Reminder: Ulster Scots

[Phillips, Addison]

> 
> >> Presently there are two new translations of "Alice's Adventures
> in Wonderland" being prepared. One is in Scots, and uses
> traditional Scots orthography (which has some variation in it to be
> sure). The other is in Ulster Scots, and uses the orthography in
> The Hamely Tongue.

Your primary distinction here appears to be between Scots and Ulster Scots. The orthography appears to be a *secondary* distinction in this case.

> >
> > Is it necessary to distinguish between Ulster Scots and its
> orthography?
> 
> It is necessary to distinguish Ulster Scots orthography from Scots
> orthography.

You miss my point, which is: is it necessary, first, to distinguish Ulster Scots from Scots? And then, if one has made that distinction, is it still necessary to distinguish the orthography?

> 
> > And is that the more important distinction to identify? If you
> were to register "ulster" to mean the dialect, then you could
> register a variant for the orthography (sco-ulster-hamely ??)
> 
> As opposed to sco-ulster- What?
> 

Language subtags are not always "in opposition to" something. They represent distinctions on the primary language. "sco-ulster" would be Ulster Scots. An additional subtag (which may not be necessary), be it '2006ulst' or 'robinson' or 'hamely' or what have you, would represent a particular distinction (an orthographic variation) within that. It isn't necessary to have something particular to distinguish it from (it appears to be in distinction from 'written in an ad hoc manner'). What's more "sco-ulster" could be written in it, but the tag just doesn't say.

If I went to buy "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", the spelling conventions would probably worry me rather less than whether the book were in Ulster Scots (vs. Scots).

Addison