Och, don't succumb to the Sassenach's tongue: The Scots have held on to Hogmanay and are battling for devolution, but their language is being taken over by Little England, says Gerald Quin

The onward surge of American English may cause Little Englanders to rend their garments, but they should spare a thought for the Scots. The linguistic differences that once helped to define their separateness from the English are steadily being obliterated, as Scotland succumbs to the deadly contagion of galloping Anglicisation.

Over the past quarter century Scots, including many in the media, have increasingly abandoned modern Scottish usage and acceptable argot in favour of standard English usage and the English demotic. I am not arguing that Scottish English should be re-established as the distinct language it once was; nor, only, that the couthier forms of Scottish speech should be preserved as a colourful supplement to English. The point is that the Scots, like the Irish, Americans, Canadians and Australians, use - or used to use - the English language in ways quite distinct from the English.

Scottish English is at least as different from so-called 'British English' as American English, and has international resonances extending beyond Scotland's historical links with France. Yet the Scots have offered little resistance to the Anglicising influence. Where the English in the Fifties railed against Americanisation and the French sustain an academy to repel franglais, the general rule for many Scots appears to be eager capitulation.

Shortleats become shortlists, greengrocers oust fruiterers, coups (pronounced 'cowps') are gentrified into effete-

sounding 'tips' and, as Santa Claus is elbowed aside by Father Christmas, fifth- year pupils are redefined as fifth formers and rones as guttering.

What cringe factor is it that makes economics correspondents eschew the native 'burroo', with its cheerful, Glaswegian ring of defiance, in favour of the defeated, downbeat and dolorous English 'dole'? A similar imperative to avoid what is deemed vulgar converts plunkers into truants, annual 'shows' into 'funfairs' and housing 'schemes' into 'estates', even though English and Scottish journalists alike happily repeated a US usage with an obvious Scottish affinity when reporting a royal visit to a housing 'project' in

Detroit.

More astonishing still, in view of the Roman Law affinities between Scotland and the Continent, is the unanimity with which the Scottish media have reported accusations of 'manslaughter' in Belgium and France when they could have offered the Scottish charge of culpable homicide as a clearer translation of 'homicide involontaire'.

There is, similarly, a tedious inevitability about the way Scotland's weekly newspapers deprive town-twinning burgermeisters and maires of their perfectly comprehensible titles. It would be a touch eccentric to call them 'provosts', but it is just as absurd to Anglicise them into 'mayors'.

Here and there, though, welcome pockets of resistance hoist a colloquial Saltire. If the weekend 'long lie' has succumbed in the parlance of some Scottish broadcasters to the English 'lie-in' and lobster 'creels' are sometimes crassly described as 'pots', it is heartening to note industrious Chinese caterers announcing 'carry-

outs' rather than 'take-aways', while the old word 'flesher' (butcher) retains a toehold in late 20th-century Scottish

co-ops.

It is equally pleasing to see committee conveners (fashionably non-sexist) making a comeback in the vocabulary of municipal reporters. And if Scottish banks were to revive the title of 'agent', evoking a more go-getting image than that of a grey manager immured in an office, they might well find it copied world- wide, like the now ubiquitous design of the Scottish police bunnet.

The current Anglophone blitzkrieg would be less irksome if there were even a modicum of vernacular interchange across the Tweed and Solway Firth of the kind that bridges the North Channel. A Northern Ireland visitor accustomed, like the Scots, to going for 'the messages', would not have shared the incomprehension of an Englishwoman when confronted by a Department of Transport edict some years ago banning 'message baskets' from seats. 'What's a message basket?' asked the innocent stranger. 'Message baskets,' declaimed the conductress in the withering tones reserved by schoolteachers for particularly backward pupils, 'are whit you cairry your messages in]'

As most Scots are aware, French influences account for much Scottish vocabulary, even if many words such as ashet (assiette) and chaumer (chaumiere) no longer look particularly French. Less well known, however, is the degree to which Scotland shares, or used to share, idiom with North America.

The past participle 'gotten' was once perfectly good Scots, employed by such eminently literate people as Mary, Queen of Scots, and Robert Burns. And the American habit of using 'in back of' instead of 'behind' has echoes in Scotland in relation to time and place.

It is a touch irritating therefore to hear network luminaries attempt to 'explain' differences between 'Britain' and North America in such matters as Hallowe'en customs, or to be told that Americans have school janitors while 'the British' have caretakers.

Most Scottish communicators have dutifully abandoned the Scoto-North American meanings of 'public school' and 'subway' for more insular English definitions, while acquiescing in the victory of England's jarring 'town centre' over earlier usages. Those Scots who used to go 'down the town' were never confused across the pond by 'the downtown area'.

But the ultimate, boak-inducing triumph of cultural imperialism has been the manner in which a predominantly Main Street country has been persuaded to echo the High Streeting mantra chanted by London's economic gurus. The only reason is that our English neighbours have decided that Main Street evokes Americana while High Street is presumed to be quintessentially British. Given a five to one ratio in favour of the former, a Main Street cliche would be more appropriate in Scotland, if no more original.

At a time when the Scots are reasserting their national identity, it is an unfortunate paradox that the cosmopolitan culture of Caledonia is in danger of being overwhelmed by a determinedly insular one. It has been said that England and America are two countries separated by a single language. Would that Scotland could say the same.