From: ag129@cus.cam.ac.uk (Alasdair Grant)
Subject: Re: Accent and Dialect, the politics there
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Thu, 19 Nov 1992 21:53:37 GMT

In article <1992Nov19.144846.15747@gssec.bt.co.uk> cwilson@gssec.bt.co.uk (Colin Wilson) writes:
>whatever Scots is it cannot be _a_ dialect, as the various regions of
>eastern and southern Scotland have a variety of Scots dialects. These
>_cannot_ be bracketed with the regional dialects of England, for reasons
>which I have stated before, but which I will repeat. They include:
>
>(i)  the fact that Scots was once the official spoken and written language
>     of state, with a standard form based on the speech of the capital;

I don't see that this means anything.  You (or someone else) have claimed
that RP English is 'just another dialect'; why then can the version of Scots
used for literature not also be just another dialect?

>(ii) the linguistic hiatus at the border between Scotland and England,
>     whose effect is that the speech of the inhabitants of Coldstream
>     in Roxburghshire has more in common with that of their compatriots
>     in Wick, hundreds of miles away, than with that of their
>     neighbours in Cornhill-on-Tweed, Northumberland, which is less
>     than a mile away.

Surely that is something to do with the fact that Scotland has its own
education system?  I.e. that teachers teaching in Roxburgh will tend to
come from Edinburgh while those in Northumbria will tend to come from
Newcastle?

>Again, you are making the same mistake of seeing Scotland as a
>locality, in the same way as London or Lincolnshire. A writer who
>writes in Scots is using a national language, appropriate (for the
>purpose of fiction) to a character from any region or nation. For
>instance, in a novel with the action set in Russia, it would be as
>appropriate for the dialogue to be in Scots as in English, German, or

If Scots were a language in its own right, this _would_ be appropriate,
and people would have done it.  Since they manifestly have not (other than
when the characters are Scottish, in which case the same arguments apply
as for Geordie, Cockney etc.) I think you've disproved your own claim.

>French. Of course, it is also possible for a writer of Scots to use
>local dialect to locate characters to particular areas of Scotland.

But this can be done for any large area, e.g. 'the North', 'the West Country',
'the Midlands' etc.; sometimes these areas are treated as units, and
sometimes they are broken down further.

>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.

Yes, it does belong equally to Scotland and England, but I'd hardly call
it a misnomer, any more than England ('Angles land') is.  Or even Scotland -
Shetlanders don't regard themselves as Scots (plural, not adjective), but
as Norsemen.  (Hence 'Norman' Lamont, everyone's favourite Shetlander.)

I quote from Lynch's "Scotland - a new history" (emphasis mine)

 "Gaelic, which had formerly been 'Scottish speech', was overtaken by
  _a brand of English_, which had been called 'Teutonic speech' and now
  became known as 'Scots'. It fast became the language of the court
  and government and Lowland society."

 "It was the Lowland perception of Gaelic rather than the extent of its
  usage which was changing: by 1450 Lowlanders were calling it Erse rather
  than Scotice. They termed their own speech _'Inglis'_; by 1500 they called
  it 'Scottis'."
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