Letter: Scots Babel

I thought Lesley Riddoch's contribution to the debate about Scots (Perspective, 7 March) was probably fairly accurate. Scots is more a way of speaking in a comfortable environment to those within your kin group, or to friends, rather than a medium through which one would address the world.

It seems to have a wide range of similarity to and differences from English, depending upon the region within which it is spoken, with Doric probably being the most divergent from standard English.

However, numerous bits of myth and gossip tell of Scottish folk whose use of their own dialect of Scots has been of help when English has failed, while trying to communicate with speakers of other north-western European languages.

Scots is a tongue which enables a greater degree of understanding to exist with those who speak other Germanic languages such as Flemish or Dutch and Norwegians, due to a commonality of words.

The same has been commented on by former prisoners of war who managed to communicate with their German guards because of their use and understanding of Lallans.

However, www.ayecan.com seems to give examples of Scots which are barely different from English. Surely they could have found some rather more distinctly Scots examples of the language.

Andrew HN Gray

Craiglea Drive

Edinburgh

Further to Ron Greer's comment about Lewis folk who speak Gaelic with a Norwegian-style intonation (Letters, 7 March), I have noticed that Faroese has some features that are reminiscent of Gaelic.

The Gaelic impersonal construction in possessive phrases like "tha leabhar agam" (literally "there is a book at me"), is similar to the Faroese "bkin hj mr" (literally "the book at me", ie my book). No other Scandinavian language has anything like the Faroese "hj" (at) to express possession.

In the realm of pronunciation, the Faroese "rt" is pronounced with a liquid sound in the middle, almost as "rsht". This is not found in any other Scandinavian language, but is a regular feature in Gaelic words like "ceart".

It's not that the Faroese are proto-Gaels, or that the Hebrideans are Vikings in disguise, although some may have Scandinavian ancestry.

Their ancestors inhabited the same North Atlantic world where trading, raiding and mating meant that many or most people would have been to some extent bilingual in Gaelic and Old Norse, with the two languages in constant interaction.

Harry D Watson

Braehead Grove

Edinburgh