Avoiding the cringe factor of Mock Doric
I find myself in partial agreement with Norman Harper’s contentions in the April Leopard on what he terms Mock-Doric.
Firstly he supplies various instances of pseudo Doric, created simply by spelling the English equivalent differently and with little regard to the principles of Scots grammar. For example he cites ‘fiftie’ for ‘fifty’. Certainly this type of Scotticising or Doricising is questionable.
Scots grammar may cover diminutives, but this is not a diminutive and smacks of the ‘ye olde English tea shoppe’ school of linguistics. Other examples are also somewhat derisory – ‘chocolait’, ‘peencil’, ‘foontain pen’ – rather than accurately phonetic. So far he and I are in agreement.
However, I did find when I carried out some oral history interviews a few years ago with older Gourdon fishermen that phonetic renderings of unique Gurden Scots features were necessary.
For example, the verb ‘do’ is not pronounced either ‘dae’ or ‘dee’, but rather ‘doh’. To transliterate it otherwise would give an inaccurate impression of what was actually said. Not all phonetic renderings are bad.
Norman Harper’s second type of Scots / Doric fraud is more debatable.
For example, he derides ‘wabseit’. Had he rendered it ‘wabsite’ I would find it more than acceptable Scots. Indeed I would count it a positive and sound sign of Scots linguistic health, revealing Scots as a builder language, capable of useful neologisms, of building new words from Scots / English rooots.
‘Wab’ is authentic Scots and the creation of new words simply attests to the dynamism of the language. Compare English morphology – ‘television’ and ‘telephone’ from the Greek. German is a similar builder language with ‘Fernsehapparat’ and ‘Fernsprecher’.
I found this procedure instinctive in the pupils I encountered in my recent research project on their knowledge and use of Scots language. I remember coming across ‘lugrings’ and ‘snawangels’, for example in their creative writing in Scots, with delight. Some neologisms are fun!
However, Mr Harper sounds a timely warning about the cringe factor and about being thrawn in linguistic matters. I agree that mock-Doric must be avoided, and authentic Scots deployed.
Cecilia Craig, celia.craig@btopenworld.com