Should Scots language questions be considered in the English language community?

Question

I stumbled across the question What is the meaning of “Many a mickle maks a muckle”? which is a question about a Scots language proverb. The thought occurred to me that although the Scots language is closely related to and somewhat intelligible with English, it is a distinct entity and as such should questions on the Scots language be answered here?

Answer 1

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about the status of the Scots language with respect to English:

Because there are no universally accepted criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, scholars and other interested parties often disagree about the linguistic, historical and social status of Scots and particularly its relationship to English.

Given that even among experts, there is no consensus, and some linguists consider Scots a dialect of English, my vote is to continue treating Scots as on topic.

If there evolves a more acute pain to be addressed, like being inundated with poor-quality or under-researched question on Scots, or a better place to address these questions is launched on SE, we can always reconsider.

As it stands, these questions aren't causing us any trouble, and there's no better home for them, so we might as well keep them.

Answer 2

I don’t see any value in having a general policy either way on this. I would definitely be against a blanket policy against questions about Scots.

As Dan Bron says:

If there evolves a more acute pain to be addressed, like being inundated with poor-quality or under-researched question on Scots, or a better place to address these questions is launched on SE, we can always reconsider.

As it stands, these questions aren't causing us any trouble, and there's no better home for them, so we might as well keep them.

How many questions on Scots, or even just on Scottish English, do we get here? Very few—few enough I think that each can be evaluated on its own merits.

The specific example you cite, What is the meaning of "Many a mickle makes a muckle"?, is I think certainly on-topic. It is about a proverb that is clearly used in English-language contexts, not just by Scots speakers. Four of the six words in the proverb as the OP gives it are clearly English words (despite your alteration of “makes” to “maks” in the title of this question, that's not how the OP spelled the expression, and it’s just your opinion that “the original question spelled the phrase wrongly”). The other two words are attested in dialectal English and have entries in English dictionaries.

This site covers many language varieties aside from standard English; e.g. questions about Shakespearian English and even Old English are on-topic here.

Answer 3

Weighing in late here, but this appears to be Scots:

The Lord’s my herd, I’ll want for nocht,
He gars me tae lie doon
In girsie howes, an syne I’m brocht
Faar wimplin burnies croon.

An fan for ither joys I craik,
An wanner faur frae God,
He airts me, for His ain Name’s sake,
Intil his ain richt road.

Ay, an I gang throwe yon dark glen
Faar waesome shadows faa
He’ll keep near-haun me, and I ken
I’ll hae nae fear ava.

Tho mony faes aroon me staun
His kindness nivver fails;
He spreads my table, an his haun
Fills my cup till it skails.

Een sae, gweed guidin an gweed-gree
Gang wi me ilka day:
And in God’s Hoose faur up on hie
I fain wad bide for aye.

It's fairly obviously related to English: "I'll want for nocht" is "I'll need/lack nothing/nought"; and gang throwe yon dark glen is "go through that dark valley".

But is it English? No. [Of course, it may not actually be Scots either, in which case I'm predicating this answer on the wrong example! If that's so, I'll delete it.] Is it intelligible? Actually, probably not: I know this is Psalm 23, and can work that from the first line, but something like "Een sae, gweed guidin an gweed-gree" in isolation is unintelligible to the point of its being difficult to work out what language it might actually be.

Could a question based on this language be on-topic on ELU? Perhaps, but it's doubtful. Someone asking about the rest of verse 3 is not asking about English. It may be conceivable that a question might be asked about the relationship between gang and go, but would a question about the relationship between the German word gang or ging and the English verb be on topic? I think that's unlikely. And what about a word like skails (overflows)? I'm not sure that has any cognate in English: is scatter related? Again, unlikely. Such questions would need to be very carefully worded to be about English.

I would lean towards Scots being generally off-topic and only exceptionally on-topic. That exception is when the Scots word is very close to its English equivalent, or a Scots expression (like "Many a mickle...") is common in English. And if that's the case, then a dictionary is likely to go a long way to answer a query — so the question is probably still off-topic.

Answer 4

Technically it might be an ethnolect, but it is just a word that was coined to avoid too heated political discussions. While ultimately I believe the decision is for people using it to make.

A 2010 Scottish Government study of "public attitudes towards the Scots language" found that 64% of respondents (around 1,000 individuals being a representative sample of Scotland's adult population) "don't really think of Scots as a language", but it also found that "the most frequent speakers are least likely to agree that it is not a language (58%) and those never speaking Scots most likely to do so (72%)".

Now, aside of the fact that this kind of studies should be treated rather advisory, it unveils the most important aspect of the issue.

I, as a non-native English speaker, have been taught standard British English. That education allowed me to interact with people from variety of countries and consume media created in even bigger number of places. Plethora of American accents and dialects came quite naturally to me, as did South African and Australian. Back then, however, there's no hope I would be able to understand Scots, neither spoken nor written. And on that note: the aforementioned study shows that 72% of Scottish non-Scots speakers think of it as a language, and that is most likely because they cannot understand it!

Finally there is the aspect of cultural identity. From my own backyard the Kashubian and Silesian languages are also topics of heated discussion - members of those communities believe those are languages, and yet that status is not granted them, despite there being only very limited mutual intelligibility, and the reasons are strictly political, verging on unhealthy understanding of "national unity".

The only fair assumption is to treat Scots as a separate language, at least until there is a referendum that would Scottish people determine democratically their stance. I guess we might actually see it happen, should Scotland become independent and be given a chance to legally sort out variety of topics concerning its own identity.

So, to answer the question: Scots language questions should be either separated from English language community, or the name of the community should change to be inclusive of related-but-separate languages.