Re: CHAT EU and accents

> > Barbara Blithered;
> >The EU officially recognized the dialect I used in school, Ulster-Scots,
as
> >a language, and now everything done by the government in Northern Ireland
> >has to have an Ulster-Scots version too.
> >
> >
> > Joe Jotted;
> You're a native Scots speaker?  How cool.
>
Barbara Babbles;
Not Scots, *Ulster-Scots*, it's descended from the Scots and North of
England Dialects spoken by the "planters" given land in Ulster centuries ago
by the English in Cromwellian times and influenced by Northern Gaelic. So
it's quite like Scots but not the same thing at all ;-), hence the OED folk
publishing
both a _Concise Scots_  and a  _Concise Ulster_ dictionary.

I learnt Ulster-Scots when my family emigrated back to Northern Ireland and
I was
eleven years old. I picked it up as a survival mechanism; because with my
then
Southern American mixed with Canadian ( "Jaw-Jah" and "Taran'a" ) accent I
stuck out like a sore thumb - and you know how cruel kids can be to somebody
"different" - so it was my way of fitting in. I am Irish by birth and blood,
so it hurt to
be labeled "the Yank" and be the butt of the rampant anti-Americanism so
rampant
back then (1960s). However my mother was an elocution teacher and wouldn't
tolerate Ulster-Scots at home.

> True, but it's [the dialect] got an army and a navy, as the saying goes.
> Or at least, it did, once.  Well, Scots from Scotland did.  But really,
are
> Scots and English any more similar than, say, Norwegian and Swedish?
I've no idea. Scots is different enough from Ulster-Scots that I've trouble
following it; eg; U-S "fornenst" = S "foranentis", and U-S "thee" = singular
you,
but S also = "to prosper" and "thigh"; although much is shared such as "Yon"
and "thon" etc.

English speaking tourists in NI soon got the hang wringing sense out of what
they were hearing. Many communication problems came rather from locals
mishearing what the tourists actually said: EG;

Tourist: "Whada ya do roun' here about sex?"
Local; "Abut sex wey hawv ur tay."
("At approximately six o'clock we have our evening meal")
:-/

Barbara