THE SCOTTISH TONGUE.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 216, 16 October 1914, Page 6

THE SCOTTISH TONGUE.

A DISSERTATION ON DIALECT A dialect, in the popular idea is s distortion of the common speech, j degradation, in a sense, of the speed !of correct usage; but the idea ii i wrong, for a mixture of slang phrasei : and misused vowels might be termec ; a dialect if such were the case, anc ; the speech of a Whitechapel Londonei or a Surrey Hills Sydneyite are reallj I distortions of the common speech anc are certainly not dialects. Many peoph : —people who have not given a thoughl ; to the matter, of course—have an ides : that the speech of the Scottish .Low landers is merely the effort of a peoph more or less foreign to speak a language not familiar to them in everyday inter course, and that idea is also, wrong for the language of the Scots is a true dialect, not a system of" makeshifts compromises, and mispronunciations—not, in short, a sort of "pidgin" Eng lish. - ; What, is a Dialect? Then, what is a true dialect ? Tin answer is that a dialect is a natura development of speech * differing fron the common tongue because it has beei subject,to .other influences. In a brbac sense, English and Dutch are dialect! of the original "West Germanic tongue but in a stricter sense ■ a dialect is t form of speech characterised by loca peculiarities and actually in use in i , community, as a means of .expression \ but, differing from the standard of its '■ literary form —the spoken as distinci from the written speech. Yet that de finition leaves, something to be desired as most definitions do; it does ,ndj ' entirely. exclude Coekh'eyieius, and I though it emphasises a difference be j tween written and spoken speech,; < 1 ' J dialect may yet have a literature of - its | own. ■= A dialqet is not a degradec literary language, but, on the contrary a literary language is a refinement, oj a dialect. The English of the Midlands,'., ,i It is well known that there are manj dialects in England, all relics of. t j common Teutonic tongue infused witl elements of the .speech of the origina i and others. But -there is only one English language,, and that it the language in which the literature oi the race is written.. The developmenl of the English tongue from a iiumbei of languages, or relics of languages, is to a large extent due to a centralisa t'i'on made necessary by_ the influence of trade. The various tribes of'.the south and the north found a "Lingua [Franca "in the language of Middle England, where the first big trading j centres, grew up, and so it came aboul that Mid-Englisli became standard Eng [lish, the language of the trading classes i Despite the of the j languages of the Teutonic invaders—the [Angles, Saxons, and Danes—traces oi j the Roman and British speech survived I and were incorporated. The different [districts kept their peculiarities of [speech, but by the time of the "Norman j Conquest, a. common English .tongue, common, at all; events, to the more educated and influential elasses, was sufficiently rooted to resist the influence of Norman-French {itself a LatinTeutonic amalgam), even though it. was made the .official language. Scots Inglis. Yet, for a long while in the south the only written languages were Latin and Norman-French, the '' Saxon' ' was a speech confined to the commoners, though spoken by the conquerors of necessity. But in the north, where the Norman Conquest had little effect, the development of the English tongue progressed and became crystallised into form with the <>omirig of-written speech —the basis of the modern English language. The origins of English has i therefore a 'very real relation with j the Scottish dialect, since "broad Scots'' is nothing'; more than a form of old English. Right up to the beginning of the sixteenth century the Scots J called their language "Inglis." lii the eighth century Bede, the histoi'ian, and Caedmoiij the , poet, ; of, , whose writings only fragments survive, were writing "inglis," showing that the tongue had attained to some definition in forriVarid: construction; But it was in the eighth century also that the invasion, of-the Danes largely destroyed this unity of speech, and marked a decline in Anglican learning and literature in the south, ■though in northern England and the t southern Scottish countries the Anglican power aiid speech remained predominant. The Tongues of North and South. Books, written, in the north during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries survive to -show how the language developed, and though it is a ,comparatively slight modification of the earlier Inglis or Angelisc, it is quite different from the language of contemporary literature of the south, where' sother, more forceful, influences were affecting the original tongue. The Anglian language fh.eld' its own in the ?iiOrth despite the incursions of the Celtic, Gaelic-speaking Northern Scots, for "Inglis" was so widespread and important a vehicle of communication that the .invaders themselves .had to adopt it. The conquerors were assimilated, and the Celtic tongue continued to be the speech of only the less cultured Highland tribes. A Scottish writer of the fourteenth century tells of the people of the coast and lowlands speaking a Teutonic tongue, while the people of the- Highlands spoke Scottish-tongue. " Inglis," because of its use as the, popular language and in law, at length came to be spoken of. as the Scottish' language, while' the language.of the Highlands was styled Yrisch, or Ersch. ' " The Literature of the South. It is sc-en that "broad .Scots" -is distinctly Anglian in root, amV-'Svas once the "polite" language, the language of literature and law, but from this position it'declined in tlie v development of learning and power round such southern centres as London and Oxford. While "Inglis" was holding its own in the north, the same speech in the south was developing softer graces and a greater flexibility of expression, and with tlie rise of the universities, the spread of their-learning, and the growth of a comparatively rich, literature as'a direct result, there was a natural:'influencing' of the speech of the more educated Scots. -But i .-"'the greatest of all influences causing .the Scottish language to be superseded as * A Scots Dialect Dictionary, comprising the words in use from the latter part of the seventeenth century to the present day. Compiled by Alexander Warrack, MA. W. and K. Chambers, publishers, Edinburgh.

I a literary language and relegated to [ the position of a dialect were the Reformation and the English Renais--1 sanee. Thegreat wealth of Elizabethan I literature forced educated Seots to be- , come readers of the southern language, but a still greater influence was the ' English version of the Bible. The Scot--1 tish clergy failed to make a translation I in the popular tongue of Scotland,, and L the need was met.by the "King James" version. , The Decline of Literary Scots. The union of the kingdoms that came about with the accession of James the First to the -English Throne was ani other factor assisting in the decline ;. of the Scottish language —to .speak ? English ,wa's hot only necessary £6"'the . learned, but it was also a mark of gentility to others, and thit very human 1 desire for gentility has always beena s force. _ As English became the polite I. tongue "and Scots the speech of commoners, the tendency was for the gentry ' to send their sons to England for - education and to despise "broad Scots." This attitude went a long way towards destroying the purity of the more ancient language, ■since pronuncia- ' tions were modified and English words i. replaced original Scottish words; yet t the decline of the language was in no I sense a degradation of it—it w r > the supplanting of the older form of • the one language by a later, richer, .and more complex form. ! Dialectical Differences. ! There is more than one dialect in Scotland,: however, as there is more s than one, dialect in England, and their s difference is due more to pronunciation , than to difference in root words. The ! educated Scot pronounces, his- long ; vowel sounds with \more purity, than the ; Englishman, but he doesn't recognise the dipthong "oo" and he will retain' , the "e" sound of "i," as it is used : in old English, and the long "u" as in old English, which in modern English is. replaced; by the dipthong "ou" as in old English"mus," Scots "moose," modern English "mouse." There are plenty of other peculiarities -of pronunciation indicating, bqw, closely the -modern Scots approximates to old English; but these few examples suffice— Mr Warrack 's dictionary of Scots' dialect gives all the others, words too, for . .find" practically every.Seots dialect word in common use at the present day, but it is not a pronouncing dictionary, and the student -must have some idea-of pronunciation before he applies to it for anything other than the significance of the 1 words'-and. the-parts'-'of speech to which they belong. The Pitfall of Etymology. The dictionary has its value to the student now that dialects are rapidly declining in use, and the philologist will find it useful in its definition of the use of dialect words. -Except in the author's preface (and then only very slightly) there is no attempt to differentiate the various dialects, showing the predominant influences in their development, such as Saxon, Gaelic, and Scandinavian; as he explains in his preface, "A word which one knows as purely local or confined to one'part of the country, may'turn but' to be used in a different <or distant district unknown to him.-,;.; Besides, ..a. speaker or writer of what may be called his peculiar or county dialect who does not always find, 'perhaps, a local word' to express his meaning exactly, will fall back on the common, dialect of Scotland ifor a suitable word." And in explaining the absence df etymologies, he says: " They- are purposely left out. Dialect etymology is a dangerous and treacherous territory, to be entered on even by an expert philologist with fear and', trembling." But even without these iti-" tercsting and more or less speculative additions 'the-dictionary is.a.very useful contribution to 1 literature, though it is probable that it will be more highly valued in years to come than in the present, when the*dialect it deals with is etiir living as common speech, though now more of-a curiosity of- literature than a force. B. H.