Category: Scots (Scots leid)

Word of the day – cawl

By Simon

Today’s word, cawl /kaul/, is a Welsh word meaning soup, broth, gruel or a mess.

Cawl is also a traditional Welsh stew made with meat and vegetables. It’s the kind of dish that’s made from whatever is available so the exact ingredients vary, but it often includes lamb and leeks, and is often served with bread and cheese. There a recipe for cawl and more information here.

The word cawl probably comes from the Latin caulis, which means the stalk of a plant, a cabbage stalk or a cabbage. It is related to the Irish cál, the Scottish Gaelic càl, the Cornish caul, the Breton kaol, the German Kohl, the English cole, as in coleslaw, and the Scots kail, all of which mean cabbage. The Welsh word for cabbage is completely different – bresychen.

The Proto-Indo-European root of caulis is *kaw(ǝ)l, which means tubular bone or pipe.

It’s a braw bricht moonlicht nicht

By Simon

Full moon

I went for a walk with some friends last night and one of the things we were talking about was the moon, which was nearly full and very bright. One of my companions suggested that there should be an adjective similar to sunny to describe such a night. He came up with moony, and I couldn’t think of anything better – can you?

I’ve since discovered that full moons have different names in different months. A December full moon like the one tonight, for example, is known as the oak moon in the medieval English calendar, as the cold moon in the Celtic calendar, as the peach moon by the Choctaw, as the snow moon by the Cherokee, and as the bitter moon by the Chinese. More moon names.

By the way, the title of this post is the Scots for ‘It’s a beautiful moonlit night’ and comes from a song by Sir Harry Lauder called Wee Deoch an Doris, which you can hear here. Deoch an Doris comes from the Scottish Gaelic expression ‘deoch an dorais’ – lit. ‘drink of the door’, which means ‘one for the road’ or ‘the parting glass’.

Shaetlan (Shetlandic)

By Simon

I found an interesting article about Shetlandic (Shaetlan) today entitled Shaetlan is Daed – Lang live Dialect or Shetlandic is dead – Long live Dialect.. It’s available both in Shetlandic and English. It raises some interesting points about the current status of Shetlandic, about relationship between languages and dialects, and the difference between linguistics definitions and popular perceptions of dialects.

Shetlandic is a Germanic language/dialect spoken in Shetland, a group of islands to the northeast of Scotland and to the south of the Faroe Islands. It’s a variety of Scots with Norn influence. Norn was a language derived from Old Norse spoken on Shetland, Orkney and in parts of northern Scotland until the 19th century.

Here are a few extracts:

… when I was young we spoke Shaetlan – we needed the word ‘dialect’ only if we were speaking English, when we would usually call it ‘The Shetland Dialect.’ When we were speaking Shaetlan, the distinction between dialect and language didn’t arise – it was an artefact of translation, a distinction which appeared only when you were looking at Shetlandic from an English-language viewpoint. The word ‘dialect’ implies that one language is a left-over scrap of another language. It’s a purely relative term, which becomes relevant only when you are looking at a language from an external viewpoint.

Recently, however, I’ve noticed that an increasing number of people use the word ‘dialect’ to describe the Shetland tongue even when they’re speaking (or writing) Shetlandic.

He goes on to argue that creating a standard spelling system for Shetlandic would be a positive move and would help it to survive. He dismisses claims that such as system would kill off the forms of Shetlandic spoken in different islands; instead people would continue to pronounce words in their own way while writing them in a standard way. Moreover writers would not be forced to give up their idiosyncratic and creative spellings as they claim.

Further information, articles and texts about and/or in Shetlandic are available here.

The mither tongue

By Simon

Moves are afoot in the Scottish Parliament to introduce lessons in Scots in Scotland’s schools, according to an article I found the other day.

The Minister for Schools and Skills, Maureen Watt, thinks that the language of Scots should be used in classrooms. This proposal is part of a new curriculum being published this week which will aim to ensure that “schoolchildren are exposed to Scotland’s literature and the languages of Scotland”. Presumably that would include Scottish Gaelic as well as Scots.

Quite a few of the comments on the article are written in Scots and most are supportive of the idea. There are also those who question whether Scots is a language, an old debate that will probably never be settled conclusively either way.

Another article discusses the role of Scots in schools and gives practical tips for teaching it, and this page is a transcription of a talk, partly in Scots, about Scots in schools. A recording of the talk is also available.

Word of the day – haiku

By Simon

the word haiku in Japanese kanjiAs I’m sure many of you know, haiku (俳句) are short Japanese poems made of of 17 syllables usually in 3 lines of 5, 7 and 5 syllables. The only Japanese haiku I can remember is:

古池や　(furu ike ya)
蛙飛びこむ　(kawazu tobikomu)
水の音 (mizu no oto)

An old pond
a frog jumps in
splash!

There are many other English versions of this famous haiku by Matsuo Bashō (松尾芭蕉) here. It’s amazing the number of different ways such a seemingly simple poem can be translated.

Haiku are not only written in Japanese. Non-Japanese haiku don’t always have exactly 17 syllables, but they usually a similar structure to the Japanese ones. Here are a few examples I came across recently in Scots:

Reid cluds lemin
at keek-o-day – refleckit
in the cray glaur

Red clouds glowing
at sunrise – reflected
in the pigsty mud

Hauf-road up the glen
a daurk wee lochan –
a cran tentie

Halfway up the glen
a dark little loch –
a heron watchful

Birlin doon
the rowth o gean blume
taigles a bummer

Swirling down
the plenteous cherry blossom
delays a bee

Do you know of any haiku in other languages? Or have you written any yourself?

Smilin like a bylt haddie

By Simon

I hope you’ll be sae cantie as a sou amang glaur (as happy as a pig in the mud) with today’s selection of Scots idioms, which I found on Wir Ain Lied, An Innin tae Modern Scots (An Introduction to Modern Scots). As you may have noticed, A hae an ee til (I have a liking for) idioms, and I hope you’ll be smilin like a bylt haddie (smiling like a boiled haddock) at some of the idioms here.

So tak tent (pay attention) but ye needna fash yer thoum (you needn’t worry) about understanding them as I’ll provide translations. So let’s get on wi the crack (get on with the conversation) and make sure we don’t spik pan loaf (speak with an affected English accent). If you’re short o the Greek (stuck for words) don’t tyne the heid (lose your temper), but why not birl the wulkies (turn somersault)? So let’s caw cannie (proceed carefully) or somebody might cowp wir hurl (upset our plans). Mony wirds, muckle drouth (much talking makes one thirsty), so maybe it’s time to cock the wee finger (have a tipple/drink) but be sure you don’t droun the miller (put too much water in the whisky). That’s quite eneuch (enough) for now, I think.

You can hear recordings of some of these idioms here.

Word of the day – dreich

By Simon

dreich, adjective = cold, wet, dismal, dull, bleak, misearable, dreary, overcast, drizzling

Origin: from Middle English dreig, drih (enduring), possibly from Old English drēog. Related to the Old Norse drjugr – lasting.

Examples of usage: It’s gey dreich the day (It’s very dismal today). Which it was, in Brighton at least.

It can also mean lang, borin and uninterestin. In the auld days, whan services in the kirk gaed on for oors and oors, ye micht hae fund the sermons a bittie dreich.
It can also mean long, boring and uninteresting. In the old day, when services in the church went on for hours and hours, you might have found the sermons a bit boring.

This is one of the many wonderful Scots words for describing the weather. It doesn’t always rain in Scotland, but you certainly have plenty of opportunities to use this word. On all but one of my many holidays in Scotland it has rained every day or most days. The only rainless holiday was a wonderful trip to the Inner and Outer Hebrides in September 1996.

A few other Scots weather words include: mochie – warm and damp; rumballiach – tempestuous; gandiegow – a squall or heavy shower, and smirr – light rain. The idea that Eskimos (Inuit) have many words for snow is a myth, but the Scots certainly have many words and phrases to describe wet stuff falling from the sky.

Sources:
http://www.rampantscotland.com/parliamo/blparliamo_weather.htm
http://www.scuilwab.org.uk/WirdOTheMonth/Feb2004.htm