Recently, on one of the Gaelic forums I frequent, someone requested a translation of "To thine own self be true." He wished to get this on a tattoo.

Is this not the most beautiful irony? In Hamlet, Polonius said this to his son, warning him against assuming false airs and pretending to be someone he's not. Yet a man who can't understand Gaelic choses to wear these words, trying to align himself with a language and culture that he is not a part of.

OK, time to admit I was wrong.

My last posting, on the borrowing of words, failed to get to the core of the problems of word borrowing.

The crux of the matter is publishing. As soon as a word comes into our language today it is written down, printed and seen by millions of people. That makes it very hard for the spelling to change. This is the reason we have curious spellings like niche in our language. Of course, this wasn't the situation in the past. After the vikings were expelled from England, it took hundreds of years for the words they left behind to appear in writing. As a result, the original foreign spelling was long forgotten and the words were written as they pronounced them. The pronunciation probably changed too, to better fit the cadences of English.

These problems with borrowing do not only occur in English; this is a current problem in Scots Gaelic and the strong viking influence in the Hebrides makes the two languages quite comparable.

The viking word for hall was halla (as in Valhalla). This was borrowed into Gaelic, but over time the pronunciation changed to better fit Gaelic and became talla. This is due to a process called delinition. (Under certain circumstances an initial T is lenited to the form TH and pronounced like the English H. As this sound cannot occur at the start of a true Gaelic word, this sound was retained for the lenited form and the root form of the word had the delinited T.)

Modern borrowings, however, are taken as close as they can be, eg bhuruca for verruca. This is inappropriate for two reasons:
1) It's a lenited form and should be delenited.
2) The stress in Gaelic words is on the first syllable, whereas the stress in the English verruca is on the second.

No-one wants to engage in artificial language change, quite understandably; languages can and should change of their own accord. However, when we put a newly borrowed term in writing, we are fixing its spelling before it's had time to "bed in" with its new host language. The spelling encodes a pronunciation which is therefore enforced by the use of the dictionary as an authority. By fixing things in an alien form, you force this new form to be accepted as part of the host language. As such, a written borrowing is a form of language change.

We are now at a stage where we understand language change enough to model the changes that have occurred in older borrowings. I concede that consciously applying these models is not a natural form of language, but I contest that it is a naturalistic form of change. If writing borrowed words down is a language change then it must be considered artificial, as language is first and foremost a spoken system.

In the absence of natural language change we must embrace the naturalistic.

Borrowing books, borrowing words

I was doing my semi-regular trawl through the bookshelves of charity shops yesterday, when I stumbled across a book on the "correct" pronunciation of commonly mispronounced words. I didn't buy it, in no small part due to the fact that I pronounce the letter R in many places where it said you shouldn't.

Anyhow, I did have a little flick through it and one example that caught my eye was the word niche. The book duly informed me that the common pronunciation was now neesh, although it used to be nitch.

This illustrates one of the biggest classes of historical mistakes in the development of modern English: inappropriate word borrowing.

Niche is a direct borrowing from French, with the spelling unaltered. But on the face of it, it's unpronouncable. The consonant cluster CH doesn't normally occur inside words unless it's part of TCH -- eg. itchy, ratchet etc. It occurs at the start of a word (chat, change, Charlie). The only words I'm aware of with CH (no T) at the end are sandwich and place-names ending similarly -- Norwich, Harwich etc..

The other problem with niche is that final E. Is it "Magic E" or not -- nih-tch or neye-tch?

Well what is magic E? It's that silent E at the end of a word that changes the sound of a vowel earlier in the word, but there's really no such thing. The rule is a little broader than that. Where the pattern is vowel-consonant-vowel, the first vowel is modified to sound the same as its name, so A goes from ah to ae, E from eh to ee, I from ih to eye etc.. However, where there are two or more consonants between the letter, this change is blocked -- eg to fit becomes fitting to preserve the original sound.

However, is CH really two letters? Linguistically, it's a digraph: two symbols representing one phonetic letter. As CH only occurs without T at the start and end of words, it's not something that we'd normally have to face. Thinking it through logically, words like fishing and without show us that similar digraphs are considered two letters, but the brain doesn't think like that.

Your brain cannot resolve the word niche on first sight against rules learned from other English words. That's why the pronunciation has reverted to neesh: it's a French word with a French spelling, so it only makes sense with the French pronunciation. Unfortunately, linguistic elitists saw fit to borrow the word whole-heartedly -- lock, stock, spelling and pronunciation -- rather than borrowing the pronunciation and writing it as though it was English: neesh.

Say it right first time

I'm putting a lot of money into Polish lessons so that I can do it right. I have to take private lessons -- when you've done a bit of language learning before, classes tend to go too slowly for you. There are so many concepts that I already understand that most English-speakers don't, so I'd just sit there, bored and miserable, as the teacher tried to explain grammatical gender or something basic like that.

I could, of course, learn off my own bat with a book. Why don't I do that? A copy of Teach Yourself Polish or Colloquial Polish, a Polish dictionary and a Polish reference grammar would all come in at the same price as half-a-dozen private lessons.

There is a mistake I commonly make in Gaelic: I drop the second n in urrainn. This is because I'm comfortable enough with the relationship between sounds and letters in Gaelic to write what I say. However, when I started learning to use the term, I wasn't. I learned the term from a book and used it at a conversation circle with a group of other adult learners. I learned the pronunciation wrong, and this has led to misspelling it. Now that I'm aware of this, I'm trying my best to change it, but changing is not just a matter of learning something new -- it means unlearning the mistake and it's really very difficult.

I'm taking Polish lessons because I know that, contrary to the beliefs of some teachers and learners, pronunciation is not a "minor detail" that can be "ironed out" at a later date. I couldn't learn the accent from a book -- I need a person there. My advice to all learners is not to worry too much about written details, but focus on the spoken. Language didn't begin on paper -- it began in people's mouths.

The easiest language to learn.

Dzien dobry.
This week I took my first Polish lesson. Why Polish? Because it may just be the easiest language to learn right now. This may surprise you. Doesn't everyone say that Polish is a difficult language? Yes, they do.

However, my philosophy is fairly simple.

Q. What is the best way to learn a language?
A. Use it every day.

So:
Q. What is the easiest language to learn?
A. One you can use every day.

With such a large Polish population in Scotland at present, that would be Polish.

Do widzenia.

Burns: clues to Scots

Fair fa' yer honest, sonsie face
Great cheiftain o' the pudding-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm:
Weel are ye wordy o' a grace
As lang's my arm.

I've never really been keen on Burns, I always felt he wrote too much in English with Scottish words inserted. His disregard for Scots as an individual language is evident in the title of his anthology: Poems, chiefly in the Scots dialect Given that the history of Scots ended abruptly when James VI ascended to the English throne and moved to London one-hundred and fifty years before Burns' birth, it is hardly Burns' fault. However, Burns is promoted so high above other Scots literary figures that he is assumed by many to be the be-all and end-all of Scots literature.

Ever since I was asked to address the haggis at a Burns Supper, I've found myself pondering the curious final rhyme of the first stanza of Address to a haggis. thairm and arm. Why the English arm as opposed to the Scots airm, which The Concise Scots Dictionary (Abdn Uni press, 1985) lists as the main headword demoting arm to the status of an alternative spelling? It must be assumed that in his day, in Ayrshire at least, the Scots ai was the same as as the English vowel a.

But what was that sound in Burns' time? I recently took a trip by train from Edinburgh to Inverness. As the train pulled into Blair Atholl, I noticed the Gaelic spelling on the platform sign: Blàr Athail. Gaelic was not uncommon in Perthshire -- I have heard that there are still a few elder native speakers further into the glens. I find it unlikely then that the Scots pronunciation could have become much different from its Gaelic source before it was first written down. The modern Gaelic a is much like the a in Aberystwyth, so I am drawn to the conclusion that this is the sound represented by the Scots ai, rather than the sound in words such as dairy, which your average Scot would use when reciting Burns.

So what is the sound of the Scots a? The great question in trying to define a standard spelling for modern Scots has always been how to deal with words like the Scots form of all: is it a', aa or aw? Or indeed can we write it as all, and simply state that the double-L is not pronounced in Scots if it doesn't precede a vowel? I propose that the correct way to phonetically describe this word is with the one letter, a.

We have numerous examples of Old and early Middle English words which even today make this sound with the letter a: was, ball, jaw all were in common usage around the time when Northumbria fell into Scots hands bringing with it the Anglo-Saxon dialects that evolved into the Middle Scots tongue. By the time Scotland and England were united, we can see plenty of new words containing a different a sound, such as the sixteenth century balloon, a borrowed word originating in Italian.

We can also look inside Scotland for evidence. Even today, in the Northeast of Scotland, speakers of Doric have a very different set of vowels from the middle-classes of the lowland cities (such as myself). Just this evening, I was watching a program on Peterhead fishermen. Their a pronunciation fell somewhere in between all and Aberystwyth. We know that it a diverse linguistic environment, people tend towards a norm, which we must assume to be Aberystwyth, not all. Thus it must be that even a hundred years ago, before TV, radio and talking cinema, the Doric accent would have been closer to all than it is today.

We can see even more evidence for this in the name Aberdeen. You may say that this Aber is the same as in Aberystwyth, but this would only be correct insofaras they come either from a common Celtic root, or in that Gaelic borrowed it from an older east coast tongue more closely related to modern Welsh. However, it is extremely unlikely that the modern spelling of Aberdeen is taken from any tongue predating Scots Gaelic in this area, and the Scots Gaelic spelling of Aberdeen is Obar Dheathain. The Scots Gaelic o is pronounced very much like the a in all, so this adds weight to the suggestion that the lowland Scots a is pronounced in such a way.

I am of the belief that in the last hundred years or so, educated people have made the critical error of reading Scots off the page as though the rules of English pronunciation were fixed and unchanging; and any linguist that in English, more than most languages, this is quite definitely not the case. I have been no less guilty than any other for this. I have taken the word faither and pronounced it with the ai of dairy, while when I read the English father aloud, I pronounce it as faither should be pronounced.

But those who would seek to return Scots to active literary life do no better, and still they try to define Scots in terms of English phonology.

The University of the Highlands and Islands give their mission statement in English, Scots, Gaelic, Orcadian and Shetlandic. Below are the English and Scots:

In English:
To establish in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland a collegiate university which will reach the highest standards and play a pivotal role in our educational, economic, social and cultural development.

In Scots:
Ti foond a collegiate university in the Hielands an Islands o Scotland at can growe as guid as the best, an tak foremaist tent to biggin up oor laer an gear, an the fowk an thair tocher.

Throughout history, we appear to have had ou in Scots representing a sound approximating the modern English oo, thus I see no need to change this now, and would suggest that the oos above should be ous.

By defining ourselves in terms of English, we tie ourselves to a language of vast international variety that is in a state of major change. In a hundred years, do we rewrite our language again, or do we let our pronunciation follow the changes in English?

If Scots is worth preserving, it must be able to preserve itself, and also to preserve our identity.

Well seen ye stay yersel

After lunch, I went for a walk up Arthur's Seat to study in the sunshine. I was walking home down Easter Road with two plastic carrier bags with the books and the remnants of my hillside snack when a cheery guy just out of the pub said something to me. I didn't quite catch it. "Sorry, what wiz that?" "Well seen ye stay yersel".

Eh? What? "Yer bags -- ye dae yer ain shoppin." I said we probably wouldn't say it like that in Stirling. After a short exchange, we both went on our way.

On my way down the road I thought about how we would say it in Stirling. "Well seen ye stay on yer ain." But would we? Well, ah wid, but then ah ay kent mair Inglis nor Scots. I think that it would be an anglicism on my part.

Why couldn't I understand such a simple piece of Scots?

First (embarrassingly enough), I didn't immediately recognise the verb "stay" -- he pronounced it with a Scots "ay", rhyming with "aye" (yes) -- so I tried to work it out from the context.

Next, I misunderstood the role of "yersel", trying to interpret it as a true reflexive object, as it would be in something like "prepare yourself". (Oh dear -- very anglocentric of me.) What choice did I have? The only other use of "yersel" I could think of is in a construction such as "Thon Stevie isnae hauf bad on the guitar." "Aye, de ye play yersel?" (english equivalent: "do you play", where extra stress is placed on the word "you") where "yersel" is used to tie to an action already referenced or obvious from the context. We didn't have a shared context, so it couldn't mean that, so I was stuck. Didnae hae a clue whit he wis sayin.

The more I think about it, the more I think my "on yer ain" form is just a translation from English, and the more I feel that "ye stay yersel" is pretty much standard Scots. And the more I fear that my personal variation of Scots has been irreparably Anglicised.