Re: Branch of English or a Separate Language?

From: Raymond S. Wise (mplsrayNOSPAM_at_gbronline.com)
Date: 09/27/04 

Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 17:43:23 -0500

"Love a Sheep" <sheepshaggerx@yahoo.co.uk> wrote in message
news:264c4ea4.0409271343.7c257f28@posting.google.com...
> Evan Kirshenbaum <kirshenbaum@hpl.hp.com> wrote in message
news:<k6v281hx.fsf@hpl.hp.com>...
> > >
> > That's the longest modern text I've ever seen in Scots, and it was
> > surprisingly readable to this English speaker. Are there any native
> > speakers here who can say whether it's the normal way they'd say it or
> > whether it was an especially "English-friendly" wording?
> >
> >
> In Scotland there are (like *ngland) so many different accents. In
> sheep country (Aberdeen) where myself and country loon are best
> buddies you hear a dialect known as Doric spoken which is nuffink like
> what you see on that web page on the Scots parliament. I don't know
> anybody in central Scotland that speaks like that either. Maybe in
> Burns time they spoke like that in Ayreshire. Trouble is they have
> stereotyped Scots into a 'language'. Well it may be a language (I am
> no linguist) but if it is then it is several and not just one.

There's another possibility: Those several things you think of as
"languages" (on the condition that "Scots is a language") could be dialects
of the Scots language. If Scots is not a language, then those dialects would
instead be dialects of English. 

-- 
Raymond S. Wise
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
E-mail: mplsray @ yahoo . com

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