There is no evidence whatsoever that regional dialects are being replaced by an “international” dialect. They are in fact continuing to diverge. Once again I plead for everyone interested in this subject to read Trudgill and Bauer’s Language Myths.
Scots Gaelic vs. Scots - I have a smattering of both. They are definitely different languages, from different language familes. Scotish Gaelic is, of course, a Gaelic language with the grammer, word order, and other characteristics unique (or nearly so) to that language family. Scots is clearly in the Germanic family of languages and closely related to English in vocabulary, grammar, word order, etc.
Dialect vs. language - Depends on how you define them. Spoken Scots would not be intelligible to the average North American English speaker on first hearing (or second… or third…). With repetition and familiarity, though, it becomes understandable without having to exert the effort to learn another language such as, say, French… or Gaelic. From my viewpoint, it was about as difficult to learn to understand as Chaucerian English, which I’d consider a dialect, not a separate language. My opinion is that Scots is a English dialect further along to being a separate language than most English dialects.
Totally my opinion - Aside from the lesser effect of vowel shifts on Scots vs. the rest of the English world, I’d say part of the reason it sounds more “German” than standard English varieties is that it seems to have much less influence from French. Fewer words of French origin, in particular. I don’t think there is that much influence from Gaelic on Scots. (I know that Irish Gaelic has absorbed a lot of English words, and not vice-versa).
A quick question - some years ago I caught a few episodes of Hamish MacBeth, starring Robert Carlyle. I found myself listening very hard to understand what was being said, but sometimes just couldn’t quite figure it out. (Neither could the Australian woman watching with me, so I didn’t feel like a complete idiot.) Does anyone know if the dialogue for that show was more Scots or Scots Gaelic-flavored?
And I maintain that it is impossible for someone to be exposed to, know and understand another’s dialect, as is increasingly the case, and it not impact on their own in some way.
But I guess that’s a debate. 
Broomstick writes:
> Scots Gaelic vs. Scots - I have a smattering of both. They are definitely
> different languages, from different language familes. Scotish Gaelic is, of
> course, a Gaelic language with the grammer, word order, and other
> characteristics unique (or nearly so) to that language family. Scots is clearly in
> the Germanic family of languages and closely related to English in vocabulary,
> grammar, word order, etc.
Nitpick: Indo-European is a language family. Celtic and Germanic are subfamilies of Indo-European. Scots Gaelic and Scots are thus from different subfamilies, not from different families.
As somebody pointed out the last time a question like this was raised (IIRC with relation to Scots), there is no real dividing line between “separate language” and dialect, other than mutual unintelligibility – and that classification criterion would group together a large number of tongues that have always been recognized as separate languages.
The origin of Scots is from the speech of the northern Northumbrian Angles; it became the national language of the Kingdom of Scotland centered in Edinburgh, had its own grammar and literature right down to 1603, when James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne as James I of England, and united his two kingdoms under a single crown. During the vast majority of this period it was very heavily imfluenced by the language spoken in the larger and more populous southern kingdom, which evolved into modern English.
Under the criterion that permits Belgians to consider Flemish a distinct language from Dutch (and both Flemish and Dutch as distinct from Plattdeutsch), or Ukrainian as distinct from Great Russian, it’s only fair to regard it as a separate language evolving parallel with and strongly influenced by English, not as “merely a dialectal form of English.” However, on the mutual-intelligibility scale, it’s quite possible for a speaker of Scots at any point in history to make himself understood, without “speaking a foreign language,” with a speaker of the English of the time, and vice versa.
Actually, I think it’s a separate argument completely.
Thanks for such an interesting thread. Gosh, you guys sure are smart!
I have a Scottish friend and I love the way she says the word “murder”. My God, it just sounds so…murderous.
Hello, just a (rather belated) quick bit of input here. You?ve had some good answers here, as, of course, one would expect. (Oh, I love SDMB!) My connection cannot be trusted to let me post anything very well-thought-out just now, but a couple of remarks anyway.
Now, there was a mention of ?Hamish McBeth", earlier? Robert Carlyle?s speech, as I recall, would have been more Scots influenced than Gaelic, though other accents in the programme were, if I recall, more influenced by accents of the north of Scotland. Haha - it?s a bit hard to remember properly, as I did not see it often and, being from Glasgow, with family from other areas - well it sounded clear to me (cute, if sad, mental picture of you and the Aussie friend suffering confusion!)
Hmm - I’d imagine that you might have encountered the film “Trainspotting”? In terms of regional differences, I can tell you there were words in the book that I had not previously encountered, they being purely of the greater Edinburgh area - really!
Leaving aside Burns and earlier writers, it would probably amuse you to look at the twentieth century poetry of Hugh McDiarmid, and the novels of Lewis Grassic Gibbon, but only if you could stand thingsmuch more tricky to understand than ?Hamish McBeth?!
http://www.scotland.com message boards have a Language Forum, and there are a few knowledgeable people there.
http://firstfoot.com is a Scottish site mostly written, in a light-hearted vein in a sort of modern colloquial Scots, rather than Lallans really, but they are some very smart people and may help.
Gaelic and Scots from Rampant Scotland Directory (Never mind that the page name says ?Gaelic? - that is merely the page name - it is really about Language/Scots/Gaelic, and in fact the main site there is very good.
Afterthought - was there a mention of there being not muchabsobed fromFrench into Scots earlier? I think so. Well it occurs to men that, oddly enough, quite a few were, as there were times when , ahem, Scotland on on better tersm with France than with England. Examples first comign to mind would be “ashet” for a type of plate, and - um, we used a “Scottish” word in my childhood, “footer” in the sense of a parent saying to a child “stop footering aboot” - “Stop messing around” Remind anyone of the French word “foutre”, at all? THere aremore, but not that are at the top of my mind right now.
Ah well, sorry, this is all a bit random, and may not add much, so I must hit send while the internet gods are with me.
This site contains songs and poetry in Scots. It is odd to understand one sentence completly, and then not one word in the next…
There are some words that look more Scandinavian than English, e.g. “yurn” (the Earth) and “min” (but), but all in all, to me it looks more English than Scandinavian.
A song from the link I posted:
He has put his Bible in his “pooch” (pouch?–the little purse they wear around their waist?), a wasp crawls up his leg and he is glad he wore his “nicky tams”, underware?
I am a midwesterner now living on the East Coast. It seems the Maine accent comes from Scots roots? One little story I like…When we moved out here my son-in-law worked for a landscape company. One day one of his co-workers asked him if he’d go and get him a “buc-a-thah lume”. My son-in-law finally laughed and told him that beyond “bucket of” he was going to have to spell it. It was L O A M. That is the way they say it out here. Even if their heritage is English, they say “lume”. Which sounds very Scottish to me…
Well up here in the North East, I’ve actually experienced some Lallands from fellow students.
I also know somoene from who thickens his accent on purpose and adds in Lallands if there are people he doesn’t care for around.
Doric, however, seems hard to come by here in town and I had to ask someone to hear it.
Gaelic (Gah-lick, as it seems to be pronounced) I have studied, and it’s quite a bit different.
If you want a good selection of Scottish writing (some more readable than others) try ‘Smokey Smir O’ Rain’ put out by Itchy Coo Press. It’s got everything from Burns and Mary, Queen of Scots to Tom Leonard and Liz Lochead.
AL
Grrrr! - o de’il tak this complete lack of “quote” button!
miss smartypants “Pooch” = “pocket”. The other thing around the waist that you are perhaps thing of is a sporran.
“Nicky tams” = little bits of string/whatever, tied around one’s trousers just below the knee, to keep them out of the worst of the mud/cowshit, etc. I really cannot think what is the name in “English” just now. Heheh - now there is another word - one from the area where, I think, Ana Livia currently lives ] - “sharn” … sort of, well, you know, the mess and mud and excreta in a muddy cowfeld, (mainly the faeces though.)
Ana Livia - a useless remark here, but when you mentioned Liz Lochead, I thought I’d say that she taught at my school, when I was a young Celyn. Sadly, she was a teacher of Art, not “English”, but we did get to hear her read some of her poems on occasions when, unfortunately for her, of course, another teacher was ill, and some other teacher had to be drafted in to the class, even if of a different subject, simply to supervise. Ah, the nostalgia! (Later, of course, I did deliberately read some of her work, and go to hear her read it)
Hmm - re. nicky tams - there is a song of that name - perhaps I shall post it later, or?? (I would not want to be too boriung for everyone.)
Oh, and as I expect Glas Onion knows anyway, I stole my screen name from Welsh, so it is neither Gaelic nor Lallans: I mention this merely lest it lead to confusion.
Is that also what keeps the weasels from escaping when “wiggle-pantsing”?
G. MacGregor, in The Bible In The Making(1961), notes:
It has been noted that Murdoch Nisbet did a translation of Wyclif into Scots about the year 1520. In Reformation times, ‘Scottis’ (Scots) was in general use in the Lowlands where Gaelic was not spoken; but ‘Southeroun’ (English) was becoming fashionable. John Knox, for instance, who had spent five years in England, anglicized his speech. Not only did his compatriots generally disapprove of this, however; they were generally unable to use ‘Southeroun’. Ninian Winzet,for example, chided Knox in a letter dated October 27, 1563,for having forgotten ‘our auld plane Scottis’ and warned Knox that in future he might have to write him in Latin, for, he reminded him, ‘I am nocht acquyntit with zour Southeroun.’ Winzet, in quoting Scripture, renders it into ‘Scottis’. For instance:
Geneva Bible: Ye haue alwayes resisted the holie Gost.
Winzet: Ze haif ay gainstand the Haly spirit.
This is the language Knox himself used, of course, in his earlier days. But though an Act of 1543 had made it lawful to possess the Scriptures in ‘Scottis’ or English, no complete translation of them into the former was made then or later.
In the nineteenth century, however, there were attempts at rendering the Authorized Version into current Lowland Scots. In I862, for instance, such a version of the Gospel according to St Matthew was published; but it had little merit and represented merely a vulgar local dialect rather than anything like the ‘auld plane Scottis’ to which Winzet had referred in his rebuke to Knox. In 1871, Dr Waddell published a version of the Psalms in Scots-a rhythmical paraphrase of which the following is an example:
For mysel in his howff he sal hap,
i’ the day o’ dule an’ dree;
He sal bier me ben i’ his biggin then;
on a craig he sal set me hie.
Psalm xxvii. 5. The Authorised Version has: ‘For in the time of trouble he shall hide me in his pavilion: in the secret of his tabernacle shall he hide me; he shall set me upon a rock.’
William Wye Smith made a loose rendering of the New Testament into a Scottish dialect, the last edition of which was published by Alexander Gardner of Paisley in 1904. The following example will show its character…
Matthew vi.26-30. ‘Look ye to the wee birdies i’ the lift; for they naither saw nor shear, nor lead intil the barn; and yet yere Heevenlie Faither gies them meat. Are-ye-na-a hantle better nor they? And what amang ye, be he nevir sae fain, could mak his set a span heigher? And anent deedin; why soud ye hae sae muckle calk and care? Look wee! at the lilies 0’ the lea, hoo they growe; they toil-na, nor spin; And yet say I, that Solomon in a’ his glorie was-na bus kit braw like ane o’ thae! Noo than, gin God sae deed the foggage (the day on the lea, and the morn brunt i’ the oven), hoo muckle mair you, O ye o’ the sma’ faith!’
Authorised Version:-
Behold the fowls of the air: for they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they? Which of you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature? And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin. And yet I say unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which to day is, and to morrow is cast into the oven, [shall he] not much more [clothe] you, O ye of little faith?
Yet another major language of Scotland was Welsh. The Mabinogion was probably written in Strathclyde. French is also probably worthy of mention - it was a court language in Scotland long after it stopped being such in England.
Which, just for the sake of thoroughness - “sporran” is actually Gaelic for “purse” (well, there’s the issue that “purse” is usually worn by women alone in English speaking lands, but that’s the closest equivalent. “Bag to put my stuff in” being a little awkward in conversation, I guess.)
“Garters”
How is it that the small island of Man has its own language? Is it substantially different from Irish gaelic? Is it still spoken?
It’s extinct, which means there are no native speakers left (IIRC the last one died in the 1920s). Laws are still announced in both Manx and English. As far as I’m aware, it’s related to the other Celtic languages (Irish, Cornish, Breton etc), but as distinct as any of them. It’s hardly surprising that the island developed its own language - crossing the Irish sea by sailboat would hardly be a journey anyone would have embarked on lightly.