Local lads who have lost their local language
Norman Harper worries about the future of the Doric and I share his anxiety.
Last summer my friend and I were busily cleaning an inscribed well in Glen Tanar when down the track came nine teenage backpackers who stopped beside us for lunch. Interested in our work, they were taking part in their Duke of Edinburgh Award and had come over the hills from Ballater and were going out over the Firmouth to Tarfside.
From their accents I took them to be English, which they quickly denied. Obviously an Edinburgh public school – Fettes or Loretto? Their response dumbfounded me: Alford Academy. Not only not a trace of the Doric, but not even discernable as North-Easters.
Delightful, intelligent youngsters, they left us their names in case we wanted help in future looking after the relics in the glen.
Backtrack a few months: weel-kent fairmer fae Alford, Lewie Reid, cam by the hoose after a day’s sheetin, for a warming cuppa. Sitting round the kitchen table, my Australian son-in-law had the conversation flowing freely over his head for over an hour until Lewie hied aff hame.
“Didn’t understand a word of that,” says Bob. “I thought you said Gaelic was only spoken in the Western Isles, and what is more, you never told me you could speak it so well.”
Two totally different generations, but those Alford teenagers are a credit to the district and just maybe we prefer them as they are, but would it not be grand if they could also preserve the enjoyment of being able to relax and converse in their own so-distinctive local dialect from time to time?
Pierre Fouin,
Milltimber, Aberdeen