Category: Scots (Scots leid)

Neo-eisimeileachd / Unthirldom / Independence

By Simon

As there’s an independence referendum in Scotland today I thought I’d look at a few relevant words in Scottish Gaelic and Scots:

Gàidhlig (Scottish Gaelic) Scots English
reifreann [rʲɛfərʲɛn̪ˠ] referendum referendum
rneo-eisimeileachd [n̪ˠʲɔ eʃɪmələxg] unthirldom independence
neo-eisimeileach [n̪ˠʲɔ eʃɪmələx] unthirlit independent
bhòt [voʰt̪] vote vote

Etymologies
– neo-eisimeileachd: from neo- (un-), from Irish neamh-/neimh-, from Middle Irish nem, from Old Irish neb-, neph-; and eisimeil (dependence, obligation), from Middle Irish esimol [source]

– referendum: from the Latin referendum (“that which must be referred” or lit. “thing brought back”), from referre (to bring or take back), from re- (back) and ferre (carry) [source].

– independent: from in- (not, opposite of) and dependent, from French indépendant, from dépendant, the present participle of dépendre (to hang down; to depend), from Latin dependentem, from dēpendēo (to hang down/from; to depend on) from pēndēre (to droop, to hang (from), to slope, to slant) [source]

– vote: from Latin vōtum (promise, dedication, vow; determination, will, desire; prayer), a form of voveō (I vow/promise; dedicate/devote to a deity; I wish/desire.), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁wogʷʰ-. [source]

Independence in Scots is either independence or unthirldom, a word I found on Spawk. It also appears on Wikipedia, along with unthirlt (independent) in the sentence:

“Scots unthirldom is the poleetical muivement that thinks Scotland shoud poleetical sinder itsel frae the Unitit Kinrick, an become an unthirlt kintra wi ane govrenment an a sovereign pairlament.”

(Scottish independence is the political movement that thinks Scotland should politically separate itself from the United Kingdom, and become an independent country with its own government and a sovereign parliament.)

– unthirldom and unthirlit come from unthirl = land outside the Sucken* or Thirl** of a particular mill; the dues paid to a mill for the grinding of corn grown on land not restricted to it [source]

– unthirlit also means not enslaved or subjugated (to another)

* Sucken [′sʌkən] = the lands of an estate on which there was an obligation to grind corn at a certain mill, or the totality of the tenants of such lands [source]

** Thirl [θɪrl] = To lay under a certain obligation or restriction, specifically in Scots Law: to bind the lands of an estate or their tenants by the terms of lease to have the grain produced on the lands ground at a certain mill, to astrict the grinding of corn [source].

Extreme Polyglottery

By Simon

The Polyglot Gathering in Berlin last week was fantastic and I enjoyed everything about it. The organizers did an excellent job and everything went well, with only minor hitches. Many other people helped things to run smoothly, and gave talks and/or arranged discussions and language practise sessions.

The A&O Hauptbahnhof hostel/hotel where the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin took place in June 2014

Venue
The venue was a huge hostel/hotel near Berlin’s Hauptbahnhof (main station), and not far from famous places like the Reichstag (home of the German parliament) and the Brandenburg Gate. It was equipped with hotel and hostel-style rooms, a dining hall in the basement, a reception area with seating and a games section on the ground floor, and a roof-top bar on the 5th floor. The gathering itself took place mainly in function rooms on the 5th floor, with a large room for the talks and activities and two smaller rooms for discussions and talks. One of the smaller rooms also served as a tea room – Gufujo (owl room in Esperanto) – in the evenings for those looking for somewhere quieter than the bar for a chat. There were also spontaneous outbreaks of polyglottery in other parts of the venue, and outside as well.

The program for the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in June 2014

Program
The program included lectures, talks, discussions, games, and plenty opportunities to practise languages and to talk about language learning, language and languages – or polyglottery as I like to call it. The talks and discussions ran from 9am to 1pm, with two hours for lunch, and from 3-6pm. In most time spots there were two or three things going on at the same time, so you couldn’t go to everything. Fortunately the talks were all videoed and the videos will appear online when they have been edited, so I can watch the ones I missed, and those who weren’t there can watch all the ones that interest them. The program booklet was printed several months before the gathering, so there were some changes, and people filled in empty spots with talks on a variety of language-related topics, and other activities.

The talks I went to include ones on Proto-Indo-European, careers for polyglots, neuroscience and language learning, practising languages in virtual words, Scots and Scottish English, Welsh; and discussions on passive v active learning, and synesthesia; and introductions to Indonesian, Toki Pona and Macedonian. Some talks were quite academic, others were more informal. All were interesting.

On the first evening there was an international culinary festival with food and drink from many different countries. There were polyglot games on the subsequent two evenings, and an international culture evening with songs and poems in many different languages on the final evening. I started it off with a song in Welsh – Lisa Lân, and my Manx/English song about seagulls and chips – Spollagyn son tey / Chips for tea, and finished it with my song Everyday Adventures, which all went down well.

Here’s me singing Lisa Lân and Spollagyn son tey / Chips for tea (videoed by David J. James):

The most impressive contribution was Richard Simcott singing Let it Go from Frozen in some 20 different languages from memory:

Participants
There were some 230 participants there from all over the world ranging in age from teenagers to pensioners. All spoke at least two languages, and many spoke quite a few more – I think the average number of languages spoken there was around four or five, with a number of people who speak ten or more languages. There were plenty of students there who are studying languages, and many other subjects, as well as people who run language-related businesses, or work as translators, writers, journalists, lawyers, engineers, teachers, and many other professions. Whatever our background, we all shared a passion for languages, and were interested in finding out about other peoples, countries and cultures.

A group photo of most of the participants in the Polyglot Gathering in Berlin in June 2014

Highlights
Meeting so many other polyglots and being able to talk in many different languages and about languages and language learning was wonderful. I don’t often get to do this as I only know a few other polyglots where I live, so the gathering was fantastic for me. I didn’t need to suppress or hold back any of my enthusiasm for languages, as I usually do to varying degrees when talking to people who don’t share my passion. Everyone was friendly, interesting, and had different stories to tell, and I now feel like a part of the polyglot community. Before the gathering I had watched videos and read blogs and forum posts, and even commented from time to time, so I was familiar with a number of polyglots with an online presence, but felt that I was kind of on the periphery of the community. Few people recognised me, but many were familiar with Omniglot, and were happy to meet the guy behind it.

I found the talks, discussions and other activities interesting and fun, especially the discussions on synesthesia, and on raising bi/multilingual children – I don’t have any kids, but my niece is being raised bilingually in English and Russian, and quite a few of my friends are raising their kids with two or more languages, especially English and Welsh.

I would recommend this kind of event to anybody interested in languages, and I’m looking forward to the Polyglot Conference in Novi Sad in Serbia in October.

Peelie-wersh & Fankle

By Simon

Peelie-wersh & Fankle – they could be a crime fighting duo, the name of a shop of some kind, or even the name of a band, but are in fact a couple of Scots expressions I came across recently in one of Alexander McCall-Smith’s books. He sprinkles such words in his novels based in Scotland and often doesn’t explain their meaning, saying that it’s obvious. Maybe to someone more familar with Scots, but not always to me. If you didn’t know, what would you think these words meant?

Peelie-wersh [‘pilɪwɛrʃ] means ‘sickly, delicate in constitution, colourless, insipid, nondescript. An example of use: “A peely-wersh young man in braw clothes a wee thing the waur for wear.” from Free Fishers by J. Buchan.

Peelie means ‘thin, emaciated, stunted’, and also appears in the expression, peelie-wally, which means ‘sickly, feeble, pallid, wan, thin and ill-looking; dull, insipid, colourless; a tall, thin, ill-looking person.

Wersh, which is also written wars(c)h(e), wairsche, warish or werch, means sickly, feeble (person); tasteless, insipid (food & drink); dull, uninteresting; lacking vigour, character or passion.

Fankle [faŋkl/faŋl] means to catch in a snare, to trap; to captivate; to tangle, ravel, mix up; to become ravelled or tangled, to catch (on); to move the feet (or hands) uncertainly; to stumble, to fumble. An example of use: “They fankle me try hoo I will, These twa wee bonnie flooers.”

Related words include:

– fankled, fanglet = confused, tangled, uncertain
– fanklin = stumbling, faltering

Sources: Dictionary of the Scots Language and Online Scots Dictionary

A Snell Wind

By Simon

The Scots phrase, a snell wind, appears in one of the books I’m reading at the moment, and as I hadn’t come across it before it mystified me a bit. It’s some kind of wind, but what kind?

According to the OED, snell is a Scots and Northern English word meaning:

1. (of a person) quick in movement or action; prompt, smart, active, strenuous
2. keen-witted, clever, sharp, acute, smart
3. severe, sharp, unsparing
4. (of weather) keen, bitter, severe
5. grievous, heavy, stinging; rigorous; painful
6. shrill, clear-sounding

So it seems that the most likely meaning for a snell wind is a bitter one.

Snell comes from the Middle English snell (quick, fast) from the Old English snel(l), from the Proto-Germanic *snellaz (active, swift, brisk). It is cognate with the German schnell (quick, swift, active), the Italian snello (quick, nimble), the Old French esnel/isnel (snell), and the Occitan isnel/irnel (snell), the Old Norse snjallr (skilful, excellent), the Swedish snäll (nice, kind, kind-hearted, decent, clever, benignant) and the Danish snild (clever) [source].

A related word is snellness (sharpness, keenness).

When I haver

By Simon

In the Proclaimers song I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles), which we often sing in the Bangor ukulele club, the Scots word haver makes several appearances (see the lyrics here), and none of us know what it means. I thought it meant something like to shout, like holler, or to cry.

According to The Online Scots Dictionary, haver [‘he:vər] means:

– n. Nonsense, foolish talk, gossip, chatter.
– v. To talk in a foolish or trivial manner, speak nonsense, to babble, gossip. To make a fuss about nothing, to make a pretence of being busy, to dawdle, to potter about, to saunter, lounge. pt. pp. haivert, haivered. adj. Half-witted.

The OED defines haver as:

1. to talk garrulously and foolishly; to talk nonsense. (Chiefly Sc. and north. dial.)
2. to hesitate, to be slow in deciding. (Orig. Sc. dial. but now in general English use)

Related words include haiverin = babbling chatter; nonsensical gossiping, and haiverel = halfwit; wittless.

There’s another haver, which is listed separately in dictionaries, which means oats and comes from the Middle English haver, from Old Norse hafri (oats), from the Proto-Germanic *habrô (oats), from the Proto-Indo-European *kapro- (goat) [source].

Related words include:

– havermeal = oatmeal, half-ground meal
– haverpoke = a horse’s nosebag

Have you ever havered? Do you have any other words with a similar meaning?

Bidie in

By Simon

This week I discovered the Scots expression bidie in, which refers to someone you live with and are not married to. It is also written bidey-in and bide in, and the plural is bidie ins or bidies in, or similar. The DSL defines bide in as “A person who lives with another without marriage”. The word bide means to remain, stay, live.

English equivalents of this word include cohabitee, cohabiter, common-law spouse/husband/wife and live-in lover. Do you know any others?

If you live with your partner and are not married, how do you refer to them?

I think the equivalent in Swedish, Danish and Norwegian is samboer or sambo, which also means roommate or flatmate [source].

Wirlie

By Simon

In a book I read recently (one of Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 Scotland Street series) I came across a number of Scots words that were unfamiliar to me. One that I particularly like is wirlie, which, according the Dictionary of the Scots Language (DSL), means:

“a place where a field-wall crosses a stream; an opening in a wall to let running water pass through”.

An interesting meaning that I would never have guessed from the word or the context. It is apparently a Shetland word which comes from the Old Norse árhilð (á = river, hlið = an opening or gap in a fence), according to Shetland Words – A dictionary of the Shetland dialect.

If you came across this word, without knowing the above, what would you think it meant?

In some contexts it might be a euphemism for being drunk or confused – he was a bit wirlie.

Are there similar words in any other languages?

Fantoosh puppets

By Simon

I came across the interesting Scots word fantoosh [fan’tuʃ], which is defined by the Online Scots Dictionary as “flashy, ultra-fashionable”, whicle the Dictionary of the Scots Language gives a more detailed definition: “1. Over-dressed, over-ornamented; flashy, showy; ultra-fashionable; and 2. An over-dressed person”.

Related words include fantoosherie (fuss, pretentiousness, swank) and fantooshed (flashily dressed).

This word was apparently coined during the First World War and was influenced by the English dialect word fanty-sheeny (a marionette, showy, fanciful), which comes from the Italian fantoccino (puppet), or from the French fantoche (puppet), or maybe fantoosh comes directly from the French.

According to the Caledonian Mercury, fantoosh is more often used for women than, and is also used for other things, such as clothes, hats, wedding cakes, and it usually carries with it hints of criticism or disapproval.

Are there similar words in other languages?

We No Spik No Whalsa’

By Simon

This is a song from one of the concerts I went to last week at the Shetland Folk Festival. It’s a version of Yolanda Be Cool’s ‘We No Speak Americano‘ by Steven Robertson in Shetland dialect which makes fun of the Whalsay dialect, which people from other parts of Shetland find very funny and/or incomprehensible. I couldn’t understand the bits in Whalsay dialect, but could follow most of the other bits.

He also did versions of songs by Tracy Chapman, Lady Gaga and various others in Shetland dialect, which were hilarious.

There are recordings of people from Whalsay, and other parts of Shetland and Orkney on the Edinburgh University site, and some more on the BBC Voices site.

Slockit

By Simon

I’m currently in Lerwick for the Shetland Folk Festival，and at a concert last night I heard some interesting Shetland dialect being spoken and sung.

One word I particularly liked was slockit, which means ‘gone out, extinguished’. It appears in the title of a tune by Tom Anderson, Da Slockit Light, which he was inspired to write after seeing how many of the houses in his home village at Eshaness were dark. He thought about the people who use to live there and how they have moved away or passed. For me it’s fascinating to hear the stories behind tunes and songs like this.

I also discovered today that there is an online dictionary of Shetland dialect with recordings on shetlanddialect.org.uk. Some other interesting Shetland words I came across there include:

– slurd = small, driving rain
– skutamillaskroo = the game of hide-and-seek played among the cornstacks in the yard
– skurtfoo = an armful. e.g. He cam in wi a skurtfoo o paets for da fire.