WI: The Bible is Translated into Scots

Let's say some early Scottish Presbyterian around the 16th century decides to translate the Bible into vernacular Scots. How would this change Scots' linguistic standing? Would this be able to avert the view that it's basically "English, but with silly words"?
 
Well, in the twentieth century, there was William Lorimer's New Testament--where the only character to speak Sassenach is Satan! :D
 
"In 1513-39 Murdoch Nisbet, associated with a group of Lollards, wrote a Scots translation of the New Testament, working from John Purvey's Wycliffite Bible. However, this work remained unpublished, in manuscript form, and was known only to his family and Bible scholars. It was published by the Scottish Text Society in 1901-5." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible_translations_into_Scots

Anyway, maybe the POD is for John Knox not to have spent so much time in England and acquired the habit of writing in English. Ninian Winzet complained about this: "Gif ye, throw curiositie of novationis, hes forget our auld plane Scottis quhilk your mother lerit you, in tymes cuming I sail wryte to you my mynd in Latin, for I am nocht acquyintit with your Southeroun..." https://books.google.com/books?id=WzDjhuqLxW4C&pg=PA11
 
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Let's say some early Scottish Presbyterian around the 16th century decides to translate the Bible into vernacular Scots. How would this change Scots' linguistic standing? Would this be able to avert the view that it's basically "English, but with silly words"?

Well... sorry to start a "war" on here, but it is "English, but with silly words" just like the difference of any dialect, pidgin, or creole with the "mother tongue". It is not a separate language. Even 42% of "frequent speakers" view it as a dialect and 64% of all Scotish people (based on a poll of 1,000 respondants). Can translating a Bible change that? Probably not, since as the linguist Max Weinreich popularized the saying (from a person in an audience at a lecture)- "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". So even if there's a Bible, even if there's a Scotland that doesn't have a personal union with England, and whose king then turns his back on Scotland and let it go bankrupt from their Panama adventure, and then are forced to into a "real union"- wouldn't Scotish and not a Scots version of English be the language pushed for nationalistic reasons in order to be "different"?
 

I'm not a Scots speaker and none of my family are, but Scots is not a dialect of Modern English. Modern English and Scots are both descended from Middle English, albeit with different influences, and are both members of the Anglo-Frisian branch of West Germanic languages. The reason that most Scots speakers do not view it as a language is because it exists in a continuum with Modern English in modern Scottish speaking patterns, by necessity and for historical reasons. You try comparing Scots in its full state against its Modern English sibling for most of their shared history and they are mutually incomprehensible except when the Scots speaker uses Modern English words. The reason that non-Scots speakers can read Burns' poems is because it is light Scots, intermixed with standard English words. There are no set definitions in linguistics for dialect vs language, not that aren't argued about, but for me personally I can't view things that are mutually incomprehensible in their full form as being dialects of the same language. Venetian and Sardinian are not dialects of Standard Italian, Portuguese is not a dialect of Castilian Spanish and neither are Aragonese, Leonese, or Catalan, and Scots is not a dialect of Modern English. Scottish Vernacular English is a dialect of Modern English, which often utilises Scots words regarded as nonstandard and slang by people judging it against standardised British English, but that is not the same thing.

I'm also suspecting you are not very familiar with languages in the British isles, there not being such a language as 'Scotish', and because you seem to be unfamiliar that Scots was the courtly and legal language of Scotland under the Stuarts before personal union with England. If by Scotish you meant Gaelic or Gallic then no, it would not have been the official language of Scotland, the Stuarts and prior dynasties explicitly undertook campaigns to 'civilize' the Gaelic speaking parts of the Scottish Kingdom. There is a reason why the language is called 'Scots', because that's the equivalent of 'Scottish' in dialects of northern England and Scotland. They already considered it different from English as a language, the same way that Old English speakers distinguished their language from the closely related and highly similar languages of Frankish, Old Dutch, Old Frisian and Old Saxon.
 
Well... sorry to start a "war" on here, but it is "English, but with silly words" just like the difference of any dialect, pidgin, or creole with the "mother tongue". It is not a separate language. Even 42% of "frequent speakers" view it as a dialect and 64% of all Scotish people (based on a poll of 1,000 respondants). Can translating a Bible change that? Probably not, since as the linguist Max Weinreich popularized the saying (from a person in an audience at a lecture)- "A language is a dialect with an army and a navy". So even if there's a Bible, even if there's a Scotland that doesn't have a personal union with England, and whose king then turns his back on Scotland and let it go bankrupt from their Panama adventure, and then are forced to into a "real union"- wouldn't Scotish and not a Scots version of English be the language pushed for nationalistic reasons in order to be "different"?

Actualy I believe that a bible translation into Scotish could mean the difference between a language and a dialect. For example the creation of the Statenbijbel, the Dutch translation of the bible was a major point into creating the Dutch language, while the fact that the lower Saxon speaking people of northern Germany retained the High German language meant that after a while there language became just a German dialect.

To be fair the reason the Dutch Bible was created was because High German differed too much from the Dutch dialects,so there already was a big difference between Dutch and German. Something I am uncertain existed between Scots and English.

That said a bible translation in the 16th or 17th century could easily kickstart a Scot linguistic tradition. Scotland must avoid falling too much into the English sphere of influence though.
 
Scots as a language in the modern day is of course bollocks.
But a bible translation in the 16th century could well contribute towards it developing as a true second standard.
You'd have to get rid of the union of the crowns as well and keep the two seperate though. Which will be tough.
 
I'm not a Scots speaker and none of my family are, but Scots is not a dialect of Modern English. Modern English and Scots are both descended from Middle English, albeit with different influences, and are both members of the Anglo-Frisian branch of West Germanic languages. The reason that most Scots speakers do not view it as a language is because it exists in a continuum with Modern English in modern Scottish speaking patterns, by necessity and for historical reasons. You try comparing Scots in its full state against its Modern English sibling for most of their shared history and they are mutually incomprehensible except when the Scots speaker uses Modern English words. The reason that non-Scots speakers can read Burns' poems is because it is light Scots, intermixed with standard English words. There are no set definitions in linguistics for dialect vs language, not that aren't argued about, but for me personally I can't view things that are mutually incomprehensible in their full form as being dialects of the same language. Venetian and Sardinian are not dialects of Standard Italian, Portuguese is not a dialect of Castilian Spanish and neither are Aragonese, Leonese, or Catalan, and Scots is not a dialect of Modern English. Scottish Vernacular English is a dialect of Modern English, which often utilises Scots words regarded as nonstandard and slang by people judging it against standardised British English, but that is not the same thing.

I'm also suspecting you are not very familiar with languages in the British isles, there not being such a language as 'Scotish', and because you seem to be unfamiliar that Scots was the courtly and legal language of Scotland under the Stuarts before personal union with England. If by Scotish you meant Gaelic or Gallic then no, it would not have been the official language of Scotland, the Stuarts and prior dynasties explicitly undertook campaigns to 'civilize' the Gaelic speaking parts of the Scottish Kingdom. There is a reason why the language is called 'Scots', because that's the equivalent of 'Scottish' in dialects of northern England and Scotland. They already considered it different from English as a language, the same way that Old English speakers distinguished their language from the closely related and highly similar languages of Frankish, Old Dutch, Old Frisian and Old Saxon.

Being descended from Middle English proves it is a dialect and not a separate language... as for being familiar with languages- I created the first comprehensive list of all over 2,500 languages in to their respective family trees ever posted on what is now commonly referred to as the internet. But ok.
 
Being descended from Middle English proves it is a dialect and not a separate language... as for being familiar with languages- I created the first comprehensive list of all over 2,500 languages in to their respective family trees ever posted on what is now commonly referred to as the internet. But ok.

I'd say it could and can be seen as a language, in a somewhat similar manner as Dutch and Afrikaans.

@Pompejus: the Statenbijbel was an important step in the development of Dutch, but the process towards a standard Dutch had already started by then (it can at the least be traced back to the (Valois-)Burgundian era.
 
I'd say it could and can be seen as a language, in a somewhat similar manner as Dutch and Afrikaans.

@Pompejus: the Statenbijbel was an important step in the development of Dutch, but the process towards a standard Dutch had already started by then (it can at the least be traced back to the (Valois-)Burgundian era.

Only if some Dutch people find Afrikaans easier than they do someone from elsewhere in the Netherlands.
 
Being descended from Middle English proves it is a dialect and not a separate language... as for being familiar with languages- I created the first comprehensive list of all over 2,500 languages in to their respective family trees ever posted on what is now commonly referred to as the internet. But ok.

By that logic, Spanish and Portuguese are the same language, or Italian and Sicilian since they respectively descend from the same set of Vulgar Latin. The point is, you gotta draw a line somewhere, and the pre-Great Vowel Shift period is as old, distinct and legitimate a point as any to make a break between these two.
 
Only if some Dutch people find Afrikaans easier than they do someone from elsewhere in the Netherlands.
Actualy I would say that Afrikaans is easier to follow for most Dutch people than(for example) the imburgish dialect. Basicly I can understand Limburgish, because I grew up in Limburg, but most Dutch people can't understand it. Afrikaans though is relatively easy to follow. My parents for example got an Afrikaans speaking guide when they went to South Africa and they were able to understand most he said.

So yes, Afrikaans is easier to understand than several Dutch dialects.

@Pompejus: the Statenbijbel was an important step in the development of Dutch, but the process towards a standard Dutch had already started by then (it can at the least be traced back to the (Valois-)Burgundian era.
Oh true, but I would say the same was true for the Lower Saxon language in Northern Germany. If Northern Germany would have created its own Bible translation, it would have seperated itself from High German. Since it did not (and the Netherlands did) Low German faded away, while Dutch became a seperate language. Sure the Statenbijbel wasn't the only reason it happened (the Netherlands becoming a greatpower helped too), but it was a major contribution.
 
Being descended from Middle English proves it is a dialect and not a separate language... as for being familiar with languages- I created the first comprehensive list of all over 2,500 languages in to their respective family trees ever posted on what is now commonly referred to as the internet. But ok.

I fail to see how being descended from Middle English makes it a dialect rather than its own language. Swedish and Danish are both derived from Old East Norse and still maintain a fair amount of mutual intelligibility and yet are certainly their own languages. Several of the Slavic languages share more mutual intelligibility than standard English and Scots. Truthfully, this is a grey area and there is good scholarship on both sides, although I fall down on the side of 'separate language' (as does the UK government, incidentally, as Scots is recognized as a regional language).

Now, getting back to the main discussion:

August Hermann Francke, one of the German pietist writers of the 17th and early 18th century actually (if I remember correctly) ran a school that helped translate and publish the Bible in many of Europe's smaller vernacular languages such as Slovene. Perhaps this would be a good place to start; if he could publish a Scots translation of the Bible could it possible be adopted by the Presbyterians? This may not be as early as the OP wanted, but would be a good start.

Although, I'm unsure of how much of a change it will make; Scots actually have a pretty rich and varied literary tradition as it was the language of the Scottish court. What really caused Scots to fall as the prestige language was the Act of Union and English becoming the language of prestige and learning. Having an early bible translation adopted by the Presbyterians might go a long way, but you are going to need to find a way so that thinkers and intellectuals continue to use Scots rather than make the transition to English.
 
Actualy I would say that Afrikaans is easier to follow for most Dutch people than(for example) the imburgish dialect. Basicly I can understand Limburgish, because I grew up in Limburg, but most Dutch people can't understand it. Afrikaans though is relatively easy to follow. My parents for example got an Afrikaans speaking guide when they went to South Africa and they were able to understand most he said.

So yes, Afrikaans is easier to understand than several Dutch dialects.

Fair enough. My analogy was wrong then.
I find Scots much much easier than I do some English dialects.
I challenge everyone to comprehend what old school west country is going on about.
 
You try comparing Scots in its full state against its Modern English sibling for most of their shared history and they are mutually incomprehensible except when the Scots speaker uses Modern English words. The reason that non-Scots speakers can read Burns' poems is because it is light Scots, intermixed with standard English words. There are no set definitions in linguistics for dialect vs language, not that aren't argued about, but for me personally I can't view things that are mutually incomprehensible in their full form as being dialects of the same language.

So, no true Scotsman speaks Scots that is comprehensible to outsiders? :p
 
I imagine that translating the Bible quite a few centuries before the modern day, and encouraging the idea that Scots is a language in its own right with less osmosis between Scots and English could go a long way towards it becoming a proper individual language.

If we're calling it a language in it's current form, I'd say part of the problem is a lot of Scots words sound just like the English translation when spoken and are just spelt differently. I spent an hour or so the other day listening to a bunch of different Scottish folk speaking in "Scots" and I could understand everything they were saying perfectly. I struggled at times with the text versions, but if I read it out loud it was easy. Words that are more obviously Scots also seem to slip in to every day use too, such as bairn (which to be fair is also used in Geordie English).
 
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Out of curiosity, how many people today even speak fluent Scots and are literate in it as a first language (i.e. learned Scots before English)? The fact that by your account modern Scots is so easy to pick up from English may actually have helped it survive today since kids today will probably be willing to be more willing to learn it.

Seeing as today all these languages not only trail English in number of speakers but British Sign Language as well, it seems unlikely that simply translating the Bible would have reversed their decline to a significant degree. With England's rise in commercial strength in the early modern era it becomes very useful to know English as a first language, even if the King James bible helped preserve Scots to that point in history, and taking the time to teach the new generation Scots when they are growing up hearing English may not be a luxury the common folk of the time would have.
 
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