LL-L "How do you say ...?" 2002.03.27 (06) [E/French]

[Lowlands-L]

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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "How do you say...?"

> From: fr.andreas at juno.com
> Subject: LL-L "How do you say ...?" 2002.03.26 (10) [E]
>
> Bonjour, Sylvain!
>      La langue Appalachienne est une dialecte d'Anglais avec Ecossais
> (ou
> Ecosse-Irlandais), une sorte de melange. Alors "Rivier-du-Loup,
> Bas-Saint-Laurent" veut etre "Wolf River, Lower Saint Lawrence," comme
> la
> meme en Anglais et, je pense, Ecossais aussi. Est-ce-que c'est vrai,
> Sandy et les autres?

In Scots a river would normally be named simply by using
its name, for example "The Forth", "The Clyde", "The Tyne",
"The Tweed", "The Teviot", "The Esk", "The Severn", "The
Danube", "The Mississippi". If the use of the word "river"
is considered necessary for clarity, it would be before the
name, eg, "The River Forth" &c. This doesn't exclude the
possibility of loan-phrases such as "The Mississippi River",
but as I said, using the word "river" at all in the name
would be rare.

This is as opposed to other kinds of bodies of water such
as lochs (Loch Ness, Loch Lochy, Loch Loch) though again
the syntax here suggests direct Gaelic borrowings, as
opposed to "Gareloch", which I guess is Scots syntax; and
streams ("burns") eg "The Davie Burn", "The Kinnessburn",
"The Sprinty Burn", "The Puddle Burn", to name a few I'm
familiar with. As well, a river might be called a "Watter"
("water"), as in "Yowes Watter" that runs through Langholme.

Note, as an aside, that the "Lake of Menteith", sometimes
touted as "the only lake in Scotland", is an erroneous
anglicisation of the Scots "Laich o Menteith" (laich="low").

Anyway, the Scots word for "wolf" is subject to a couple
of phonetic processes (the one in "wool" -> "ool" and the
one in "golf" -> "gowf") which leads to a number of forms
in various dialects: "wowf", "wouf" and "ouf", or indeed
"wolf", and the ultimate translation would simply be "The
Wolf" or more rarely "The River Wolf", or alternatively
"Wolfs Watter". To say "The River o the Wolf" isn't very
natural Scots - that would be deliberately emphasising
the mythic status of the river.

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

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