The Doric

[heilanner]

...If you ask an Aberdonian the way to somewhere he may well say "gang stracht on" (go straight on) which is pure Scots just pronounced differently from other areas.

really? hmm, i always thought we said, "haud gaan", but i guess "ging straicht on" would do just as well. "Ging straicht on" really is just "go straight on" in an accent though. "Haud gaan", which is the real answer you'd get from a Doric speaker, is not.

[unaspenser]

I think that's the thing about Doric. There seem to be a lot of words that are unique to it (I'm thinking of loon and quine as basic examples).

[gilmore]

Thanks for the article link! I went to school in Aberdeen and there was one particular coffee shop I loved to go to because the two ladies who worked there would converse loudly in Doric and I could eavesdrop and try to figure out what they were saying. I think a lot of folks here aren't aware of teh difference between Doric and the Lowland Scots dialects (though several of my linguistics professors disputed that they were actually not mutually intelligible with English and therefore could be classed as seperate languges). Anyway, it's always nice to have a native dialect-speaker to set 'em straight.

Diane

It is said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy.

[gilmore]

I'd actually say that Doric and Scots are either

1) Dialects of English

or

2) Pidgin languages derived from English, Gaelic, Norse languages, etc.

The definition I'd always been given was that dialects are mutually intelligible (i.e. an American can go to Scotland and understand what Scots are saying)... I think it's pretty convincingly a seperate language with Doric... I know there are Doric words I wouldn't get at all if I hadn't been told what they mean.

Some say that English is a dialect of Scots....and they are as correct as those who hold vice versa.

Both Lallans and the language called English derive from one brought to those shores by the same peoples at the same time. For a good if brief summary or the development of Scots, see http://www.scots-online.org/grammar/

[gilmore]

http://www.scotsindependent.org/feat...cots/index.htm is one of my favorite online resources of Scots. For a chuckle or two, click on Scot Wit.