XPost: soc.culture.welsh, soc.culture.cornish, soc.culture.irish   
   XPost: soc.culture.scottish   
   From: innes8@verizon.net   
      
   "Robert Peffers."  wrote in message   
   news:n4ednYUtmKg2BV7bRVnyigA@bt.com...   
      
   >> There is a huge difference in dialectal speech versus root~ language   
   >> differentials. Language follows culture, after all. In Cornwall hardly   
   >> anyone spoke Anglo Saxon, and not 'English' until well after the   
   >> Elizabethan period. This to great degree has preserved a sense of   
   >> cultural identity, whereas the Lowlands might as well be Tyneside-North.   
      
   > How silly - I have just pointed out to you that until after James VI the   
   > language of even the Scots Royal Court was Lowland Scots - as written   
   > records can show.   
      
   I don't understand enough of your statement to contest it, especially the 2   
   items of cultural sense of identity and language. May you be right!   
   Originally I was interested in what are called root~ or stem~ factors of any   
   'language' - and to what degree that is blended with what we call 'English',   
   or Saxon speech.   
      
   > There are also Parish and town coucil records in Lowland Scots preserved   
   > for posterity.   
   > It was not until after a Scottish Education Act, (1872), effectively   
   > proscribed both Gaelic and Scots from the classroom that Standard English   
   > was used in classrooms. I was Lochgellied, (belted), every day of my   
   > school life for speaking my own language in class.   
      
   The recent novel, "The Welsh Girl" by Peter Ho Davies explains the   
   derogatory term 'to welsh' in same way. He said anyone caught speaking Welsh   
   would be nominated for punishment at the end of the school day, unless they   
   ratted or 'welshed' on another student, then they were off the hook and the   
   latest culprit was the sacrificial victim to the gods of English.   
      
   > I was always a rebel in that regard. While always gaining good marks in   
   > English I always resented being force-fed upon it. This proscription of   
   > the Scots languages continued into the late 1990s.   
      
   Ay well, my family has carried the name Wallace for 600 years - whatever   
   that was, is not over  ;)   
      
   PS: talking of books, has anyone read Sea Room, by Nicholson, on the   
   Shiants?   
      
   Cordially, Phil   
      
   >> Phil Innes   
   >   
   > --   
   >   
   > Robert Peffers,   
   > Kelty,   
   > Fife,   
   > Scotland, (UK).   
   >   
   >   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)