"hawker@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
" <flink@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:dgtm29$lp3$1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Allan, why then do you Scottish people speak Northern English, which you
> have renamed Scots?
What's in a name eh? Whatever one calls it doesn't actually affect what's
being spoken. You are right of course in that the Scots language springs
from the northern dialect of Anglo-Saxon or Old English. In the 13thC
there
would probably have been little difference as to how it was spoken from
Edinburgh right down to past the northern English counties, apart perhaps
from accent, in truth we don't know. After the Wars of Independence the
language spoken in Scotland started to move away as the two countries
became
more isolated and different influences started working on the various
regions. The more southerly dialect took precedence in England whilst
through being the language of state in Scotland the language took on a
life
of its own. Initially the Scots called their own tongue Inglis (English)
whilst they gave the language spoken further south the appellation Suddron
(ie Southern). The change to using the term Scots as opposed to Inglis,
first evidenced in the works of Gavin Douglas, probably came about for
nationalistic reasons. It was by then the dominant langauge of those in
power in Scotland so took on the national name whilst they started to
refer
to Gaelic as Erse (Irish). It was probably also, due to a century or so
of
hostility, influenced by an aversion to using the title English.
Even by the sixteenth century, as far as written do***ents are concerned,
there is still a strong similarity between at least Border Scots and the
dialect of the Northumberland dales. I suspect that the written sources
perhaps even exaggerated the difference. Nowadays there are still
similarities between modern Border Scots and Northumbrian or even Geordie.
Saying that no Borderer would mistake someone from the opposite side of
the
Border. If you compare someone brought up in Ladykirk with someone
brought
up in Norham (a stones throw across Tweed) then what is remarkable is not
the similarity, as that would be expected anyway, but rather the
differences
are perhaps more marked than would be expected.
Allan
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