No word for the tongue we spoke
Hardly a Leopard passes without one or more references to ‘Doric’, e.g. 12 times in Derrick McClure’s latest page. It also appears in newspapers and some books, and a Doric Festival.
Some may deem it heresy to criticise the use of this word, but I do so unhesitatingly. I’ve had enough of it.
When I was at school at Turriff in the 1930s and 40s, we schoolchildren never used the word, and I never heard it from indigenous folk. We had no word for the tongue we spoke, as is general among indigenous folk elsewhere in the world.
Since then, I have found that those keen to use the word are English speakers or what Aberdeen folk termed ‘panloaf’ speakers. Some were taken aback when I spoke to them in the indigenous tongue, and replied in English.
William Grant and David Murison, stalwart pioneers who produced the monumental Scottish National Dictionary, did not use the word when describing the geographical distribution of Scots dialects. I recall on several occasions visiting David Murison after he retired to the Broch, because he gave me invaluable help while I worked on a book on the place names of upper Deeside. I never heard him use the word when he spoke with me, and indeed he deplored the use of this term.
Adam Watson,
Crathes, Banchory