Re: Hoji Takahashi builds consensus
Posted: Sat Jun 29, 2013 2:16 pm
The issue with Scots is that linguists tend to define it as a dialect of English and more politically inclined people call it a language. Really if you see Ulster Scots written down it's little different than if I took the dialect of English spoken in the rural part of Ireland I came from and wrote it down phonetically as per the Munster accent. Some of the phrases and terms and the spelling would throw you but it's still clearly English. Gaelic and Gaeilge on the other hand have more in common with the Slavic languages than English.John Fairbairn wrote:Yes, Scots. Most Scottish people attempt, sometimes embarrasingly, to speak it on Burns Night, and many but increasingly fewer at Hogmanay. But for the rest of the year, thanks to what is known as the Scottish Cringe, they are forced, or try, to speak like English people - or, worse, like Edinburgh intellectuals.Are there any languages that have a (relatively) small number of native speakers but a lot of people who try to learn it?
Scots is not officially supported in Scotland, I believe, yet Ulster Scots receives government grants in Northern Ireland, and Gaelic gets subsidies in both countries.
(I am not a Scot and am not taking sides.)
Personally though I think calling Ulster Scots a language and giving it subsidies solves a lot of issues politically in the North so I'm fine with it.
) out there who are raising their children monolingually through Latin until school age and only then introducing the language of the country they live in. I don't think it'll work without Latin being a community language but it's interesting.