Praise Sara Donati!

Originally posted on 20 November, 2004. Please take note that some links may be broken. Thanks.

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I have my own views about Nature's methods, though I feel that it is rather like a beetle giving his opinions upon the Milky Way.

-- The Stark Munro Letters Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Since this is yet another sleepless night, I prowled on the net to see if there is any books that would interest me enough to put it on my book shopping list [which is coming on nicely, thank you very much] and at January Magazine, I stumbled across an interview with historical author Sara Donati. I recognised her name from fellow RT message board poster Jenster's constant praises for Donati's books, so I read the interview. And what I found in middle of the interview nearly had me falling out of the chair:

You have a background that helps with that as well. My academic background is in linguistics so I pay a lot of attention to language issues and I try not to misrepresent those. I think a lot of people who write novels about 18th-century America and England and Scotland tend to misrepresent Scots. They like to think that Highland Scots were Scots speakers when they were Gaelic speakers. A Highland Scot wouldn't necessarily speak Scots at all. If they had a second language it might even be English. What are referring to when you talk about someone speaking Scots? When I'm talking about Scots I'm talking about a variety of English that was spoken in Scotland and was the official language and was the published language of Scotland until about 1750. And then English started to make inroads and replaced it eventually. It's still spoken now. In the lowlands they spoke Scots. In the highlands they spoke Gaelic. And then there was English. So you have Scots as one language, Gaelic as another and some presence of English as a third language. But when you read novels that are set in 18th-century Scotland, you often have highlanders who are represented as Scots speakers when that just is not going to be the case. But it's kind of a fictional license that people take because they think that people don't know the difference. And if it's all in Gaelic you're going to be in trouble, because it's a difficult language.

OMG. This is the first time I've seen on the Net that matches what I have been trying to say all these years. Whenever I tried to explain, I received so many sceptical reactions that I sometimes wondered if I was delusional. So, it is a relief to come across Donati's comments that make - illogically, admittedly - me feel a lot better. Thank you, Ms Donati, wherever you are. ADDITION: I've tracked down her web site. By the look of the book list, the first book is Into the Wilderness, second Dawn on a Distant Shore, and I think third is Lake in the Clouds. Also, in her 'About Me' item, she says she has a PhD in linguistics, which is even better. Judging by her answers above, she richly deserves her PhD. And she appears to be a Farscape fan, too. Respect. She has a weblog, too. Be good, be bad & be safe.