thescotslanguage

[thescotslanguage]

Gid wi wid by Scots Language Centre Via Flickr: This jyner’s van wis seen in Dumfaurlin (‘Dunfermline’) in Fife. A jyner is a body that wirks wi wid. The Inglis for gid wi wid is “good with wood.” Photie taen bi John Macfarlane.

[thescotslanguage]

My queue has run dry once again and I’ve been busy having a minor mental breakdown, so enjoy this post from one if the best Scots blogs on tumblr and happy Burns Night to everyone. I’ll try to be less awful soon.

Back tae the man himsel, I sometimes use the Scots tongue when posting here and on my Facebook page, now and then one of my extended family in Somerset jokingly question what I have posted. Well in 1791 Burns penned a response to a recent review, that criticised a supposed abundance of “obscure language” and “imperfect grammar” in Burns’s poetry, it’s a perfect retort and quite a put down I think you will agree. Nowadays we just call the wankers Grammar Nazis or the like!! 

Ellisland, 1791. Dear Sir: Thou eunuch of language; thou Englishman, who never was south the Tweed; thou servile echo of fashionable barbarisms; thou quack, vending the nostrums of empirical elocution; thou marriage-maker between vowels and consonants, on the Gretna-green of caprice; thou cobler, botching the flimsy socks of bombast oratory; thou blacksmith, hammering the rivets of absurdity; thou butcher, embruing thy hands in the bowels of orthography; thou arch-heretic in pronunciation; thou pitch-pipe of affected emphasis; thou carpenter, mortising the awkward joints of jarring sentences; thou squeaking dissonance of cadence; thou pimp of gender; thou Lyon Herald to silly etymology; thou antipode of grammar; thou executioner of construction; thou brood of the speech-distracting builders of the Tower of Babel; thou lingual confusion worse confounded; thou scape-gallows from the land of syntax; thou scavenger of mood and tense; thou murderous accoucheur of infant learning; thou ignis fatuus, misleading the steps of benighted ignorance; thou pickle-herring in the puppet-show of nonsense; thou faithful recorder of barbarous idiom; thou persecutor of syllabication; thou baleful meteor, foretelling and facilitating the rapid approach of Nox and Erebus. R.B.

[thescotslanguage]

Radge: adj. mad, violently excited, furious, wild

[thescotslanguage]

Siven: n. wild raspberry, (also a venereal disease characterised by raspberry-like sores)

[thescotslanguage]

Hogmanay: the 31st of December, New Year’s Eve dammit I left out the apostrophe in the image

Hope you’re all having a great Hogmanay.

[thescotslanguage]

Gutties: n. rubber-soled gym shoes

[thescotslanguage]

Tant: v. to taunt

[thescotslanguage]

Scag: v. to become aged or rotten

[thescotslanguage]

Hoshen: n. footless or handless leg or arm warmers

[thescotslanguage]

Linder: n. woollen jacket or cardigan

[thescotslanguage]

Chrissenmas: n. Christmas

Also, Merry Christmas to everyone following this weird little blog.

[thescotslanguage]

Cock-a-leekie: n. chicken soup with leeks

[thescotslanguage]

Begunk: v. cheat, deceive, jilt

[thescotslanguage]

Bloit: n. a sudden bowel movement

[thescotslanguage]

Barrikin: n. a small cask or barrel

[thescotslanguage]

Rumgumption: n. common sense, understanding

[thescotslanguage]

Colliebuction: n. a noisy squabble