XPost: soc.culture.welsh, soc.culture.cornish, soc.culture.irish   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: allan@noemail.co.uk   
      
   "Féachadóir"  wrote in message   
   news:kk58c3dlgu5s0ub5u70qtggtpfronifphs@4ax.com...   
   > Scríobh "allan connochie" :   
   >>   
   >>"Féachadóir"  wrote in message   
   >>>>> I had just wondered what you meant by your list, Bob. Obviously   
   >>>>> lowland   
   >>>>> scots would have to speak something, and I wondered what your emphasis   
   >>>>> was? Certainly 'most highlanders don't speak a form of lowland scots   
   >>>>> [dialect]' and most lowland scots don't speak Gaellic. Even 'standard'   
   >>>>> English is a [invented] dialect, courtesy the BBC.   
   >>>>   
   >>>>All forms of speech are dialect. That of course includes Gaelic which   
   >>>>also   
   >>>>shares a similar relationship to Irish that Scots shares with English.   
   >>>   
   >>> Not quite. I'd submit that while Scots and English have grown closer   
   >>> over the past 400 years or so, Irish and Scots Gaelic have grown   
   >>> farther apart.   
   >>   
   >>That is true though I didn't say identical relationship just similar.   
   >   
   > For sufficiently vague meanings of similar.   
      
   Well let's just say that they share a similar relationship to each other.   
   What I'm trying to counter is the oft quoted idea that Scots is only a   
   dialect or set of dialects because it is so closely related to English,   
   whilst the likes of Gaelic is obviously completely different from English so   
   is obviously a language. Of course it is absurd to give language status or   
   not on a mode of speech dependent on its relationship with English. It is an   
   acutely anglo-centric view for the other poster to take especially as going   
   by his overall stance he probably sees himself as very un-anglo-centric   
   There was even a poster last week who within the same post first stated that   
   Gaelic was more important to Scotland than Scots  because it is unique to   
   Scotland (while Scots relationship with northern English dialects meant it   
   wasn't unique) then in the next sentence he proclaimed that his Irish friend   
   could understand a certain spoken Scottish Gaelic dialect! Both Scots and   
   Gaelic are modes of speech springing originally from Irish and Anglian   
   dialects; both at one time were dominant in Scotland; and both have gone   
   downhill in the face of Scottish Standard English. The other poster seems to   
   suggest that Lowland Scotland hasn't any of its culture left. That could   
   only be a view expressed by someone who really doesn't appreciate what   
   Lowland Scottish culture is in the first place. Of course there is a   
   continuum with especially northern England; and of course elements of our   
   culture is also a pan-British, pan-European culture etc, but that is the   
   same for the Highlands or Cornwall etc.   
      
      
   Allan   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)