The question o spellin staundarts (I perfer ‘stannerts’, but och) aye comes up. Here the thochts o the Scots Leid Associe (Scots Language Society).
But no awbodie’s wi me..
Maist o’ us wha yaise Scot’s try tae spell oot the leid ( a wurd A’d nivir heard afore A joined this forum) the w’y we heard it frae oor grandparents. Mase’l A flit atween the East an’ West coast fir cadence an’ rhyme. A nivir spoke the Ayrshire Scot’s o’ Burns an’ only occasionally visit Northern Doric. Tae re-translate ma stuff intae a Standard Scot’s, furren tae me wid be like try in’ tae convert it intae Gaelic, a leid wi’ which A hae only a passin’ acquaintance! A Scot’s is, bit it wis nivir nailed doon tae ae’ rigid form, why should it be dae noo?It’s a leid o’ immense expression, perfect fir knockin’ doon pretension, dinni’ imprison it! Liberate its diversity an’ celebrate it!
Got a reply…
But as Derrick McClure seems to suggest in his book, its important to have both a Standard Scots developing over time withj a standard spelling throughout Scotland as well as regional variations. The two should develop in parallel but at the same time intertwining. One day hopefully Scots will develop into a fully fledged national language like Tuscan developed into Standard Italian. A stsndard spelling is crucial for that to happen. Now its really up to Scots speakers, writers etc whether they want to keep a diversity of dialects together with the standard form or whether dialects will eventuall lose out. I hope the former but with languge and cultural developoment you never know.
An A said
Spoke to a Basque activist the other day. In Basque some dialects are mutually incomprehensible (unlike Scots), so they had to develop an artificial standard that everyone learns alongside their dialect. Was thinking how lucky we are with Scots. The differences between our dialects are trivial and we have 200 years of literary Scots on which to base our standard.