Tuesday, November 7, 2017

Say It in Doric

Today our professor gave us a lecture in Doric. By which I mean: He gave a lecture, and the language that he was speaking as he did so was Doric.

Doric is the variety of Scots spoken in this region of Scotland, the Northeast. Scots, in turn, is a language related to English (unlike Gaelic, which is a very different language). I've seen Scots described as a language...or a dialect...it seems to be one of those gray areas where linguists can debate endlessly what constitutes a language and what a dialect. My professor just referred to it as the "vernacular."

This came up when we were in class, working on topics relating to the provision of bilingual English/Gaelic library services in the western parts of Scotland where Gaelic is spoken. And our professor started talking about Scots, and how there hasn't been as much support for maintaining it as there has been for Gaelic. Then it turned out a couple years ago he gave a lecture in Doric (he grew up speaking it, switching between Doric for home and English for school) and he asked if we'd like to hear some of that lecture.

We said YES. (Or at least, I did!)

It was so fascinating. (Both the content of the lecture – about Doric language, literature and culture – and simply the fact of getting to hear so much Doric spoken at a stretch.) I would say I got the gist of pretty much everything he talked about, even if I certainly didn't understand every word, and I'm very pleased about that.

To give you an example of how different Doric is and isn't, here's the title of the talk:

Fa div ye think ye are
Or fit we hiv forgottin tae mine aboot 

(translation: Who do you think you are
Or what we've forgotten to remember)

You can see how it's in some ways recognizable as English or at least English-adjacent, but also has very different vocabulary and pronunciation. ("What" becomes "fit," "when" becomes "fin," "who" becomes "fa," etc. – so there are regular patterns of vowel shifts and such between standard English and Scots, but the overall result ends up looking quite different between the two languages.)

SO COOL! Definitely another thing I would not have gotten to learn about if I'd gone to grad school in Boston.

2 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Nae bad! :-D

      (I'm SO pleased with myself that I finally understand what "fit like" means...still don't know if there's one standard and expected answer, though?)

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