A painful admission: since Letter from Breznev, the divide for me, I try to
see Brit films in foreign countries, because the subtitles help (doesn't do
anything for me on the streets of Glasgow). Which leads to a thought: how
about all films being subtitled? I'm imagining for the moment Gone with the
Wind translated into Glaswidgian, but a good western, maybe Red River or
Cheyenne Autumn, would also be interesting.
Mark
At 05:43 PM 5/20/2005, you wrote:
>That Trainspotter Welsh was a hot shot with my daughter when she was 19 -
>and then my god could she cuss a blue streak upsetting her old man (he's a
>poet, huh) that here in San Francisco. The G langwidge took off over the
>ocean, or found its mate, certainly did.
>
>Thanks a lot,
>
>Stephen V
>Blog: http://stephenvincent.durationpress.com
>
>
>
> > <<
> > What were the arguments *against* the acceptance, investigation and
> > use in poetry of any and every variety of Scots language, spoken,
> > written or invented one afternoon down the pub? I have a couple of
> > William Herberts on my bookshelves, and very fine they are too, so I'm
> > acclimatised to a kind of anything-goes approach. Back when anything
> > didn't go, why didn't it?
> >>>
> >
> > Well, Dom, to stick to, out of all the varieties of written and spoken
> Scots
> > ever, specifically what we were up against in Glasgow in the sixties
> was the
> > dismissal of urban Scots speech as "the langwidge o the gutter."
> >
> > Class/urban/"standard language" prejudice -- a pretty lethal mix. Add to
> > which, there wasn't (and isn't) one urban speech in Glasgow -- it's split
> > across class/religion/area/education/generation, perm by 5. Which made
> > Glasgow the obvious place where this would happen, and equally if the
> > argument could be won in Glasgow, the lesson could be extended anywhere.
> >
> > Maybe.
> >
> > People might still think "the langwidge o the gutter", but I don't think
> > anyone would quite say that aloud today. Not just about Glasgow urban
> > speech but any ... Basically, Irvin Welsh, writing later in Edinburgh,
> > benefited from a fight that was fought -- and won -- earlier in Glasgow.
> >
> > Mind you, having said that, and having just decided that the only thing to
> > do with ScotsLanguage is to unsubscribe, I'm glumly becoming aware that
> > possibly I have a slightly rose-tainted view of the whole business.
> >
> > But I'm too old to fight this all over again with a pack of narrow-minded
> > Scots linguistic chauvinists, so I've decided just to give up on this.
> >
> > Simpler.
> >
> > A Somewhat Tired Stone Dormouse
|