Jennie on Linguistics
Ever since I first learned to speak and read, the study of language has been a passion for me. I feel that I owe a great deal to my mother for explaining new words to me in the context of the words they related to, and some of their historical roots, right from the start. I always saw language as a code, as part of one big system of interwoven traditions of symbolism - as maths, as music, as a pattern-recognition game. Each new language I have learned has given me a greater insight into the big picture. Perhaps I am too eager for my own good, as I tend only to study new languages to a certain point before I become impatient to learn the next one; I lose my fluency quickly, though I remember the structures, and can regain most of my vocabulary after a couple of weeks of frequent conversation in the relevant tongue. Of modern languages, I have only English, Scots, German, French, Russian and a little Spanish, though I can get by in Italian and Croatian, and I've dabbled in Arabic and Finnish. I'm currently learning Swahili, my first language outside the Indo-European group; it's actually proving easier than I had expected, so I think it was a good choice. It's a trading language in origin, so it developed with simplicity in mind. I am still intending to learn Arabic (properly; probably in its Classical form) starting in September, though I have been somewhat distracted by my recent discovery of Mongolian, with its elegant vowel system and the most beautiful script I've ever seen. Books on Mongolian are, however, pretty much impossible to find.
Where archaic languages are concerned, I have Middle English, Old English, Middle Scots, Old Scots, Old Norse, Old Icelandic, a little Old Swedish and Gothic, and a smattering of Ancient Hebrew. Of course, it is rare that I find anyone else with whom I can converse in these tongues, but they give me access to a huge number of fascinating historical documents (and I don't have to rely on other people's dubious translations, such as that offered up alongside the Dead Sea Scrolls at their (partial) recent exhibition here in Glasgow); also, and most importantly, they enable me to better understand the evolution and mechanics of modern languages.
The more languages I know, the easier it is to learn the next one. My area of specialisation is Germanic languages, but I now find myself reaching a point where I feel an increasing need to experiment with languages outside of the Indo-European group altogether. Besides Japanese and Arabic, I find myself drawn to the field of Native American languages, mostly because they are so alien to the Indo-European system - like discussing algebra with Aristotle - and the challenge intrigues me. I have a private project which I work on whenever time allows, tracing the patterns of several word-forms which it seems to me have most likely travelled across the ice (or northern sea), between the European and North American continents, even while the evolution of language on each continent is quite distinct. Obviously this could be of some historical import if I could establish it for certain. That's just one of the possibilities offered by the power of understanding words.
I owe a lot of what I've learned, especially in the field of archaic languages, to the excellent staff at the University of Glasgow's English Language department; especially Jeremy, Kate and Graeme, whose enthusiasm was itself an inspiration. Most of my university experience was far below my expectations - I did not find myself surrounded by intelligent people, I did not meet constant intellectual challenges, I did not encounter much in the way of curiosity and imagination - but the opportunities which opened up to me for the study of language, both tutored and private, were more wonderful than I could ever have hoped. Where throughout my life I had struggled to find linguistics books and similar resources, I was suddenly overwhelmed by them. I am reassured now that a lifetime is far too short to understand more than a tiny fraction of the overall system. If I can do my bit, and make some small contribution, I shall be very happy. Most of all, though, I want to make other people aware of language, of the advantage that understanding it can give and of the worlds of knowledge which it can open up.
I am seeking, on this page, to address a few of the linguistic issues which are commonly raised in (and sometimes as a result of) my presence. In this way I hope to make some aspects of the field more accessible to the layman. As always with my essays, I appreciate feedback, though unfortunately I don't have time to reply to everyone in person.
I am often asked why I persist in referring to Scots as a language, when to many people's understanding it is no more than a dialect, or perhaps only an accent. This debate exists within the scholarly community as well. Personally, I feel very strongly that Scots is a language, and I have carefully considered reasons for that.
The first difficulty, as I see it, is that many people do not understand what Scots is. There is a tendency to confuse it with Scottish Standard English, the dialect of English which is used by most Scottish people in formal situations (we'll leave the Gaelic speaking community aside here, since they're a whole different story again). Neither SSE nor Scots itself underwent a great vowel shift to the extent that other dialects of English did; for this reason they are sometimes seen as backward; I protest that there are sound social reasons for the difference, namely that the Scottish people (with the exception of certain Morningside women who have invented a vowel shift all their own) have not historically been so concerned with social climbing. Anyway, that aside, there is much more to Scots than different pronunciation. There is a vast lexicon and a different syntactical system which seem quite alien to most English speaking people. Scots is spoken by almost all of Scotland's working class, and by a considerable proportion of its middle class, though the latter tend to use it only in informal situations. There are many different dialects within Scots itself, and a word used in one part of the country may not be understood in another; but that happens with any language; in the case of Scots, it is exacerbated by the fact that there has never been an official standardisation of the written form.
Historically, Scots has some roots in common with English, most notably Old Anglian; however, it was subject to a much stronger Norse influence, and to a Gaelic influence which English never had. Scotland was never invaded by the Normans, so Scots lacks the French influence, and the tendency to use French words in an French words in an aspirational manner, which one finds in English. Its words are more often constructed in accordance with Norse patterns, and pronunciation has been heavily influenced by the Gaelic habit of reducing everything to two syllables by dropping the middle ones, which is why it amuses us so much today to hear English tourists try to pronounce things like 'Milngavie'. There are differences in sentence structure and syntax - for instance, a Scot would tend to say "this room needs cleaned" where an English person would say "this room needs cleaning". Where the English mark the gerund with the suffix '-ing', Scots uses '-and', and so forth. These things, to me, constitute a significant linguistic difference.
After Scotland fell under the political sway of the English following the Act of Union, the speaking of Scots was prohibited for some time. It is only in the last two decades that the school system has begun to accept it as a legitimate means of communication; until then, children who spoke Scots at home had to remember to speak English in the classroom or they would be punished for it; at best it was considered 'slang'. Today there is still a strong social stigma attached to it. Many people growing up with Scots as their first language find themselves discriminated against in employment and in the legal system as well as in academia. Scots is a stigmatised language, but it is a language, and despite all attempts to suppress it, it is still thriving.
Contrary to some people's understanding, I do not personally use Scots in online communicatioation. An a deed, tha maist a yis wid'nae ken whit a wis kleppand aboot. I use the occasional Scots word as part of my SSE vocabulary, but, as with any area of communication, I seek to make myself easily understood by the majority of my audience. I use Scots when I am talking to fellow Scots speakers, as I use German when talking to German speakers.
I am often decried in online debate on account of my usage of 'sie' and 'hir' as the nominative and genitive/dative/accusative forms, respectively, of the non gender specific third person personal pronoun in English. In my defence, I assert that I am not a feminist (in as much as this is not a political issue for me); I am a linguist.
As a writer, I have often felt the need for such a pronoun; it cuts out the use of messy forms like he/she or s/he. True, traditional English usage is such that 'he' ought to have a non gender specific application, but in actual practice it can be misleading and create false expectations in the reader. Many generations of linguists have sought to introduce an appropriate 'artificial' pronoun to the language, with various limited degrees of success, but it is only with the arrival of the internet that anything as remarkable as the usage of sie/hir has occurred. Zie/zir also occur in the same context. My own preference for sie/hir is based simply on its greater degree of popularity, but I am sure that in time one form will become standardised while the other disappears, and if necessary I shall be happy to change my usage accordingly. The evolutionary mechanics of language have always favoured a populist approach. Furthermore, a study of historical linguistics shows us that new words crop up where they are needed, and that they survive only where they are felt to be necessary and useful by a significant section of the population. The very fact that the sie/hir forms have emerged on the net, and have become so popular (I see perhaps one in a hundred newsgroup and web page writers using them, which, if you think about it, is representative of a considerable number of people) demonstrates that they are useful, and also that they have the advantage of being memorable and simple to use. Most people encountering them for the first time seem able to figure out what they mean without difficulty.
Since the development of internet communications began, a number of new words have emerged as a result. I suspect that, in time, 'sie' and 'hir' will seem no more remarkable to the average person than, say, 'webpage', 'troll' or 'lart'. They will gradually become a part of common parlance. I am quite comfortable in justifying their grammatical value, and regard their use as being as much my right as is any other standard lexical choice. I'm not trying to play politics, just to be practical.l. If people find them insufferably irritating, they are free to choose not to read what I write (as I might be free to suggest they get out more); I regard those who flame me for using them as being as petty as any other grammar flamer. While I have a certain sympathy for the denizens of alt.possessive.its.has.no.apostrophe, I don't go around pulling people up about such things online, because, frankly, I've got better things to do.
It strikes me that one of the most fascinating linguistic changes taking place due to the influence of the internet is the increasing use of smiley faces ('emoticons') to signify mood. Universally adopted across all the alphabet-based languages which I have encountered online, they mark a vastly important shift in the structure of those languages. They have more in common with punctuation marks such as the question mark and exclamation mark than they do with words, yet nothing quite like them has been seen in the Indo-European language group before.
Some people despise the use of smileys, arguing that it enables people to be lazy in their use of language, that there is then less need to concentrate on the effective use of words. I suspect that people who desire to be lazy will be lazy regardless. One might argue that having at one's disposal a larger vocabulary encourages one to be lazy; it relieves one of the need to apply so much cunning in arranging available words. I see smileys simply as another aspect of vocabulary. I have seen plenty of people produce impressive, eloquent prose in which smileys have also been involved; they can enrich text; they need not detract from it. They clearly fulfil a desired function, or they would never have become so popular so fast. They enable written language to better approximate the subtleties of the spoken language.
Systems similar to the use of smileys have existed within other language groups for as far back as anyone has been able to research them. The ancient mystical languages of the Himalayas, for instance, used colour to the same ends. Early Hassidic languages were known to vary their chosen alphabets for similar reasons. There is nothing in the use of the smiley which cannot be supported by tradition; it is innovative only for Indo-European writers, who might do better to look at the big picture before raising their voices in condemnation.
Of course, the smiley is still in its early stages of development; it has not yet been standardised everywhere, and only three or four forms of it are sufficiently well known to be used cross-culturally. However, the process of standardisation can be seen to be taking place. The popular adoption of new systems is always the critical part of language change. It is too late for linguistic purists to destroy the smiley, and, therefore, it seems like foolishness to me for them to cling to a few more decades of dismissing it and treating it as they have historically treated 'slang'. Why not acknowledge it and get on with things? Change is essential to language. It enriches us, and, as we cannot effectively resist it, we might as well appreciate its beauty.
My latest hobby is scripts; that is, the various characters (pictographs, logographs, syllabaries and alphabets) in which language can be written down. Actually, I've been fascinated by them for some time, but it's really hard to get hold of useful information about them, especially in this country. At any given time I have several undeciphered ancient texts lying around which I mess about with and compare to other samples. It's a fascinating business; one thinks not only in terms of comparison, but also the natural path of strokes across or through the chosen medium, the speed of the writing, the mindset of the writer and the ideas likely to have been most important in the writer's culture.
Scripts present a fascinating counterpart to language groups, overlapping slightly at the edges and sometimes having been imposed by or adopted from distant cultures, usually when the existing culture had no means of writing down its language. Often they are modified, or new versions are invented, to take account of the idiosyncracies of a new language. In combination with spoken language patterns, they convey an enormous quantity of cultural information. I have recently been learning twenty six new scripts, phonemically; it's actually less confusing that way than learning them one at a time; plus, it gives me a better opportunity to compare the structure of their characters and character systems. I have to learn to read and write Arabic this year anyway, if I'm to be on schedule for the next language I plan to get to. If you happen to know of any useful resources (especially online), I should be most grateful.
Last updated 20th July, 2006.