Importance of Norn Today

[DePooperit]

"quit tinchs doo a yun enn?" commonly used question n terminology + sentence structure which is common place in Delting (amongst Shetland natives) which is Norn sentence structure as opposed to scots. "quaar comes doo fae?" "quitna een is yun?" etc etc, maybe scots words in general , but how many of thier words are Norn based too ? .Lowland scots definately dont talk gaelic. Sentence structure, vowels, pronounciation and accent all Scandinavian far more so as scots. There is a common attitude among young folk in this area tho that its "uncool" and there lies a challenge

 

Well, to begin with, 'Whitna ene is yun' is absolutely Scots 'Whitna ane is yon'. 'Whitna' is a Scots word (mistranslated by the Central Scots who write the dictionaries but don't speak Scots as 'what kind of' but used here in the North East, when I first came here, just as in Shetland.) The word order is exactly the same as English 'Which one is that.'

 

The others are inverted word order of the sort found in older English 'What thinkest thou' and 'Where comest thou from.' They've just survived in Shetland but died out in standard English. At the time that Scots took over from Norn, both would have used constructions like this, so it would have been automatic for Shetlanders to use them.

 

Lowland Scots, though with some Norse influence mainly in vocabulary, is basically descended from Anglo Saxon, as is standard English.

 

Of course, the phrases as a whole are uniquely Shetland. In 'Whit tinks du o yun,', 'Whitna ene is yun', 'Whaar comes du fae', etc, the combination of word forms, sounds and word order is uniquely Shetland. And this is the point, as made by Ghostrider. It doesn't matter where these characteristics come from - in combination, they form a unique language (sorry, can't use any other phrase in the context) with its own identity. The problem is that any attempt to illustrate this - as on my former website - is rubbished by the Shetland establishment, and replaced by the amorphous term 'dialect' which can mean anything or nothing.

 

This is probably part of the 'uncool' problem. Exactly where does anybody get the idea that it ought to be 'cool' to speak 'dialect'? The word almost shouts out 'uncool.' It's the sort of thing that primary kids will adopt uncritically, and teenagers will then reject. Tom Morton, who has always ridiculed anything that threatened to give 'dialect' a name or identity, says (it's somewhere on the net) that his own children, though growing up speaking 'dialect', have now reacted against it. Why not?

 

Contrast Wales. When I was in North Wales in the summer, most of the teenagers spoke Welsh to each other all the time, and - in contraast to Shetland mockery of outsiders speaking Shetland - were delighted when I was able to speak a few words to them. But the situation in Wales - formal grammar (which, note, the kids do not necessarily speak, but it's there as a counter-reference to English influence), a written form, etc - is exactly the thing which most Shetlanders would abhor, and complain about and ridicule along with their fellow Brits if they see it somewhere like Wales.

[Kavi Ugl]

I used to argue that what I inadvisedly used to call 'Shetlandic', or 'Shaetlan', had to be regarded as an entity in its own right because, while a form of Scots in linguistic terms, it was too different from mainland Scots to be written as Scots. This is, however, irrelevant, because (a) it is now officially (by ShetlandForWirds) regarded as a dialect of Scots;.....

 

A bad mistake on their part, which will work as much against them as for them IMHO.

 

To step aside from the topic slightly, in some ways the thing I lament most is the loss, and it has effecitively already happened, of the colourful phrases that were used to describe everything by fluent Shetland speakers. The product of a full and complete mastery of the language being used to best effect, and while direct translations in to English or Scots may not have been to difficult, the result was meaningless nonsense, yet a Shetland speaker understood it perfectly. I don't think you need much more "proof" that Shetland is indeed a seperate language. Even where words and other writings have been preserved, no attempt (that I'm aware of) has been made to preserve the art of usage in this way, except perhaps in the shape of an occasional line in one work or another which is there as much by accident as anything else.

 

For example, just how many under 40's today understand a line such as this:

 

"He tuik is lang lent is he cam reeslin in da awrie, bit da onlee faut he got wis a twatree cloors upoa is neb"

 

R.E Shetlandforwirds - exactly. Who gave them the right to class the Shetland dialect as a just a branch of scots, and to me this shows where they're coming from.

 

Ghostrider, fear not because just yesterday I was speaking with someone who's involved with the new (Shetland)dictionary and it will have a full section dedicated to the old phrases and sayings(the dictionary is currently with the printers).

 

Whether it will contain every phrase kent to dyesel I dunna ken but if the overall effort that's gone into this book is anything to go by it will be better than a poke in the eye.

 

And one of the beauties of this dictionary is that it has been done in sections. As an example, there is an alphabetical list of bird names etc, etc but again, although I haven't seen the work myself or been involved in it I can't over-emphasis the thought and work that appears to have gone into it.

 

[joenorth]

To my mind, we need to think about our tongue in a strictly utilitarian sense. Academic niceties are interesting and very worthwhile, well...within the realm of academia! The point is, in practical terms dialect speakers are pretty close to being bilingual - we all know this. If you "canna knapp", many younger islanders will not understand a substantial proportion of what you say. Of course, we all knapp. As the situation demands, we switch from using one language to another. Cohen, in his anthropology conducted in Whalsa in the eighties, observed that it took Whalsa bairns, on average, much longer to become proficient in written/spoken English than in other areas in the UK. He concluded that this was because they were being taught a language that "was essentially foreign to them" . Depooperit is exactly right in his arguments. Until our tongue is recognised and formalised as a unique and distinctive speech form its decline will continue. Language might live - dialect will die (except in poetry books that our young folk will need to have translated to them)!

 

I think that speech forms, to survive and grow, have to be considered in the contexts in which they exist - a holistic and grounded view, I suppose. They must be used in day- to- day environments. Once they display ownership by the poet and the academic over the everyday person, trouble will loom. In addition, a critical mass of enough language speakers might be required to sustain a tongue. Shetland has a small, no longer isolated population. This also spells trouble.

 

Massive, massive changes in mindset would be needed for our language to live on.

[Malachy]

R.E Shetlandforwirds - exactly. Who gave them the right to class the Shetland dialect as a just a branch of scots, and to me this shows where they're coming from.

 

I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding. It's not Shetland ForWirds job to 'classify' anything, they're just there to promote the dialect. Linguists class Shetland dialect as a branch of Scots. Shetland ForWirds (so far as I know, and I'm not a member so may be wrong) simply accept that linguists are correct in their analysis. It is not offensive or crazy to accept that this dialect belongs to a broader family.

The horror that the suggestion seems to evoke among some Shetlanders is nothing objectively to do with language, it's about identity and politics. Some people don't want Shetland to be a Scots dialect, so they are adamant that it is not a Scots dialect. But it's a rather senseless argument. For instance, I am a unique human being, absolutely different from all other human beings, but I'm not offended if you suggest that I share much (most) of my DNA with lots of other human beings. It doesn't make me less unique. Similarly, Shetland dialect is absolutely unique, with features that are not found anywhere else, and many things that have come from elsewhere, particularly Norn, but it's closest relatives are Scots dialects (indeed, Scots itself can be seen as a family of dialects, since there are so many unique regional variations). These dialects are each, in themselves, also unique.

[DePooperit]

Cohen, in his anthropology conducted in Whalsa in the eighties, observed that it took Whalsa bairns, on average, much longer to become proficient in written/spoken English than in other areas in the UK. He concluded that this was because they were being taught a language that "was essentially foreign to them" . Depooperit is exactly right in his arguments. Until our tongue is recognised and formalised as a unique and distinctive speech form its decline will continue. Language might live - dialect will die (except in poetry books that our young folk will need to have translated to them)!

 

In agreeing with me, I hope you realise that the only reason I can maintain these opinions and survive is because I 'bide Sooth!'

 

The Whalsa example you give seems to me to be good ammunition for the view that dialect damages childrens' education - because 'education' is perceived only in terms of standard English. As long as that is the case, then 'dialect' must be seen as damaging to 'education', because it contradicts standard English. (Remember that, for most people, 'education' is a way of getting a better job.) This could only be overcome if the Shetland tongue were seen as, itself, a form of education.

 

Also, it is arguable that dialect, if it remains as dialect, must always be an inhibition to learning standard English. Because there is no Shetland reference point, you can never say, for example, 'home is English' and 'haem is Shaetlan' because the concept of 'Shaetlan' doesn't exist. 'Haem' is merely a lot of different ways of pronouncing 'home' in 'dialect'. The difference is subtle, but important.

 

Interestingly, the only two people at the dialect conference some years ago who recognised the possibility, let alone the desirability, of bilingual education in Shetland were two young people from the high school. One was an incomer who had learned to speak Shetland, and the other had grown up in Africa with Shetland-speaking parents. On the other hand, as Alex Cluness entered the conference he heard two young people saying 'Hit's dat dialect conference - a lock o shi*e.' I think that speaks for itself.

[DePooperit]

 

Ghostrider, fear not because just yesterday I was speaking with someone who's involved with the new (Shetland)dictionary and it will have a full section dedicated to the old phrases and sayings(the dictionary is currently with the printers).

 

Whether it will contain every phrase kent to dyesel I dunna ken but if the overall effort that's gone into this book is anything to go by it will be better than a poke in the eye.

 

And one of the beauties of this dictionary is that it has been done in sections. As an example, there is an alphabetical list of bird names etc, etc but again, although I haven't seen the work myself or been involved in it I can't over-emphasis the thought and work that appears to have gone into it.

 

 

I'm interested in this, because some time ago I received an e-mail from someone in Shetland talking about what I gathered at that time was an online dictionary. Is this the same one - the one that's associated with Shetlopedia?

 

The person who contacted me then (maybe he's on this forum!) also expressed the opinion that ShetlandForWirds were making the dialect in their own image, or words to that effect. I pointed out, much as Malachy did earlier, that it was an open organisation and anyone could go and put their oar in.

 

The gist of this effort seemed to be a reaction against any form of spelling standardisation - even the broad conventions used by current writers - emphasising rather the amount of different pronunciations that could be gathered from different areas. I did reply, but as I had the opposite point of view the correspondence didn't last long. (Which may have been my fault because I was probably already 'scunnered' of the entire subject.)

 

If this is the same idea - a general collection of different words differently pronounced in different ideas of spelling without any record of where they come from - then I can't see much use for it. Without a technical correspondence between pronunciation and script or record of where the word was gathered it wouldn't even be any archival use. But of course I could be totally wrong.

 

In any case, the fact that such a dictionary seems to have been produced in a spirit of animosity rather than co-operation (and even, dare I say, the fact that I didn't know anything about it, unless the e-mail I received did have something to do with it) demonstrates something about the general situation.

[crofter]

There is a common attitude among young folk in this area tho that its "uncool" and there lies a challenge

 

I wid lik tae big up DePooperit, (an no lik a robbit daek!) Ah'm joost read "Da Liver Drink" fae da emmers o's website - dir even a translation fur da under 40's. Weel wirt a skoit.

 

http://www.wirhoose.co.uk/

[Malachy]

the fact that such a dictionary seems to have been produced in a spirit of animosity rather than co-operation ... demonstrates something about the general situation.

I find it extraordinary that this subject seems to generate such a degree of animosity among people who, you would imagine, would have similar goals in mind. Why is it that people find it so hard to work together?

[joenorth]

It would seem to be common sense to recognise that the speech forms of a small population group will not survive in common use when subjected to the linguistic pressures of a much larger population group, without a formalised, accepted version of their language. Of course this could be achieved -in our democratic society, all that is required is broad agreement! Easily said, but not so easily achieved. As DePooperit explains, we have to acknowledge that this is the central problem.

[upmakk]

The horror that the suggestion seems to evoke among some Shetlanders is nothing objectively to do with language, it's about identity and politics. Some people don't want Shetland to be a Scots dialect, so they are adamant that it is not a Scots dialect. But it's a rather senseless argument. For instance, I am a unique human being, absolutely different from all other human beings, but I'm not offended if you suggest that I share much (most) of my DNA with lots of other human beings. It doesn't make me less unique. Similarly, Shetland dialect is absolutely unique, with features that are not found anywhere else, and many things that have come from elsewhere, particularly Norn, but it's closest relatives are Scots dialects (indeed, Scots itself can be seen as a family of dialects, since there are so many unique regional variations). These dialects are each, in themselves, also unique.

 

Well said. The only thing I'd add is that, in addition to identity and politics, there is the human brain's tendency to think in terms of hierarchies, classifications, sets and suchlike - and then to fall into the trap of thinking that subordination in classification necessarily implies subordination in the real world.

 

It doesn't. The purpose of classification is merely to list together things that are similar and distinguish things which aren't. There's no necessary implication of power in the way the hierarchy is represented. To say that Shetland is a 'subset' of Scots, for example, just tells you that it's one of several variants of Scots, not that it's more or less valuable than any of the others. 'Scots', from that perspective, isn't a master tongue, it's just a convenient label for the group as a whole.

[DePooperit]

the fact that such a dictionary seems to have been produced in a spirit of animosity rather than co-operation ... demonstrates something about the general situation.

I find it extraordinary that this subject seems to generate such a degree of animosity among people who, you would imagine, would have similar goals in mind. Why is it that people find it so hard to work together?

 

Well, firstly the goals might not necessarily be similar and even if they are, the methods of achieving them (or, as I would argue, not achieving them) may not. There are fundamental conceptual difficulties - exacerbated by the fact that nobody actually sees them as conceptual difficulties, which means that they can surface in what could easily be described as mythologies, if not actual prejudices.

 

From my point of view - for example - I have already alluded to the fact that my writing has been used as a bad example, and my nomenclature derided, etc, to the extent that I got so fed up with it I took my website down (at which point I can simply be dismissed - probably accurately! - as 'pleepsit'.) This obviously highlights a conceptual difficulty - though in this case not one that surfaces in Shetland itself, as everyone there seems to be agreed that only non-spelling and the unqualified word 'dialect' are acceptable. (Interestingly, the only person who used the word 'Shaetlan' at the dialect conference was the incomer who had learned to speak it - very well, incidentally. She had obviously picked up on the natural word, as used by traditional speakers, without being sidetracked by the politically correct expression - 'dialect.')

 

More recently, Charles Greig, in the introduction to his Shetland Bible (or whatever) has commented that 'translation from Hebrew or Greek into Shetland dialect doesn't really work.' Unless Charlie has been swotting his Hebrew and Greek ever since he was a room-mate of mine at Uni, I can hardly imagine that he's seriously attempted to do this himself - which means that the only extant example of this process not working is my Guid Unkens (Maybe in this case we can avoid getting distracted into the anti-Christian prejudices which are so rife on Shetlink, which is one of the reasons I rarely visit it nowadays.) The only other possibility I can think of would be my translation of the beginning of the Odyssey. The point here is a bit like Drew Ratter's - that 'dialect' is a medium confined to certain areas, and any attempt to break out of that confinement is derisable.

 

So it's not just a case of co-operation. Any attempt to do anything at all about 'dialect' or 'Shaetlan' or whatever, because it has no reference point in mainstream thought, immediately falls victim to an area characterised by mythologies and prejudices - both internal and external. Part of this is because mainstream thought has never even touched upon minority language issues as it has upon, say, racism and sexism. The result is that minority language issues are associated in the mainstream mind with 'balkanisation', hopeless romanticism, the perceived 'rudeness' of the Welsh for speaking their own language - etc. In other words, with things which are perceived as retrograde, parochial, probably right-wing, and politically incorrect. And as Shetlanders are basically in the cultural mainstream, and have no reference point (as the Welsh and Gaels do) on which to focus the visceral frustration which at least a few people in any society will experience at the demise of their native tongue, it tends to come out, where it does at all, in shall we say, ways which are not necessarily co-operative. The current expressions, I would argue, are in more chaotic and less productive directions than that encouraged by John Graham (who, of course, belonged to the modernist rather than the postmodernist era.)

[joenorth]

Malachy, should Shetlanders take advantage of the turmoil of recent local politics to enact a totalitarian administration in the isles? Just imagine - a Shetland Stalin at the helm with "da wye we spik" close to his heart. He could impose dialect for all (might have a few less desirable tendencies as well, though...)!

 

Seriously, though, the polemics of the Scots/Scandinavinan dyad are immensely destructive, and ultimately irrelevant to the day-to-day use of our tongue. We need to think about how we speak, how we speak today, and how our language can be made relevant to contemporary contexts. Whether my granny was Scottish, my grandad from Yell, or my dad from Jamaica makes no difference. In terms of mindset, Shetlanders are prisoners of their history, and I mean the Scots/Scandinavian debate. However, I do believe that for our language to survive, we need to think of ourselves as Shetlanders first and foremost, neither Scots nor Scandinavian. Language is inextricably woven with sociocultural identity, and, if we're not Shetlanders, how can we have an extant and growing Shetland language?

 

Our history colours our judgement. The "Scotch" lairds were more privileged than the ordinary islanders, and this is within living memory.

I'm the first owner-occupier of my croft, buying it from the estate of a laird(although my family have been on it since before church records began in 1756). The point is that there is a historical context for many islanders' unease with "Scottishness" Of course, this is no longer relevant in any practical sense. In addition, the local Scandinavian romantics gave (and continue to give) islanders a frankly daft alternative historical identity to hark to. DePooperit's appraisal of the influence of the Shetland-based intelligentsia is also very valid. All these intractable standpoints would damage any practical attempts to keep our language alive.

 

Such standpoints, however dearly held, should be put aside in grounded approaches to sustaining and developing our tongue. A poststructural approach to the issues, anyone...?

[Ghostrider]

Malachy, should Shetlanders take advantage of the turmoil of recent local politics to enact a totalitarian administration in the isles? Just imagine - a Shetland Stalin at the helm with "da wye we spik" close to his heart. He could impose dialect for all (might have a few less desirable tendencies as well, though...)!

 

I'm up for it, just so long as I get the Stalin role.

 

Oh, yeah, the undesirable tendencies.....don't get me started on those....

[joenorth]

DePooperit's comments on the lack of consideration in mainstream thought for minority languages are interesting. Indeed, there is a lack of ability to recognise the true extent of the diversity of cultures per se (a hangover from classical anthropology). Consideration of the massive breadth of cultural diversity across even comparatively small geographical areas is a relatively new outlook in the field of cultural studies. In this model, Shetlanders can just be Shetlanders, without being Scots or Scandinavian. In these terms, we can validate our language as having its own, discreet identity and place in the world (if it survives, of course...)

[crofter]

Consideration of the massive breadth of cultural diversity across even comparatively small geographical areas is a relatively new outlook in the field of cultural studies. In this model, Shetlanders can just be Shetlanders, without being Scots or Scandinavian.

 

And also within Shetland itself....