Language revival

[Fifi]

Actually, in a sentence like 'I kaen at du's richt', there is no Norse at all. The sentence is purely Scots:

Apologies for butting in but just a quick observation. There do seem to be a number of words Shetlanders use which are Scots and I've got a feeling I spotted some in the Shetland Words magnets which are on sale now. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I spotted some Scots words in there.. or at least words that Scottish folk would use, so presumably Scots?

[Trønder]

Actually, in a sentence like 'I kaen at du's richt', there is no Norse at all. The sentence is purely Scots: 'I ken (th)at thou's richt', where 'thou' - as in older English - is pronounced 'thoo', and the verb form 'is' (rather than 'art' as in older English) follows it. The only possible influence from the Nordic is the sound change th>d in thou>du.

 

Scandinavian scholars (and I think Barnes as well) often make the mistake of thinking that the singular/familiar pronoun 'du' is Norn in origin, but this is largely because they are unfamiliar with Scots.

When you have a Scandinavian language being replaced by a language that has been strongly influenced by Scandinavian I suppose it could be difficult to know for sure what comes from where. With that sentence I'm sure that you are correct though. Is the word "kaen"/"ken" the same as the Norwegian "kjenna" (Old Norse "kenna")?

[Dagfinn]

I have read that, but I wasn't aware that the difference was so pronounced. It is interested that your question words really being with a Q/K, like in my dialect (and most others). Has the conservative writing norm influenced spoken Faroese in any way. I notice that sometimes I use words or conjugates that aren't really a part of my dialect, but that I'm used to writing in nynorsk.

 

I find myself sometimes (e.g. when singing from a hymn book) saying "honum", because of the writing, but no, the conservative writing norm has not influenced spoken Faroese, everyone still says "honun " when speaking, but writes "honum".

 

BTW. Faroese "miki(ð)" is pronounced "mykje", and "gekk" is pronounced "gjekk" excatctly as in some Norwegian dialects.

Is "ikki" pronounced "ikkje" as well? I my dialect, trøndsk, the Ks have become Ts and words are often cut, so instead of "mykje" we have "mytjy" and instead of "ikkje" we have "itj".

 

Yes, ikki is pronounced "itje", gekk "djekk", mikið "mitje" etc.

 

Apologies for butting in but just a quick observation. There do seem to be a number of words Shetlanders use which are Scots and I've got a feeling I spotted some in the Shetland Words magnets which are on sale now. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure I spotted some Scots words in there.. or at least words that Scottish folk would use, so presumably Scots?

Scots? Really? I´ve been to Shetland twice, and apart from an old lady in Lerwick who spoke a peculiar dialect (which I recently have found out, must have been Shaetlan/Shetland/Post Modern Norn/Shetlandic/Shetland Dialect/Insular Scots/Corrupted English/Whatever) everyone spoke "the Queens English", surely you must have a natural talent for spotting words.

[Fifi]

Scots? Really? I´ve been to Shetland twice, and apart from an old lady in Lerwick who spoke a peculiar dialect (which I recently have found out, must have been Shaetlan/Shetland/Post Modern Norn/Shetlandic/Shetland Dialect/Insular Scots/Corrupted English/Whatever) everyone spoke "the Queens English", surely you must have a natural talent for spotting words.

No idea what you're on about sorry, presumably it's a joke but I was just making reference to the fact that there appear to be Scots words amongst the 'Shetland' word magnets which are on sale.

[Dagfinn]

No idea what you're on about sorry, presumably it's a joke but I was just making reference to the fact that there appear to be Scots words amongst the 'Shetland' word magnets which are on sale.

It is a joke. I just wanted to tell you, Shetlanders didn´t use their scots dialect when speaking to me, so I assumed Shetlanders were plain english speakers. But someone told me recently, that they were just "knapping" to me, or something like that.

[Fifi]

^^ Yes, they would be politely humouring you by speaking English, no doubt. I've lived here for 26 years and, thankfully, some of my broader-spoken Shetland friends don't change that much when speaking to me, or including me in a group conversation, saying that I've been here long enough!

[DePooperit]

In a hurry, so short comments(Edit: famous last words):

 

1. Yes, Scots has many words which are Norse rather than Anglo Saxon in form - eg: bairn, kirk, and probably ken. However, as ken is now Scots, and as Shaetlan is basically a form of Scots (though a very distinctive one) there's no reason for thinking of it as a separate Norn influence on Shaetlan.

 

The same is true of 'at' used as a relative pronoun. This is not the infinitive marker 'at', as in Faroese and Swedish, as I think someone implied above. In Scots, 'at' and 'that' are used almost interchangably as the relative pronoun (W.B. Lorimer used 'at' exclusively in his translation of the New Testament in Scots) so again, there is no need to look beyond Scots for the origin of this word in Shaetlan.

 

2. There's a lot of misconception about what Shaetlan is. I think the best description is that it is a 'form of Scots superimposed upon a Norse substratum.' That is, the grammatical structure is basically Scots, but it retains a lot of vocabulary and expressions which are left over from Norn. So, to comment on the 'fridge magner' comments, many words are naturally common to Shaetlan and Scots, just as many words are common to Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. You also get faux amis - like 'rolig' which means 'peaceful' in Danish and Norwegian, and 'merry' in Swedish. So in Scots, 'sicker' means 'certain' (compare säkert in Swedish) whereas in Shaetlan it means 'grim'. In Scots, 'graith' means 'equipment', but in Shaetlan the cognate 'greth' means 'urine'.

 

This, of course, is true only of traditional Shaetlan which is fast dying out. Any Shetland dialect which survives into the current century will only be like the 'street talk' or 'Nedspeak' of the Central Belt of Scotland. The dialect which is spoken on radio is a very diluted version, from which - in the absence of any Shaetlan policy - peculiarly Shetland words are omitted. This is the case even in dialect promotion. In traditional Shaetlan, as spoken by myself, 'teeth' is both singular and plural, and 'ta lock' means to to shut (as in Icelandic, I don't know about Faroese), whereas English 'to lock' is 'ta key'. However, in a recent children's book written to promote 'dialect', the writer deliberately made all references to teeth plural, to avoid using 'teeth' as a singular. This apologetic stance to standard English is the opposite of what I would do if I were trying to promote the Shetland tongue.

 

3. It's very strange that people should consider that Shetlanders only speak standard English because that is what they speak to non-Shetlanders. Would a Faroese attempt to speak to an English visitor in Faroese? Shetlanders know that 'brod Shaetlan' is not likely to be understood by outsiders, so naturally they speak to them in English.

 

Johan Hendrik Poulson (?) once commented that Danes used to have the same opinion of Faroese. They would claim to be able to understand Faroese perfectly - implying that it was just a dialect of Danish - but the Faroese were in fact speaking to them in Danish with a Faroese accent.

[Fifi]

to comment on the 'fridge magner' comments, many words are naturally common to Shaetlan and Scots

Which makes them not specifically Shetland words and hence my slight puzzlement as to why they were included in a list of Shetland words - but no big deal. Good post.

[Dagfinn]

3. It's very strange that people should consider that Shetlanders only speak standard English because that is what they speak to non-Shetlanders. Would a Faroese attempt to speak to an English visitor in Faroese? Shetlanders know that 'brod Shaetlan' is not likely to be understood by outsiders, so naturally they speak to them in English.

 

Johan Hendrik Poulson (?) once commented that Danes used to have the same opinion of Faroese. They would claim to be able to understand Faroese perfectly - implying that it was just a dialect of Danish - but the Faroese were in fact speaking to them in Danish with a Faroese accent.

This might be a special Faroese perception, that Shetlanders speak standard English. The death of Norn (at least when I went to school) was used as an example of what could happen to Faroese, if we did not promote the language, create neologisms etc., because Shetlanders, who once spoke a Norse laguage like ours, "now spoke English".

Bet we´re the only nation outside Britain, which has (or had) language death in Shetland, as part of our school curriculum.

So maybe it´s a special Faroese prejudice, that Shetlanders speak "the Queens English".

[DePooperit]

@Fifi - it's because Shetland words consist of all words that are used in traditional Shetland speech, not just words that are peculiar to Shetland. In fact, as almost all Shetland words are related either to English, Scots or Norse ones, if you were to make a list of those which were peculiar to Shetland alone, the list would be very short indeed.

 

Strictly speaking, Shetland words would include not only Scots ones, but English ones as well. If I'm speaking Shaetlan, I use words like 'man' and 'net' . These are common to English, Scots and Shetland, as they are, indeed, to the Nordic languages. I don't think of these as 'English' words any more than I think of 'pneumatic' as a Greek word, or 'vision' as a Latin word. Just as all words used in English belong in an English dictionary, whatever their origin is, so all words used in Shaetlan would theoretically belong in a Shetland dictionary, whatever their origin is. However, the emphasis on Shetland as a dialect of English means that only the non-English words are 'noticed' or perceived as being Shetland.

 

Some words, while common to Shetland and English, are used differently. The word 'little' was not used of size when I was young, being replaced by 'peerie'. It was still used of quantity, however, in phrases like 'just a little'. Moreover, the word 'little' is, of course, Norse as well as English.

 

However, words like 'small' or 'roof' I do think of as English words, because their Shetland equivalents - 'sma' and 'ruif' are pronounced differently, and therefore the English forms sound 'English' to me, although young Shetlanders increasingly use these forms. Similarly, Scots words which are not traditionally used in Shetland - such as 'orra' and 'ilka' - would sound 'Scottie' to me.

 

Part of the problem, I think, comes from seeing the Shetland tongue as 'wirds' rather than as a coherent linguistic system comprising phonology, grammar and vocabulary.

[DePooperit]

@Dagfinn - I don't think it's peculiar to Faroese. I think there's also a general perception among the monoglot British that if you speak standard English, then that's the only way you can speak. I've heard interviewers on Scottish TV asking Scots speakers why, if they were Scots speakers, they weren't speaking it in the interview. But they wouldn't ask a Gaelic speaker that.

 

This stems partly, I think, from the fact that most people in Scotland who are likely to be interviewers on TV have either deliberately rejected Scots, or their family before them has done so. As they are English speaking monoglots, they can't conceive how a person would be able to switch between Scots and English. There is a deep prejudice in Scotland that, in order to speak 'proper', you have to be unable to speak Scots. In some sort of relic of the old colonial attitude, it is assumed that to be able to use one form of language shows that you are better educated than if you are able to use two or more.

 

In Shetland, some friends who were contacted by a television program had great difficulty explaining how they, as educated people (teachers, etc) were able to switch from Shaetlan to English, and that the fact that they could speak to the researcher in standard English did not mean that they had to go and find a specimen dialect speaker who could speak only 'dialect'.

[Trønder]

The same is true of 'at' used as a relative pronoun. This is not the infinitive marker 'at', as in Faroese and Swedish, as I think someone implied above. In Scots, 'at' and 'that' are used almost interchangably as the relative pronoun (W.B. Lorimer used 'at' exclusively in his translation of the New Testament in Scots) so again, there is no need to look beyond Scots for the origin of this word in Shaetlan.

No, you are correct, it is not the infinitive marker, but you still have a parallel to Norwegian. In Old Norwegian you had the demonstrative pronoun þat and the conjunction at. These were probably originally the same word and are still with us in Modern Norwegian as det (silent "t"), da in some conservative western dialects, and at.

 

I do get your point about not needing to look further than Scots though.

 

In traditional Shaetlan, as spoken by myself, 'teeth' is both singular and plural, and 'ta lock' means to to shut (as in Icelandic, I don't know about Faroese), whereas English 'to lock' is 'ta key'.

I believe that is the same across the Scandinavian languages. In Modern Norwegian you have "Ã¥ lukka/lukke".

[DePooperit]

 

In traditional Shaetlan, as spoken by myself, 'teeth' is both singular and plural, and 'ta lock' means to to shut (as in Icelandic, I don't know about Faroese), whereas English 'to lock' is 'ta key'.

I believe that is the same across the Scandinavian languages. In Modern Norwegian you have "Ã¥ lukka/lukke".

 

This illustrates another feature of the promotion of 'dialect' in Shetland. The last time I was in Shetland, I was informed by some of my friends who are engaged in the promotion of 'dialect' that this usage was dead. But my sister, who lives on the Scottish mainland, says that she still slips up - using the Shetland usage instead of the standard English one, even when speaking English, and confusing her English-speaking children.

 

In other words, in Shetland, a usage can be perceived as obsolete by those who are ostensibly promoting Shaetlan, even though Shetlanders living outside Shetland still use it!

 

Similarly, the transition in usage from 'Shaetlan' to 'dialect' as the primary description of the tongue seems to be more marked among promoters than in the general population. Two people have recently remarked to me that there is a move to teach 'Shaetlan' in school. To this I reply that there is actually a move to teach 'dialect' in school. I have even heard people switch in mid word, saying 'Sh-dialect' - ie, beginning to say 'Shaetlan' - the word which they would naturally use - and then switching to 'dialect'.

 

I consider dialect promotion to be impossible. But the switch in nomenclature from 'Shaetlan' to 'dialect'; the different perception of words like 'teeth' (singular) and the Nordic use of 'lock'; and the fact that the demographic seems to be almost the opposite of that in the 'purist' approaches to local speech forms which have had some measure of success elsewhere (where traditional forms would generally be emphasised rather than ignored or even deliberately 'hidden' by promoters) are interesting from a sociolinguistic point of view.

[Trønder]

I have even heard people switch in mid word, saying 'Sh-dialect' - ie, beginning to say 'Shaetlan' - the word which they would naturally use - and then switching to 'dialect'.

Why is that?

[DePooperit]

I think (though I don't suppose anybody in Shetland would agree with me) that it's a symptom of a transition from one nomenclature to another, which in turn is a symptom of a transition from one perception to another. The person I heard saying 'Sh-dialect' was, it seems to me, changing from his natural nomenclature to one which he regarded as more acceptable.

 

The traditional 'Shaetlan' shows an identification of the language with the place. This isn't uncommon in Britain as a whole - folk might speak about 'speaking Glasgow' or whatever. It may be that the identification of the language with the place is now challenged by the fact that, whereas in my youth almost everyone in Shetland spoke 'Shaetlan', now only a certain proportion of people do. I would argue that calling the native language 'Shaetlan' is expressing an unconscious feeling that Shetland is an entity and its tongue is related to that entity. Although Shaetlan was always thought to be a dialect in theory, it was naturally perceived as being the native language of the place.

 

Increasing use of the word 'dialect' seems to be seeing the native tongue rather as it is related to standard English - in other words, from an external, global, rather than from an internal, native viewpoint. It always was seen in this way in theory, but increasing use of the word 'dialect' used as a name rather than a category seems to me to indicate that this theoretical perception is now becoming an unconscious perception, replacing the traditional unconscious perception of 'Shaetlan.'

 

I suspect that this is related to a similar perception among promoters of Scots, ie: that Scots is a language which should be valued precisely because of its non-standard nature. As some of those people are sociolinguists, you could say that they are providing material for themselves to study!