Anent the Scots Leid

Notes

by James Graham

1. For those who are as intrigued by words as I am, here’s a lengthy but fascinating footnote. The everyday use of ‘rake’ in Scots refers to looking for something among a whole lot of other stuff, say in a drawer; you rake with your fingers to try to turn up the thing you’re looking for. The Scottish National Dictionary gives this meaning, but also the meaning ‘to look into, to investigate’.

On Gaelic websites, ‘Search’ is ‘Rannsaich’, pronounced ‘ransach’ or ‘ransack’ if you can’t manage the ‘ch’.

The Gaelic and English words have the same Old Norse origin in rannsaka, literally a house search. It’s not hard to imagine what a bunch of Vikings just off the longboat meant by a ‘house search’. In these more civilised times we can all rannsaich the Internet for information — yet another word for Google.

The word steid is not far removed from ‘stead’ as in ‘homestead’. In Scots usage, however, it tends to mean a site on which a building is to be erected.

Cairt is related to the ‘cart’ in ‘cartography’, and to ‘chart’. The English and Scots words have their common root in Latin carta, a sheet of paper or parchment. But for a sheet of paper with roads, rivers and towns marked on it, English has used the word ‘map’ from Latin mappa, originally meaning a printed or painted cloth such as a towel or napkin.

Airtins is the least recognisable word, as it derives from the Gaelic for ‘quarter’, i.e. compass point. In Scots it means a direction, or a route taken on a journey.

2. How different are languages? Some languages are cognate: much of their vocabulary is from the same origin. English is basically a Germanic language, with of course many words taken from Latin, Greek and a host of other languages. So, as far as simpler words are concerned, we can guess that Mann is ‘man’, and Maus is ‘mouse’ and even that Strasse is “street’ though the Dutch straat is closer. So we have to say that English, Dutch and German have words in common, any variations in spelling and pronunciation being not enough to prevent us recognising that they are the same words.

English: ‘My house is next to the church.’ Dutch: Mijn huis is naast de kerk. German: Mein Haus ist neben der Kirche. Scots: My hoose is neist tae the kirk. A family of languages?

Editor's note: Yes, the same Germanic “family” in different households. Scots, English, Dutch and German all belong to the West Germanic group. Scots and English are in the Anglo-Frisian branch; Dutch, in the western Low Franconian. Old Norse and the Scandinavian languages generally are “cousin” languages in the North Germanic group. The East Germanic languages (notably Gothic) are extinct. There is no South Germanic.

3. Burns’s language in this song looks more English than it sounds. All the best singers of Burns songs give words their characteristic Scottish pronunciation, e.g. (in the first verse) simmer, pleesant, flooers, watter. ‘O’er’ is pronounced ‘ower’ rhyming with ‘tower’.

In ‘Address to the Deil,’ note especially the sound of the rhymes nicht, licht, fricht, sicht (spelt night, light, fright, sight). The vowel sounds in these words are also different from English — not long ‘i’ as in ‘bite’, but short ‘i’ as in ‘bit’.