<div style="text-align: center; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">===============================================<br>L O W L A N D S - L - 21 February 2010 - Volume 07<br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><span style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);"><a href="mailto:lowlands.list@gmail.com">lowlands.list@gmail.com</a> - <a href="http://lowlands-l.net/">http://lowlands-l.net/</a></span><br style="color: rgb(102, 102, 102);">
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===============================================<br></div><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">From: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI"><span class="gD" style="color: rgb(0, 104, 28);">Tom Mc Rae</span> <span class="go"><<a href="mailto:thomas.mcrae@bigpond.com">thomas.mcrae@bigpond.com</a>></span></span><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">Subject: </span><span style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="gI">LL-Linguistics<br><br></span><meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"><meta name="ProgId" content="Word.Document"><meta name="Generator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><meta name="Originator" content="Microsoft Word 11"><link style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" rel="File-List" href="file:///C:%5CDOCUME%7E1%5CRon%5CLOCALS%7E1%5CTemp%5Cmsohtml1%5C02%5Cclip_filelist.xml"><style>
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<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Yet another
Glasgwegian decrying Edinburgh's
cultured population.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Ur Ye
awright Pals </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Kevin
McKenna</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Sunday
February 21 2010</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">The
Observer</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/kevin-mckenna-scotland-language" target="_blank">http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/feb/21/kevin-mckenna-scotland-language</a></span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In a Glasgow tavern of an
afternoon and evening there are two topics always guaranteed to rattle the
synapses after the third Bacardi chaser: to what extent did the great European
vowel shift of the late 14th century [<a href="http://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm" target="_blank">http://www.englishclub.com/english-language-history.htm</a>"
title="]affect the Scots language? And if Johnny Rep [<a href="http://www.world-football-legends.co.uk/rep.php" target="_blank">http://www.world-football-legends.co.uk/rep.php</a>"
title="] hadn't scored for Holland
immediately after Archie Gemmill's Cordoba
waltz in 1978 [<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1axsnMRbbo" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1axsnMRbbo</a>"
title="]could we have scored a fourth and qualified?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">But it's
that old chestnut, the vowel shift, which most often divides opinion and never
more so than last week. For it was then that the world's first-ever translator
of the Glaswegian dialect started his new job for an international language
agency [<a href="http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Ah39m-a-real--master.6074272.jp" target="_blank">http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/news/Ah39m-a-real--master.6074272.jp</a>"
title="]. The new Glaswegianator wasted little time touring bingo halls,
taxi ranks and factory floors for, though he possesses a formidable knowledge
of the west of Scotland
dialect, there can be no room for complacency. This is a language that is in a
constant state of metamorphosis.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In the
interests of journalistic ethics I should declare an interest here. I was one
of the many who applied for this position and didn't get an interview. Either
my CV was lost in the post or they decided that my seven years working in Edinburgh must have
contaminated my pure Glaswegianish to an irreparable degree. If so, then I have
been harshly treated. For in those years that I toiled in Lothian's capital I
found myself almost compelled to alter my registers of speech quite radically.
Instead of shortening my vowels and curbing my glottal instincts to fit in with
fey Morningside, I discovered that my accent was becoming coarser rather than
softer.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">As one of
my Edinburgh
friends put it: "It's as if you are paranoid about turning into one of us,
Ken." I was too polite to state the bleedin' obvious. That so long as I
kept buying rounds of drinks in the pub there was little danger of that
actually occurring.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Thus I
peppered my conversation with exaggerated phraseology such as: "Howzit
gaun?"; "Geeza brek"; and "Nae bother, big man." Even
when I was addressing a lady. Often this could lead to distressing scenes.
There were references to chinas and banjos even when the chat was not of country
and western music or matters of the Orient.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">When I look
back upon this period of my life I must have sounded like Billy Connolly [<a href="http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0175262/" target="_blank">http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0175262/</a>"
title="] on temazepam. I was becoming a professional Glaswegian and
self-appointed cultural ambassador for my great city. It wiznae real, so it
wiznae. See what I mean? I found myself nightly studying the canon and oeuvre
of Bud Neill, [<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Neill" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bud_Neill</a>"
title="] the great Glasgow
humorist and autodidact. Neil's immortal appreciation of fiery-haired maidens ?
"Ah love rid herr. Rid herr's rerr" ? I would intone to myself until
sleep's silvery wraiths enfolded me and gave me release.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Yet
curiously, on my return to the city of my birth, my speech patterns returned to
normal and now there may only be fleeting references to "pure dynamite, as
a matterafact" and "jist gonnae no".</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Obviously,
everyone knows that the Great Vowel Shift irrevocably transformed the English
language, forming a cultural and linguistic bridge between Middle English and
Modern English. And that it was probably occasioned by a mass exodus of
northerners to the south-east of England following the Black Death.
Yet I believe that the Scottish government ought to encourage research into
what some Sauchiehall Street
linguists are already calling The Great Glaswegian Glottal Stop Matrix.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">In particular,
they may wish to focus on how this waspish patois has become a badge of
identity for those of us born in the shadow of the Clyde.
And how it has beautifully mutated into Punjabi, Sino, Hispanic and Italo
Glaswegianish. Thus making this city the most inclusive and diverse in Europe. By the way?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Indeed,
each of Scotland's
main dialects are dynamic, ever-changing organisms of beguiling beauty. I am
always mesmerised by the way a sentence, uttered by a citizen of Leith, wanders
desultorily through peaks and troughs before seemingly always ending with a
question mark. Or how Aberdeen taxi drivers,
once they have established you are from the west, lapse gently into a wondrous
tour of the Doric that is as inscrutable and precious as the cadences of Kathmandu mountain goatherds.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">And how
will I ever forget one night in Turin with a company of Dundonian football fans
who were sparkled with Special Brew and whose verbal cantrips were taking
vowels to places none had ever previously visited?</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif; margin-left: 40px;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">If you have
any questions about this email, please contact the <a href="http://guardian.co.uk/" target="_blank">guardian.co.uk</a> user help
desk: <a href="mailto:userhelp@guardian.co.uk" target="_blank">userhelp@guardian.co.uk</a>.</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"><a href="http://guardian.co.uk/" target="_blank">guardian.co.uk</a> Copyright
(c) Guardian News and Media Limited. 2010</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Registered
in England and Wales No.
908396</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;">Registered
office: Number 1 Scott Place,
Manchester M3 3GG</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; color: black;">Best
Regards<br>
Tom Mc Rae<br>
Brisbane Australia<br>
An honest man's the noblest work of God (Robert Burns)</span></p>
<p style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>
<br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;"><br style="font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">
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