or a collection of dialects, or part of modern English,
or a more-or-less distant cousin.  All I am claiming is that lists of words
that Colin knows and I don't [or vice versa] prove nothing, as very similar
lists can be, and have been, given for all sorts of pairs of languages *and*
pairs of dialects.  Nor does the existence of a literature prove anything,
because of the very different cultural backgrounds in which various dialects
or languages have flourished or languished over the past few hundred years.

	What's more, I don't think it matters, *operationally*, whether
Scots is a separate language from English or not.  If some committee sits
and delivers some weighty judgement -- what difference will it make to
the way *you* speak, the way *I* speak, or the way we communicate?  I
suggest none at all.  It *may* make a difference to the way Scots is
handled in schools, or to the awareness among non-Scots of the existence
of a distinctive Scottish way of speech;  but those are political matters
that could just as well be handled by parental pressure groups, or by
advertising campaigns, or in various other ways.  For all I know, there
may already be pressures in Yorkshire schools for the children to be taught
more about their linguistic heritage, about the differences between their
natural speech and BBC English, and so on.  I don't see that Scots is
different in principle, *except* that the language issue can more easily
tag on to a general nationalistic fervour -- politics again, not logic.

>Let's see then: if the dialects of Scotland and those of England
>(including standard English) really are all dialects of one language,
>then it follows from this that the name "English" is a misnomer, as the
>language belongs equally to Scotland and England, having an equally long
>history in both nations.

	It also has a long history in Australia, New Zealand, Canada,
the USofA, Jamaica, India, ....  Some of the English used elsewhere in
the world diverges even more from BBC English than does Scots.  We're
stuck with the name English, no matter how inappropriate it may be to
describe the totality of English-like modes of speech and writing.

>	    In regarding our national language as Scots, my and other
>Scots' position is no more and no less political than English people's
>in regarding theirs as English.

	What the Scots choose to call their own national language is a
matter for the Scots.  But if that language is what the rest of the world
calls English, and if the Americans and the Canadians and the Jamaicans,
and so on, are happy to call their versions English, then calling it Scots
is more political than logical.

	I'm *not* saying you shouldn't do it.  Go ahead, provided that
enough of your compatriots agree with you.  But recognise that it's a
political decision, based on sentiment, national pride and other emotions
[which I do not in any way denigrate or despise], and don't claim that
it's based on some words that I don't understand and some books that I
would find hard to read.

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk
Newsgroups: uk.net,soc.culture.british,news.groups