Re: [tied] Gaelic

Some years ago, I had the German NDR channel on my cable. Once a
month, they had Platt (Low German) Saturday night programs.
Interesting to follow. I noticed that even when various guests,
locals, who should know the language, or more "mainline" people
(politicians, race drivers) tried to speak Platt (and this to a
certain degree is simultaneous translation in your own head), they
could not avoid words like "Berufs-schule" (cf Dutch <beroep>).
Things they haven't made themselves, they'd have to use the others'
words for. In other words, since Platt has no army or navy,
mainstream words can't be kept out. So much for translation vs.
oversetting.

I agree that the functional restriction that is maybe caused
by not having an army or a navy plays a role. There are many
similarities between the situations of Scots and Platt, but
there are also a number of differences.

You rarely hear or see Scots in the broadcast media.  
Where it does appear it is in a toned down, anglified form,
but there is an increasing amount of printed work, mostly of
a literary nature.

Another difference may be that there is still a substantial
minority of children who grow up speaking Scots as a first
language. I don't suppose this occurs to the same extent
in Platt, although I am open to correction. When I lived in
North Germany in the 1970's, the only times I would hear or
overhear entire conversations in Platt, other than on the
radio, would be from old people in the countryside.

Scots also has a standard form spoken from Ayrshire through
to Fife and Edinburgh, with phonological variation to the
north and south of this, but not so much in the way of
lexical variation. There is some orthographical consensus in
Scots, although not so much as in, say, Catalan. Platt lacks
this geographical unity and standardisation to a much greater
extent.

Despite the functional restrictions, there is a realistic
possibility of Scots again becoming an official language,
and while we can be pretty sure that there will never be a
unitary Low German state, we cannot say the same for
Scotland. While both languages are in a state of terminal
decline and erosion, it is possible that this will be
(temporarily) reversed slightly in the case of Scots, and
Scots is still alive enough to exhibit some interesting
diachronic changes in recent times.

Also, while Scots separated from English much more recently
than Platt did from High German, it is useful to refer to 
Scots as a language rather than a dialect, to distinguish it
from Scottish English, which *is* a dialect of standard
English. By contrast, it may be more useful sometimes to
consider Platt as part of a dialect continuum with High
German.


Ed Robertson