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Using Shetland dialect on the forums


Twerto
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Yes, ex-isle - it could certainly be a uniquely dynamic environment in which to nurture a standardisation of written contemporary Shetland. Homophonic characterisation however, I wondered and I guess hoped could be able to distinctivley delineate people geographically as does the spoken dialect - rather as a standardisation of written Shetland transforming into a "colloquial" version.... albeit that would be easiest to read for all ... I think that's what you were saying too anyway ... ?

 

Shetlink has always had a vision to be able to give users buttons in the "Post a Reply" section whereby they would be able to inject the ou, ae, etc. sounds. It's like many things though - time and money is an issue .... time especially!

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Call me stuffy but the only way i think dialect can be used widely as a writen language is in some sort of reasonably standardised form.

Riting foneticly maibee a noveltee but cree-ates a hole nue owkwardness for reeding, it's fine and entertaining, but when peeple all start maiking up theyr own spellings of things it gets pretty cumbersum.

 

A fine example is, the book, "Feersum Endjin" by Ian Banks, the thoughts of one of the characters are all written phonetically, which is hard to grasp initially but really rewarding when you get into it. Here we can already see several posters writing the same things with completely different spellings and it does make it a pain at times, for me anyway.

 

Ahm aa fir a bit o dialect bein ritten joost sae lang as it dusna turn intae a competishun tae see wha can mak it as herd tae deesiefor is possible. Dat's joost witless.

 

Christ kens its herd enyoch keeping up we proper Inglish it times: ie

 

Wikipedia[/url]"]

/u/ as in "through" (cf. boo).

/É”/ as in "thought" (cf. taut).

/oÊŠ/ as in "though" (cf. toe).

/É’f, ÊŒf/ as in "cough" (cf. off).

/ÊŒf/ as in "rough" (cf. ruffian).

/aÊŠ/ as in "plough" (Commonwealth spelling; cf. plow).

/ÊŒp/ as in "hiccough" (now uncommon variant of hiccup; cf. up

 

:?
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Guest Anonymous

As a person who is almost fanatical about preserving the Shetland Dialect, I have to agree, in some circumstances, with those who are against it's use on this forum.

As a user of the dialect, I can understand how easy it must be for non dialect speakers to understand some of the sh**e we Shetlanders write. I even find it hard when words are written in a spelling which I wouldn't use myself.

 

My take on it would be that, if a topic is started in dialect, then it is OK to continue in that manner. But, to post a reply to a non-dialect topic, in the dialect, could easily be construed as being rude.

 

A'll geeng back ta spaekin sh**e igyen :D

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In some ways standardisation would seem necessary. Particularly because the phonetic spelling employed inevitably involves English letters, which as Njugle shows, are not fixed or distinctive sounds. Hence the fact I can write do, doo or du without changing the sound.

Njugle also highlights another problem with this method. He writes "ritten", "competishun" and "deesiefor" (with tongue in cheek I realise, but nevertheless) as if they were dialect words. But this is entirely unneccesary. When I write in English I don't expect you to read my words in my accent. You automatically 'translate' those words into your own voice. Why should it be different with Shaetlan? It doesn't matter whether you say tattie, tautie, taatie or taaaaty, because when I read it I'm going to hear it whatever way I say it.

If you wish to write phonetically then you're going to have to use the phonetic alphabet, rather than English letters. But I suspect that not many folk here can write in phonetic symbols (nor can they find them on their keyboards).

The only standard form we have at the moment is J Graham's dictionary, but obviously you can't expect folk to consult it as they write. So perhaps the best way of making yourself comprehensible is not to try too hard.

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As a person who is almost fanatical about preserving the Shetland Dialect, I have to agree, in some circumstances, with those who are against it's use on this forum.

As a user of the dialect, I can understand how easy it must be for non dialect speakers to understand some of the sh**e we Shetlanders write. I even find it hard when words are written in a spelling which I wouldn't use myself.

 

My take on it would be that, if a topic is started in dialect, then it is OK to continue in that manner. But, to post a reply to a non-dialect topic, in the dialect, could easily be construed as being rude.

 

A'll geeng back ta spaekin sh**e igyen :D

 

Or indeed, to post a reply to a dialect topic in English? I dunna ken. I kynda laek da 'inatweenniss', a'shiftin codes ta plaes desel :)

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^^^^Yea, dat's laekly ower weel. Dat gies wis puir craetir's a wye ta knap noo an dan.

So perhaps I will agree with you old chap :lol:

 

Weel ja, a skaar a'dis ...and a little of that ... laek twa feet ta waak wie. I see no reason why a 21st century Shetlander shouldn't be fluent ... baeth ati'Shaetlan an Engliesh ... or indeed, Norwegian or any other language too, should they choose to learn.

 

Seriously, and I'll use English here so as not to exclude anyone, thinking about Njugle's point at the outset, I feel that Shetlink (or a board like Shetlink) is a brand new opportunity. No previous generation (and I use that term broadly) have had such a perfect forum for the debate about dialect, and particularly the writing of dialect, to take place in.

 

So Shetlink (ironically the technological manifestation of globalization) might be the very thing that helps to revive a little local tongue like Shetlandic - and that is a process that any ... sorry, hae to win back ta Shaetlan ... for emphasis :) ... 'onie aathir oniewy myght help wie, wid dey bit try ...'

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Earlier in this thread I posted a reply to Fjool’s comment that: "At the end of the day, everyone is entitled to write and speak just exactly as they please. So long as the meaning is clear enough for the purpose, there's no real problem." I suggested that, taking into account differences of opinion as to what the ‘purpose’ of dialect writing is (Fjool’s viewpoint is ‘special occasions such as poetry and Irvine Welsh novels’) these opinions led inevitably to an increase of the feeling that dialect writing is generally inappropriate.

 

Fjool replied that I was reading too much into his comment and "getting offended just for the sake of it." To this I replied that Fjool’s Cockney example, which he used to imply that writing as you speak just makes the writer look thick, further implied that: "Since there is no standard way of spelling Shetland, there is no 'correct' way to write it, and therefore, it seems to me, there is no way to write it without looking 'thick'."

 

I also tried to open up the discussion by asking what, if I had indeed read too much into his post, he saw as an alternative to writing as you speak, including whether he was in favour of standardising Shetland spelling. I asked this question because it was possible that, by the phrases "but simply writing English words in the way you'd pronounce them" and "Spelling everything phonetically" Fjool was referring, not to Shetland writing per se, but to the present variety of spelling which could, in theory, be levelled by standardisation.

 

Fjool replied by repeating that I had misinterpreted him, and, brushing aside my suggestion of alternative solutions or areas of discussion, moved directly into maligning my motives for criticising his viewpoint and my use of language:

 

"That you have re-interpreted what I've intended to say and used this as a justification for getting the ache over this only goes to show how fallible even standardised English is in the wrong hands."

 

I am disappointed and appalled that my reasonable criticisms of what started as an extremely provocative statement (by Twerto) should be treated in this manner by a moderator.

 

It is totally inappropriate for a moderator, when his views are challenged, to immediately reply in a defensive manner which does not address the issues, but instead goes directly to maligning the motivation of the challenger, accusing him of ‘getting offended just for the sake of it’; of misinterpreting him as a ‘justification for getting the ache over this’ and, finally, using that challenger’s reply as an example of ‘how fallible even standardised English is in the wrong hands.’ It is a blatant case of moving from the issues to something approaching a personal attack on the other party - certainly, in this case, on my motives and my ability to use language. Such methods are the verbal equivalent of settling an argument by a kick in the goolies, and those who resort to them place themselves above criticism by the time-honoured principle of asserting my testosterone by putting the boot into yours.

 

I normally avoid those parts of the internet where users give vent to disagreeableness behind a cloak of anonymity. That this should be the case in the moderation of a forum advertised as ‘Connecting Shetland’ is inexcusable, especially as I am a new member of Shetlink with only a few posts so far. The last time I encountered such an abuse of privelege it was as a new prole in the Hostel, and the perpetrators were known as Prefects. It is not an experience I wish to re-live.

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DePooperit: I have sent you a PM regarding the off-topic aspects of your post.

 

I stand by my point that writing everything phonetically is not 'dialect' per se. Using Shetland words where they fit is great and I would encourage this. Simply spelling normal English words in 'dialect' is not the same thing at all. With all this talk of standardised Shetland spellings, it seems to have been overlooked that we already have very well understood standardisations for many of these words. The pronunciation is entirely aural. Writing everything phonetically where there are already perfectly good standard spellings does, in my opinion, look more like illiteracy than the application of true dialect.

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Right. If we can get on to the actual issues, I can say that I see your point. I don't think, either, that there is any point in writing (rytin!) words differently from the standard English spelling if they are pronounced the same way in standard English as they are in Shetland, allowing for differences of accent. However, there are a number of things to be considered, such as:

 

- How do you tell what is 'different' and what isn't? How do you define 'accent'? Some people have claimed that the English used by Lewis Grassic Gibbon was in fact Scots, because of its underlying Scottish 'feel', but this is a far cry from what most Shetland or Scots speakers are trying to put over when they write their native tongue. To say that you can read words like 'computer', 'plane' and 'radiator' in an otherwise Shetland text without having to spell them 'kumpyootir', 'playen' and 'raydeeatur' is reasonable, and I would agree with it. It is less reasonable to say- as some have claimed - that you should be able to read and pronounce the spelling HOUSE as 'hoose' or WATER as 'watter' - Shetlanders are too accustomed to the English pronunciations of these spellings. And it's even more unreasonable to claim - as, again, some have - that you ought to be able to read MAKE as 'mak' or CHAIR as 'shair'. You could write something intending it to be read that way if you liked, but nobody is likely to do so.

 

Even if there were a way to decide which differences are significant (and there is) hardly anybody would be familiar with it, so Shetland speakers would still just have to do the best they could in the circumstances. So it wouldn't be surprising if some of them went further towards standard English, and others went further away from it.

 

Which brings me to my next point. The fact is that most Shetlanders ARE effectively illiterate in their own tongue. There are two ways to become less illiterate. One is some level of standardisation, and (with or without this) the second is practice. And this applies to practice in reading Shetland, not just to writing it. But the more Shetlanders feel that they maybe shouldn't write in Shetland, the less practice they get in both writing and reading it, and the more the situation is exacerbated.

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I stand by my point that writing everything phonetically is not 'dialect' per se. Using Shetland words where they fit is great and I would encourage this. Simply spelling normal English words in 'dialect' is not the same thing at all. With all this talk of standardised Shetland spellings, it seems to have been overlooked that we already have very well understood standardisations for many of these words. The pronunciation is entirely aural. Writing everything phonetically where there are already perfectly good standard spellings does, in my opinion, look more like illiteracy than the application of true dialect.

 

I understand, and agree with your point, insofar as a significant amount of the dialect as it is spoken today, is little other than English pronounced differently.

 

However, for those of us who speak older forms of the dialect, it's a whole lot more complicated than that. There are many words and phrases I would use in the dialect, which are English words pronounced differently, but if I were to spell them in their English form, the sentence within which they appeared would read like double dutch.

 

The problem arises is that words often adopt a somewhat different meaning when pronounced in their dialect form than in their English form, this happens even moreso when they are incorporated within common dialect phrases. One example off the top of the Head....

 

The dialect phrase "sum idder wye" translates as "somewhere else", the words used are all English ones pronounced differently, yet when written in their standard English spellings, you end up saying "some other way", which, in English means something somewhat different to "somewhere else". Add to that that much of what is correct grammar and sentence structure in the dialect, would be anything but in English, and vice versa.

 

Writing in English and only using dialect words which are not differently pronounced English ones here and there as they occur, is fine up to a point, but IMHO it runs the risk of making the whole passage containing them look stupid and not convey it's intended meaning.

 

Translating from English to dialect and vice versa is easy if you speak both, but that translation is not a word for word one, it is the overall meaning rewritten in the other. As I've already said the dialect translated word for word in to English reads like double dutch, and when done from English to the dialect word for word it's unreadable.

 

Mixing and matching words from both, can work up to a point, but it is very limited how far you can go with it, and there is the opportunity to create chaos at every corner.

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Onybody is entitled tae spaek onywye dey please an it wid be up tae da wans dat dunna / canna understand it tae learn it , as it wid be if onybody guid tae a forgien country , du widna expect dem tae change fae dir lingo tae english just tae please dee. wi da reference tae lookin thick , I fin dat brally offensive and wid counter wi , da wan dat canna /winna learn da local lingo is maybe da thick wan. :roll:

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Onybody is entitled tae spaek onywye dey please

 

I don't think anyone is arguing otherwise, at least at the moment. I think it's whether - or where/when - it's okay to write Shetland that's the point at issue here. That's not to say, of course, that there aren't some people who don't think we should speak it either! :(

 

I think Ghostrider makes some important points.

 

The phrase 'sum idder wye' is an illustration of what I was talking about earlier. As you say, in this case it would be the English-like version 'some other way' that would look illiterate. In order to put over the Shetland pronunciation - and thus the Shetland meaning of the phrase as a whole - it's necessary to spell the words differently (although maybe not 'some', as this is usually pronounced the same in Shetland and English.)

 

The main point is that the Shetland tongue has its own characteristics, both of sound and meaning, and that these, taken together, make up a coherent whole in speech. The whole thing has to be written as a whole to represent this in writing. And, as you say, it's the fluent native speaker who feels this most. Using Shetland words in English sentences may be OK for some - limited - purposes, but it isn't Shetland.

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