Re: NATLANG: Scary Document

John Cowan wrote:

>That *is* what modern standard Scots looks like.  For it to contain no
>English words whatever, it would pretty much have to date back to before
>the Union of the Crowns, and even then mim-moued Southron was a considerable
>source of loanwords.  In order to express the concerns of 21st-century
>speakers, a massive influx of English loanwords (where else would they
>come from?) is not only necessary but benign.
>
Well, if they'd bothered and had some sort of language body, they
could've taken the English word back till around the time English (for
the most part, you would just go by the spelling I imagine) and Scots
diverged then bring them forward with Scots sound changes.

Or they could've done what Icelandic does and calque everything :)

BTW.... What dialect are the Scots words borrowed from English borrowed
from? I imagine it'd be quite funny if they took 'em from RP :)

When did Scots diverge? Is it Great Vowel Shifted? (Did it shift under
the influence of English or is it its own change---German and Norwegian
at least both seem to have some sort of an equivalent.)

>There is no saying, in general, whether a given word is English or Scots,
>though there are many particular identifiable cases.  In most cases, however,
>it is straightforward to tell if a *sentence* is English or Scots.  Thus,
>"Scots wha hae wi Wallace bled" is not Scots, but English heavily influenced
>by English:  grammatical Scots would require "Scots ut hae".
>
>
Should that be '... heavily influenced by Scots'?

--
Tristan                  <kesuari@...>

There's no such thing as an infinite loop. Eventually, the computer will break.
-- John D. Sullivan