Scottish English (was: LANGUAGE SUBTAG REGISTRATION FORM (fwd)

Caoimhin O Donnaile caoimhin at smo.uhi.ac.uk
Mon Aug 27 03:15:12 CEST 2007


Lars said:

> >   en-GB - British English
> >   en-US - US English
> 
> Since GB is the ISO 3166-1 code for the United Kingdom, has it 
> occurred that the ISO 3166-2 code GB-EDH (for Edinburgh) might be 
> applicable?

We haven't been talking at all about Edinburgh dialect here, just
Glasgow.  (Edinburgh dialect, by the way, is nowhere near as unique
as Glasgow dialect.)

I reckon that the main use of the tags en-GB and en-US is for the
written language, to distinguish British spelling (colour, neighbour,
centre) from US spelling (color, neighbor, center), and that they
would not form a good basis for spoken language categorisation.
The difference between Scottish Standard English pronunciation and
South of England pronunciation is probably as great as trans-Atlantic
differences.

> Wikipedia talks of Highland English and Glasgow patter, which are two
> variants of Scottish English, both different from the variant spoken
> in Edinburgh.  So should en-scotland cover all three?

en-scotland (Scottish Standard English) would probably cover clear
Highland English and the likes of BBC Scotland newsreaders from either
Glasgow or Edinburgh.  It would certainly not cover Glasgow patter.  
The man in the street in Glasgow would almost certainly be sco-glasgow,
which is very much stronger stuff - the kind of stuff which often
gets given subtitles in England and America.  And the man in the street
in Edinburgh would very likely be sco-edinburgh, if we ever get round to
registering it.

Caoimhín


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