Научный проект на тему Modern Scots

Modern Scots.

Other authors developed dialect writing, preferring to represent their own speech in a more phonological manner rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots, especially for the northern and insular dialects of Scots.During the twentieth century a number of proposals for spelling reform were presented. Commenting on this, John Corbett (2003: 260) writes that "devising a normative orthography for Scots has been one of the greatest linguistic hobbies of the past century." Most proposals entailed regularising the use of established eighteenth and nineteenth century conventions, in particular the avoidance of the apologetic apostrophe which supposedly represented "missing" English letters. Such letters were never actually missing in Scots. For example, in the fourteenth century, Barbour spelt the Scots cognate of 'taken' as tane. Because there has been no k in the word for over 700 years, representing its omission with an apostrophe seems pointless. The current spelling is usually taen.Through the twentieth century, with the decline of spoken Scots and knowledge of the literary tradition, phonetic (often humorous) representations became more common.[6,87]Currently, there is no official standard orthography for modern Scots, but most words have generally accepted spellings.

During the 15th and 16th centuries, when Scots was a state language, the Makars had a loose spelling system separate from that of English. However, by the beginning of the 18th century, Scots was beginning to be regarded "as a rustic dialect of English, rather than a national language". Scots poet Allan Ramsay "embarked on large-scale anglicisation of Scots spelling". Successors of Ramsay—such as Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott—tended to follow his spelling ideas, and the general trend throughout the 18th and 19th centuries was to adopt further spellings from English, as it was the only accessible standard. Although descended from the Scots of the Makars, 18th-19th century Scots abandoned some of the more distinctive old Scots spellings for standard English ones; although from the rhymes it was clear that a Scots pronunciation was intended. Writers also began using the apologetic apostrophe, to mark "missing" English letters. For example, the older Scots spelling taen/tane (meaning "taken") became ta’en, even though the word hadn't been written or pronounced with a "k" for hundreds of years. 18th-19th century Scots drew on the King James Bible and was heavily influenced by the conventions of Augustan English poetry. All of this "had the unfortunate effect of suggesting that Broad Scots was not a separate language system, but rather a divergent or inferior form of English". This 'Scots of the book' or Standard Scots lacked neither "authority nor author".^[15] It was used throughout Lowland Scotland and Ulster, by writers such as Allan Ramsay, Robert Fergusson, Robert Burns, Sir Walter Scott, Charles Murray, David Herbison, James Orr, James Hogg and William Laidlawamong others. It is described in the 1921 Manual of Modern Scots. [16]

By the end of the 19th century, Scots spelling "was in a state of confusion as a result of hundreds of years of piecemeal borrowing from English". Some writers created their own spelling systems to represent their own dialects, rather than following the pan-dialect conventions of modern literary Scots. The variety referred to as 'synthetic Scots' orLallans shows the marked influence of Standard English in grammar and spelling. During the 20th century, with spoken Scots and knowledge of the literary tradition waning, phonetic (often humorous) spellings became more common.

In the second half of the 20th century a number of spelling reform proposals were presented. Commenting on this, John Corbett (2003: 260) writes that "devising a normative orthography for Scots has been one of the greatest linguistic hobbies of the past century". Most proposals entailed regularising the use of established 18th-19th century conventions and avoiding the 'apologetic apostrophe'. Other proposals sought to undo the influence of standard English conventions on Scots spelling, by reviving Middle Scots conventions or introducing new ones.A step towards standardizing Scots spelling was taken at a meeting of the Makar's Club in Edinburgh in 1947, where the Scots Style Sheet was approved. J. K.Annand, Douglas Young, Robert Garioch, A.D. Mackie, Alexander Scott, Tom Scott and Sydney Goodsir Smith all followed the recommendations in the Style Sheet to some extent.[16] Some of its suggestions are as follows:

1. aa, baa, caa for words like aw, baw, caw – this was later discouraged

2. -ie for final unstressed -y

3. y for the /əi/ sound in words like wynd and mynd, and i for the short /ɪ/ sound in words like wind and find.

4. ui for the /ø/ sound in words like guid

5. ou for the /uː/ sound in words like nou and hou

6. ow(e) for the /ʌu/ sound in words like growe and fowk

7. throu and tho for through and though

In 1985, the Scots Language Society (SLS) published a set of spelling guidelines called "Recommendations for Writers in Scots". They represent a consensus view of writers in Scots at the time, following several years of debate and consultation involving Alexander Scott, Adam Jack Aitken, David Murison, Alastair Mackie and others. A developed version of the Style Sheet, it is based on the old spellings of the Makars but seeks to preserve the familiar appearance of written Scots. It includes all of the Style Sheet's suggestions, but recommends that writers return to the more traditional -aw, rather than -aa. Some of its other suggestions are as follows:

1. ei for the /iː/ sound at the beginning or middle of words (eidiot, feinish, veisit), unless ee is firmly established (for example in wee and een)

2. y for the /əi/ sound in words like wynd and mynd, but if it's at the beginning or end of a word use ey (eydent, stey, wey)

3. eu for the sound in words like aneuch, speug, neuk

4. -k for final -ct in words like object and expect (which become objek and expek)

5. sk- for initial /sk/ (sclim→sklim, scrieve→skreive, scunner→skunner)

6. -il for final unstressed -el and -le (muckle→mukkil, morsel→morsil, traivel→traivil)

7. -ss for final /s/ (hoose→houss, moose→mouss, polis→poliss) unless -se follows a consonant (mense, merse)

8. omit final -d where it is silent (staund→staun, thousand→thousan, friend→frein)

The SLS Recommendations says "it is desirable that there should be traditional precedents for the spellings employed and […] writers aspiring to use Scots should not invent new spellings off the cuff". It prefers a number of more phonetic spellings that were commonly used by medieval Makars, such as: ar (are), byd, tym, wyf (bide, time, wife), cum, sum (come, some), eftir (after), evin (even), evir (ever), heir, neir (here, near), hir (her), ir (are), im (am), littil (little), sal (shall) speik (speak), thay (they), thaim (them), thair (their), thare (there), yit (yet), wad (would), war (were), wes (was), wul (will). David Purves's book A Scots Grammar has a list of over 2500 common Scots words spelt on the basis of the SLS Recommendations. Purves has also published dozens of poems using the spellings.

In 2000 the Scots Spelling Committee report was published in Lallans. Shortly after publication Caroline Macafee criticised some aspects of that, and some previous spelling suggestions, as "demolishing the kind-of-a standardisation that already existed where Scots spelling had become a free-for-all with the traditional model disparaged but no popular replacement", leading to more spelling variation, not less.