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: Wed, 18 Nov 1992 17:49:03 GMT

In article <1992Nov17.161325.6086@gssec.bt.co.uk>
cwilson@gssec.bt.co.uk (Colin Wilson) writes:
>	I don't include [as bad examples], though, the ones that you say
>would be recognised (but not used) by speakers of English: that simply
>shows that they are Scots words known to English-speakers,

	But that begs the question!  *If* Scots is a separate language,
*then* its distinctive words are Scots words that *may* be understood
(as foreign words) by speakers of English;  if, on the other hand, Scots
is "just" a dialect, then its distinctive words are words of English.
Bannock happens to be a "burn";  had it been situated in Nottinghamshire
it might well have been Bannock Dumble [I kid you not].  "Dumble" is thus
a perfectly good English word, even though I expect few readers of this
group to have known this;  to argue that "burn" [stream] isn't is making
a political statement [which is not to imply that the statement is false].
Every region of the UK has words for local topography, flora and fauna,
parts of the body, etc., derived from many sources.

>		   some of the words that I mentioned are used in
>Lincolnshire, but the fact remains that in English these words are not
>part of the literary language, whereas in Scots they are.

	Again, this begs the question.  Most English writers try to
write "standard" English, with dialect confined to attempts to locate
particular characters as being Lincolnshire, Cockney, Cornish, Welsh,
or whatever.  *Most* Scots writers do the same;  a *few* make the
attempt to write a whole book in Scots, just as we occasionally see
whole books in Yorkshire [or whatever] dialect.  There are historical
reasons why books in English regional dialects are usually of risible
quality, but the principle is the same.

>							   Scots
>(however it might be categorised) is used by a sizeable proportion of
>the population of Scotland.

	Of course.  But millions of UK citizens speak Yorkshire dialect,
millions more speak Lancashire, etc., not to mention Scouse and Geordie
(for which the case is at least as good as for Scots).

>								    I
>can hardly see how running words of standard English together ("Gerrup"
>-> "get up, "elsal" -> "else I will", etc.), or simply varying
>spellings ("pleez" -> "please") which are the principal characteristics
>of the examples you give, can be seen in the same light as the
>characteristics that distinguish Scots from English.

	The examples I gave were from a "humorous" newspaper clipping.
Nevertheless, there are characteristics of Nottinghamese that are as
distinctive as Scots.  If you're allowed "lug", I claim "tab" [ear];
for "burn", I claim "dumble" [stream];  for "lum" [chimney] I claim
"causie" [pavement] or "gate" [street].  "Ee akst if we gorn av us
dinnas" is no more standard English if I strip the "humour" and the
pronunciation and re-write it as "He aksed if we going have us dinners".
Just as Scots was drilled out of Scottish youngsters, just so the
local schools drilled "aks" for "ask" out of us [it, and "us" for "our",
and the elision of "were" and "to" were just "lazy speech"], and it was
*much* later that I found out that it was simply a different (but
obviously cognate) word [*vide* a discussion on "sci.lang" a few months
ago that ranged to "waps" and other similar words].

	[All I'm really saying out of all this is that *every* region
of the UK, let alone other English-speaking parts of the world, has
its own dialect, with its own special vocabulary, syntax, sound, etc.;
some of these are admittedly more acceptable in "literature" than others;
some are less comprehensible to outsiders than others;  and the point
at which a dialect becomes a separate language is purely political.]

-- 
Andy Walker, Maths Dept., Nott'm Univ., UK.
anw@maths.nott.ac.uk