Please find our Scottish English page here: Scottish English.

It is Burns Night today! Scottish English week comes to an end with a guest post by Janet Gough.

_________________

My sister got married on January 8 at Pollokshields Burgh Hall (1) , on the Sooside (2) of Glasgow. Sláinte, Alison and Colin! The wedding day was brilliant. So much work needed done beforehand to make it so pure dead brilliant but!

As an English incomer to Glasgow 16 years ago, I would have found it slightly difficult to get my grammatical & lexical head around the previous sentence. We’re most of us familiar with the phrase ‘pure dead brilliant’, popularised by Elaine C Smith, and even taken by Prestwick Airport as a marketing slogan. And the sentence ‘makes sense’ to an English speaker, albeit ‘pure’ would not generally function adverbially in non-Scottish English. But what about the grammar of ‘need’? Surely things need doing, not done? Well, not here in Glasgow. Things don’t need doing, sorting, or celebrating, they need done, sorted, & celebrated. There is to my mind something nicely definitive to the use of the past participle here.

And what about ‘but’ – a conjunction at the end of a sentence? When I first heard this usage, I was waiting for the phrase following the ‘but’… But it doesn’t come. ‘But’, at the end of a sentence, is almost impossible to ‘translate’ into standard English. The closest equivalent is probably sentence-final ‘though’ (‘it was pure dead brilliant, though!’)

So Scottish English has its own grammar, as well as its own lexicon. Added to the much-cited impenetrability (to an outsider) of the Glasgow accent, the three elements of different vocabulary, accent and grammar can lead to an impression of a certain harshness, a dourness to Scottish English.

I beg to differ!

When asked to suggest a ‘Scottish’ word, probably most Sassenachs would first come up with ‘wee’. Meaning? Small, of course. But its usage here in Scotland is not confined to the literal sense. ‘Wee’ is scattered liberally in the spoken language not as a meaning-specific adjective, but to soften and add an element of care to what is being said. When I take my feline companion Daisy to the vet’s, for example, she is always referred to not as just ‘the cat’, but as ‘the wee cat’, or ‘wee Daisy’. All animals seen at the veterinary practice – from the smallest pygmy hamster to the hugest great dane – are termed ‘the wee ones’. Perhaps it is not without significance, too, that this is the first word of the famous Burns poem ‘To a Mouse’: the creature addressed is not just small, but also, somehow, cherished.

My Mum, who had travelled up from Yorkshire for the wedding, even caught herself saying that my bit (3) was ‘a wee bit further out’ of Glasgow than she’d expected – she had been in Scotland for just a couple of days, but already found herself catching the idiom. What better demonstration could there be that Scottish English, like the Scottish people, draws you in and makes you welcome?

Notes

1 burgh: town, or equivalent autonomous district (hence ‘Edinburgh’). A burgh hall is a town hall.
2 Sooside: South Side. Glasgow has a South Side, East End and West End. No North Side or North End though!
3 one’s bit: the place where one lives – or in local parlance the place where one stays – to ‘stay‘ somewhere is to have one’s home there

Scottish English week continues with another fantastic guest post, this time about learning Scots by Mairi MacDonald.

________________

Bunker and slitter*. Two new words I’ve learnt recently. I’m not learning a new language, just slowly improving my own. Considering I was brought up in Scotland and I have a Scottish accent, my knowledge of Scottish English or Scots is pretty poor. Many believe that it is a language of its own whilst others believe it is a dialect of English. Whatever the answer, the connection between the two is deep rooted.

There are plenty words I hear frequently but would never use. “Ken”, meaning ‘to know’, has evolved into a slang,  an unthinking tag at the end of every sentence, similar to the English “innit”. I wouldn’t say “bairn” (a baby, child), though I’d expect to hear it while out and about. I do say “aye” and “wee” and sometimes “och” but I’ve never ever heard anyone say “Hoots, mon!”

Scottish English was discouraged at school, apart from a brief spell every January when we’d have to learn a Burns poem. Perhaps the teachers were afraid that when we went out into the wide world other English-speaking people wouldn’t understand us. Perhaps it was a class thing – after all educated people simply don’t say things like “Ah yistae be a nanny but ah’m no’ a nanny noo, eh naw.”**

This past bias against Scots I feel was misplaced. Placed in the right hands, Scots can be a very demanding and creative language – just read anything by Hugh MacDiarmid. Whatever the reasons for this suppression, things have clearly moved on since then; on a visit to my son’s primary school I was pleased to spy an A to Z illustrating Scottish words cheerfully displayed on the walls of the dining room – A is for “aipple” (apple), O for “oxter” (armpit), S for “slater” (woodlouse) etc.

Scottish English stems from our  distinct history and its impact on our language. Take the Scottish pronunciation of mouse (“moose”), house (“hoose”) and out (“oot”). These examples are closer to Old English and other North European languages than standard British English. Partly because of our historic links with Scandinavia and partly because we didn’t have a 1066 and us Northerners missed out on the Normans tweaking our language, at least for a little while. The Scots language began its slow decline with the Union of the Crowns (1603) and gained speed after the Act of Union (1707) where standardised English was introduced as the language of education, law and politics. In spite of this, more old words have survived longer in Scotland than in other parts of the UK and strong regional varieties have persisted.

So it’s worthwhile taking a closer look at Scots. And don’t worry if a face-to-face encounter with the language  leaves you with a blank stare; we’re all students of our own language in one way or another.

___________

*A bunker is a kitchen worktop and slitter is a verb which means ‘to eat or work messily’.
**“I used to work as a nanny but I don’t any more.”

Links
If you want to hear Scots, download a podcast from the Scots Language Centre.
For more on Hugh McDiarmid, see this website.

It’s all about Scottish-English this week. Here is a guest blog by Nick Gillard about English spoken by “Weegies“.

________

I was born in Glasgow (Scotland’s largest city) where English is spoken but not quite as we know it, Jimmy*.

Like Liverpool, (perhaps Glasgow’s closest cousin) over 50% of “Weegies” are Irish Catholic in origin (potato famine refugees) and that means while only a few miles down the M8 from the Capital City, Edinburgh, we could not be more different in the way we speak.

Glasgow instantly challenges you with fiercely abrasive consonants whilst Edinburgh charms and beguiles with the neo-Classical beauty of her modulated vowels (think Miss Jean Brodie in her prime). And it’s not a friendly rivalry either. “Edinburgh isnae bad but Glasgow’s miles better, by the way …”

Above all, Glaswegians make the English language funny. They pride themselves on it. And delight in phrase making and the rhythm of words. It’s no coincidence the Celtic cities of Liverpool, Glasgow and Manchester are all musical ones. You may not understand us though. It can easily confuse and disorientate the first time visitor. It’s not just that the accent is thick. And it is – extremely at times. But it can often escalate into a kind of Celtic (or Rangers) Creole – an impenetrable Gorbals Swahili.

In fact, when I first moved to England – two things struck me immediately. Taxi drivers will not accept Scottish pound notes regardless of how you reason with them. But more to the point, when you do reason with them they do not understand what you are saying. Accent and money were so different that the fundamental structures of life fell apart even before you’d left Kings Cross station.

Scottish national treasure, Stanley Baxter must have had a similar experience. “Parliamo Glasgow” remains a tour de force to this day – rejoicing in the diversity of the English language in a pre-Billy Connolly/Rab C Nesbitt world.

Take a look big man/wee man (delete as appropriate). That’s my patter…

Teach Yourself To Speak Scottish – 4 – Parliamo Glasgow

Footnote:

* When conversing in licensed premises in the city and have temporarily forgotten a person’s name, it is perfectly acceptable vernacular to address them as “Jim or Jimmy” regardless of gender.

Move over Irish-English … It’s time for Scottish- English week! Here is a guest blog post from Vikki Reilly on what it’s like to speak (or should I say weep) Scots.

_______

I cannae help the way I speak. Well, I suppose that’s not really true, I’ll admit to having a ‘telephone voice’ like everyone else. (Which is deeper too. Funny that.) Still, even then, I often have to repeat myself, or correct people. (‘No, not Becky, Vikki … Vikki … with an i … Yer alright, it’s just ma accent.’ Oh, for a pound every time I have that conversation!)

I can help the way I write, though, but, when it’s allowed, I’ll slip into typing how I speak. It’s comfortable, it’s easier; my thoughts seem to make their way to my fingers faster and smoother. Not only that, but I feel people can catch my tone and meaning in a way that isn’t possible in Standard English; punctuation can only take you so far. I refuse to use those smiley faces (not that I criticise those who do!). And some Scots words just seem to mean the word more than the Standard English word. To me, anyway …

‘Did you see that film last night? I wis greetin’ ma eyes out by the end.’

To greet, in Scots, to cry, in Standard English. But to greet means the word so much better, don’t you think? It’s a more emotional word. I can see the tears streaking the cheeks and hear the gulpy breaths. It sounds, OK, I’ll say it, a wetter, snottier word. In a good way. To cry, though, I understand the word, I know what the word signifies, but it seems only that, a signifier, a functional word.

‘Nae offence, but I think he’s a bit glaikit.’

Glaikit, in Scots, gormless, in Standard English. Now, I like the word gormless. I think it expresses what it means very well, I can picture the blank expression, the shiny, empty eyes. But I also think it’s too affectionate and forgiving. What I like about glaikit is the harshness of its sound; you can really get stuck into the k in the middle. It emphasises the stupidity, and articulates the contempt, more effectively.

‘Ugh, that’s clarty.’

Clarty, in Scots, dirty, in Standard English. Like glaikit above, clarty has the harshness, the judgement that dirty doesn’t express. Dirty, to me, is far too polite! I also like how clarty can be made into a noun – a dirty person is a clart.

‘Shoogle it about a bit.’

Shoogle, in Scots, shake, in Standard English. And yet, shoogle is a more specific kind of shake: it’s the gentle shake you give your presents under the tree, or of a key in a difficult lock. It’s a less violent action, although it definitely doesn’t cut it as a rock ’n roll number … shoogle yer tail feather, anyone?

I realise there’s a fair chance I’m absolutely havering (another great one!) here. This is only how I think about language. Scots-English, to me, not only expresses the heart of me, but expresses more than just language, more than these letters on the page. These words, to me, they just sound right. Anyway, I need to stop bletherin’ now, as there is a word limit, and I could go on and on …

Note: There is an email link embedded within this post, please visit this post to email it.