From: cwilson@gssec.bt.co.uk (Colin Wilson)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Accent and Dialect, the politics there
Date: 16 Nov 92 13:51:46 GMT
Organization: BT

In article <27452@dog.ee.lbl.gov>, mike@fionn.lbl.gov (Michael Helm) writes:
|> 
|> This leads to a couple questions I would like to ask about Scots
|> English.  There appear to be several dialects of it.  But there
|> doesn't appear to be much in the way of national Scots -- is there
|> much radio & television programming in it?  Newspapers?  What I wonder
|> is, is there any evidence that one dialect is coming to the fore, or
|> that the dialects are picking up characteristics of other dialects?
|> The second question comes from earlier comments about mixing standard
|> English with Scots; would you say that Scots is gradually converging
|> on standard English?

The position with Scots in Scotland is that, in the official sense, it
does not exist except as the "flawed English" used by the uncouth and
uneducated.  Its use in radio and television reflects this, and the
limited amount that there is tends to be confined to comedy. 

One thing that it is necessary to understand, though, is that not all
Scots dialects are considered equally uncouth. The dialect of Glasgow,
which is actually the most anglified, is looked down on most. The
Aberdeenshire dialect is at the opposite end of the scale in both
senses, and is regarded as semi-respectable. The other areas of eastern
and southern Scotland have dialects somewhere in between, and the
northern isles (especially Shetland) have a dialect that is Scots with
a strong Norse flavour, that mainlanders often have difficulty
understanding.  The Shetland tongue is also regarded as
semi-respectable.

When Scots is used on the TV, it is almost always Glaswegian: it would
be very unusual (but not unknown) for Aberdeenshire Scots to be used.
It could be said that in that sense Glaswegian is coming to the fore,
but it is not regarded as any more respectable for it, because it is
used only for comedy or in serious material for the lines of unsavoury
characters.

Scots is not used for factual writing in the press. The "Sunday Post"
has cartoons in which the characters talk an anglified form of Scots -
again, it is used for comic effect - and the "Press & Journal" has a
weekly short humorous story, in which the dialogue (but not the
narrative) is in Aberdeenshire Scots. On the other hand, there is a
good amount of creative writing in Scots (some examples of which I have
already posted) and since the mid-eighties it has been possible to buy
the New Testament in Scots, but not as yet the entire Bible.

I am not aware that the various Scots dialects are being influenced by
one another. Instead, it is much more the case that all of them are
being influenced by English, both standard and non-standard. For
instance, all over Scotland you can hear people using the Essex Man
expression "Cheers!" instead of "Thank you". Apart from that, though, a
certain proportion of vocabulary is lost to each successive generation,
to be replaced by the equivalent in English. This has been accelerated
in recent years by the near-exclusive use of English on television, and
the effect of non Scots-speaking incomers. (Part of the reason why
Aberdeenshire Scots is so well preserved is that, until the oil boom of
the seventies, it was an area that saw very few incomers). The process
of erosion will only be halted by the language being given the status
it deserves in the media and the schools. 

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