UPDATE 25/09: Marius Zaliukas deal looks dead

[Calgacus 8]

I hope it's a while before he signs (if at all) as it would mean the end of this highly informative thread!

[alexscottislegend 2,057]

dB - great piece/lecture but are you aware that Scots was actually included in the EU's list of protected languages? You imply that Scots was a dialect of English/Anglisch but I think it's different enough to be regarded as a language. Problem is that its spelling is not-standardised and it survives best in spoken form.

[alexscottislegend 2,057]

There's no doubt that Scots was heavily influenced by Northumbrian English, due to the coastal trading network which was used before the in-country land was cleared. Add to that the Flanders trade links, the remnants of Celtic/Gaelic which had been pushed eastward, and the heavy influence, as you say, of Norse which remains to this day in the rural north of Scotland, and you had a language (Scottis) which differed significantly from your English of the day.

 

As I understand it, it was the printing of the Bible in what became standard English which tipped the balance. People wished to speak in the sacred language of The Book, this tongue was adopted earliest by elites, gained status and has filtered down ever since.

 

Nevertheless, as the fiction of John Buchan will show you, even up to the early 20th century Scots contained a massively separate lexus from English. My own wee Grannie, Ayrshire born and bred, only died in 2008 and my goodness, some of her dialect was completely incomprehensible to me (only speak Weegie English). I regret the standardisation of English into estuary English; it seems so boring.

 

Further to the comments on another thread last week about impressions of the DDR, I did a little scouting around recent publications (@2000-present day) and the movement appears to be that initial depictions of a living nightmare were overdone, and that the DDR was more bewildering than totalitarian - there are a wide variety of descriptions given it now, to wit:

 

autalitarian: a mix of authoritarian and totalitarian

Stalinist: given the cult of personality around Honecker

Diktatur der liebe: A loving dictatorship

Erzeihungsdiktatur: Education dictatorship

 

This second wave of western scholarship on the DDR insists on so-called 'ego-documents' (diaries, personal interviews etc) to build up a deeper picture than one could get from only reading the Stasi files, I suppose. The tension seems to be between the aim of the DDR (emancipation) and its chosen method of achieving this (repression). Seems like a lot of justifying for nastiness, but there you are, that's how it stands at the moment.

 

info from: The GDR Remembered (editors Hodgin & Pearce); 20 Years On (editors Rechtien & Tate); The East German Dictatorship (Corey Ross); Dictatorship & Experience (Konrad Jarausch).

Re the John Buchan and his Scots: what Hugh McDiarmid was trying to do with "A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle" was to re-establish the language of Douglas, Dunbar and Henryson in a modern context; unfortunately it was criticised for being synthetic rather than having grown organically. Thus Scots survives really only in a spoken sense - there is still no agreed orthography.

[andy steel 0]

Just about all that remains in my mind from English Language course I did about a year ago is that Scots is most certainly considered a language by the people who work in the field. Although, as you say, it has survived strongest orally, the advent of computer power has allowed the formation of this:

 

http://www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk/

 

"Recent years have brought significant changes to the political situation in Scotland. This new political situation has been accompanied by a resurgence of interest in the languages and culture of Scotland. On 1 July 1999, for example, in an historic address, the late Donald Dewar offered a 'handsel' to the Queen at the opening of the new Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. A 'handsel' is a gift intended to bring good luck to something new or to a new beginning. He was thus marking this special occasion in a traditional Scottish manner.

 

Scotland has a distinctive and colourful language heritage. The present-day linguistic situation in Scotland is complex, with speakers of Scottish English, Scots, Gaelic and numerous community languages making up Scottish society. However, surprisingly little reliable information is available on a variety of language issues, such as the survival of Scots, the distinguishing characteristics of Scottish English, or the use of non-indigenous languages such as Chinese and Urdu. This lack of information presents significant problems for those working in education and elsewhere.

 

A New Era in Language Studies

 

Advances in computer technology have now made it possible to store and analyse very large quantities of information in a way which would have been unthinkable a few decades ago. As a result, in recent years much research in the Humanities has focused on the building of large text archives and corpora. Such resources offer exciting opportunities to study language on a broad scale and with an accuracy which would otherwise be impossible.

 

The SCOTS Project

 

The SCOTS project is the first large-scale project of its kind for Scotland. It provides a large electronic corpus of both written and spoken texts for the languages of Scotland. It has been online since November 2004, and, after regular updates and additions, it reached a total of 4 million words of text in May 2007. It is hoped that SCOTS will allow those interested in Scotland's linguistic diversity, and in Scottish culture and identity, to investigate the languages of Scotland in new ways, and address the gap which presently exists in our knowledge of these. It will also preserve information on these languages for future generations."

 

Also available at the same address:

 

"The Corpus of Modern Scottish Writing (CMSW) is an electronic corpus of written and printed texts from the period 1700-1945, complementing the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots (1450-1700) and the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech (1945-present day). CMSW contains over 350 documents, containing approximately 5.5 million words of text overall."

[andy steel 0]

Re the John Buchan and his Scots: what Hugh McDiarmid was trying to do with "A Drunk Man Looks at a Thistle" was to re-establish the language of Douglas, Dunbar and Henryson in a modern context; unfortunately it was criticised for being synthetic rather than having grown organically. Thus Scots survives really only in a spoken sense - there is still no agreed orthography.

 

Henryson is quality. Timeless, really. Cynicism about humanity is always going to be topical, I suppose.

 

But I'm a huge fan of Buchan, who has unfairly become marginalised with so many High Empire writers as jingoists or racists. Completely untrue! And in so many of his books he preserved the language of the Border farmers which he knew was dying out even as he lived, weaving their environment in with the classical inheritance he loved, to create not some noble savages roaming the heather clad hills, but a separate culture, certainly Christian but heavily flavoured by paganism, the strength of which allowed the likes of his Hannay or Arbuthnot to roam the globe, safe in their own certainties.

 

He gives us a fascinating look at the conditions which produced the kind of people who built the Empire, and what built them. Not always positive but always brilliant to read. It's criminal that he is not up there with Burns, in my lowly opinion. Should be taught in every school, should be revived on stage, should be movies (and not the shite versions of 'The 39 Steps' which come up every few years, either).

 

John Buchan Loyal!

Edited September 20, 2013 by andy steel

[54andcounting 0]

[chilledbear 16]

Enjoying this thread.

 

Zaliukas can go do one.

[der Berliner 3,234]

dB - great piece/lecture but are you aware that Scots was actually included in the EU's list of protected languages? You imply that Scots was a dialect of English/Anglisch but I think it's different enough to be regarded as a language. Problem is that its spelling is not-standardised and it survives best in spoken form.

 

Essentially it developed from the "Old English" dialect of Anglish, much like modern "British English" developed from the West Saxon "Old English" dialect. Both lived alongside one another for 300 odd years. After 1707, the closeness to English and the promotion of everything English (as in: South of the wall-ish) meant that it was in steady decline. Last time I checked there were some 30k native speakers (i.e. those who said that Scots was their mother tongue), though many more Scots use words and phrases of that dialect.

 

Gers wha hae wi' Ally bled ... :-)

[ian1964 10,409]

ALLY MCCOIST is hoping to find out if Marius Zaliukas will join Rangers in the next couple of days.

 

The Lithuanian centre half is currently mulling over an offer from the club and McCoist is hopeful the 29-year-old free agent will agree to a move to Ibrox.

 

Speaking today at Ibrox Stadium the manager said: “Marius has went back home, we put an offer to him and we’d be very hopeful of speaking to him in the next couple of days to see whether or not he will be taking that offer up.

 

“I know we’re still in negotiations and we’re speaking to Boris Pandza’s agent. I’ll be speaking to Craig (Mather) later on today about that to see if there are any further developments so we are still pursuing a couple of lines in the centre of defence.”

 

McCoist could not say whether a move to bring both players to Ibrox is feasible but he admitted he will keep looking for free agents that would improve his playing squad.

 

He said: “Absolutely and that’s our job to do that. If there are free transfers available that we feel would strengthen the team and the squad then I would obviously go to Craig and see if it was financially possible to bring the players in. I don’t think we would be doing our job otherwise.”

 

Earlier this week it was confirmed that Anestis Argyriou’s contract had been terminated by mutual agreement and McCoist admitted more players could move on.

 

He added: “There possibly could be, I think that’s another four boys that have left the club in the last month or so.

 

“I couldn’t give you specific names but like in most clubs there will be activity with players hopefully coming in as well as leaving.”

 

http://www.rangers.co.uk/news/headlines/item/5137-ally-waits-on-marius

[der Berliner 3,234]

Rangers signing target Boris Pandza has accused the Ibrox club of lacking professionalism and giving him false hope over a move to Glasgow.

 

Rangers manager Ally McCoist said at his weekly news conference on Friday that talks were ongoing with Pandza’s agent but the player has told STV that his patience has grown thin after negotiations dragged on for three months.

 

The former Hajduk Split defender said: "For me some professional attitude. Nothing's happened. Everybody says 'wait, wait, wait', all summer we wait. In the end, nothing.

 

"It's a new situation that they want to sell some players but they are limited with the budget. When they've been talking about this for three months and haven't done anything then that's not professional."

 

While negotiations with the Bosnian have dragged on, Rangers have confirmed that they've offered a contract to the former Hearts captain Marius Zaliukas, but Pandza claims that he was promised a fresh deal by the club earlier this week.

 

The 26-year-old continued: "They told me that they will send me an offer on Monday evening or Tuesday morning, but they didn't do it. I expected something on these days but nothing's happened, so I'm a little bit disappointed.

 

"To be honest I don't believe something is going to happen. If they don't want me then don't say anything about me."

 

Boris Pandza has 21 caps for the Bosnian national side, and left Belgian side KV Mechelen in the summer.

 

STV

 

None of our CH have gone, which is the problem. STVs knows that, but goes ahead with this story. It looks like Pandza's agent does not talk that much to him either. You wonder why he himself has not signed for any other team out there?