LL-L: "Mutual comprehension" 20.JUN.2000 (02) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 20.JUN.2000 (02) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at fleimin.demon.co.uk]
Subject: "Mutual comprehension"

> From: R. F. Hahn [sasssisch at yahoo.com]
> Subject: Mutual comprehension

> I would be interested in similar examples where at least one of the
> languages involved is Lowlandic.

Ron,

I can't think of anything between English and Scots as extensive as the
example you gave for LS & German (in fact, I'd think this sort of thing
would be very rare in Scotland too, with Scots speakers being so conversant
with English as well these days), but you may remember we did have one
living example where my continually saying "Nut!" (meaning "Nope!") to John
Tait was interpreted by an (American?) contributor to mean that I kept
calling John a "nut".

One thing that does happen is that if a Scots word isn't used in a locality
and has an English cognate, a Scots speaker will sometimes assume that the
English meaning is intended. For example, the Scots word "gate" (meaning
"road" or "way") is known in our locality but rarely used. When I was a kid
I used to say the Tam O'Shanter and always imagined Burns's opening line
"When chapman billies tak the gate" to mean that they were closing the gate
behind them as they left (as in the Scots expression "tak the door wi ye"),
when in fact it means they were taking to the road.

Now that I bring it up, I do remember the phrase "tak the door wi ye"
occasionally causing puzzlement in people less familiar with the language -
as if they thought you'd just asked them to take the door off its hinges
and make off with it! There are a few other phrases that sometimes cause
this sort of bemusement (though not amongst full-blown Scots speakers),
though I can't seem to recall them just like that.

I could think up a fair number of possible examples that I haven't actually
heard in real life. For example, A Scots speaker would say "Ay, A'm gaun,
A'm gaun!" (meaning "Yes, I'm going, I'm going!"). In theory an English
speaker should take this to mean "I'm gone, I'm gone!", but in practice if
a Scots speaker uses this phrase with an English speaker, it's likely that
he knows the English speaker is conversant enough with Scots not to
misconstrue it. If you want, I bet I could make you up an example better
than the one from your book, but I doubt if it could ever occur in real
life!

Sometimes the possibility of confusion occurs to Scots speakers and they'll
make a joke out of it. Earlier in the year I was talking to my brother
about someone who had had an epileptic fit. Since the incident was long in
the past he chose to interpret my meaning as "epileptic foot" and went
hopping around like the idiot he is. He can be almost as bad as me at
times!

There's an famous English TV comedian (Russ Abbott) who used to do a
wonderful stereotyped Scotsman impersonation, and who also made this
sort of misunderstanding his speciality:

"Bonnie Prince Charlie's comin'?"
"Yes, we'll have to lay out the red carpet for him."
"Here's the carpet tacks. What road is he comin'?"
"I don't know."
"Well, you tack the high road and I'll tack the low road!"

There's another English comedian who's also a Trekkie (Bill Bailey)
who in one of his stand-up routines uses examples from Scots to support his

theory that Scottish people are actually beings from the future. How can
you
say "I'm awa" when you're at home, unless you actually from somewhere
else? I can't make this sound as convincing as he does though!

And of course there are a few eng/sco confusion mondegreens. For
example, when my mother was at school, she used to sing the first line of
"Good King Wenceslas" as "The good king winched his lass last night"
(winched=courted). In fact, the etymology of the word "mondegreen" itself
illustrates
just this sort of eng/sco confusion. It comes from a line in the Scots
ballad
"The Bonny Earl o Moray":

O, they hae slain the Earl o Moray,
And laid him on the green.

Which was heard by English speakers unfamiliar with this use of the
word "green" as:

O, they hae slain the Earl o Moray,
And Lady Mondegreen.

Sorry if none of this is as academic as you'd hoped!

Sandy
http://scotstext.org

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