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Shaetlan Wird o' Da Day


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Guest Anonymous
^^ "Wint is geen, an waur is athin is place".

 

A wry take on "progress" by my late graundmidder 20+ years ago.

 

Interestin - 'wint' as a noun. On some o da things at I wrat i da past, I wrat aboot 'aald wints' or 'haemaboot wints' meanin 'old customs' or 'local customs'. An I tink 'wint an laer' meanin 'custom and education.'

 

Fast dying out now, but "ill wint", meaning "bad habit", was in common usage round here not long ago.

my graandmidder med mention at i hed "ill wint wyes" is a teenager, did tü

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Hoodie Maa = Black-headed Gull

 

Danish 'Hætte-måge' Hætte = Cap (referring to the black part that looks like the bird is wearing a Cap :? )

 

But what does Shetland 'Hoodie' referr to? The English 'headed' or the Danish 'hætte=Cap'?

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Töming(is that the right o?), pouring with rain.

 

Faroese, tómur = empty.

 

So, the rain is being emptied on us - töming.

 

:D

 

In mainland Scots we say teeming - seems like it comes from the same root?

 

Are you from the North East?

 

The word 'teeming' is actually an English word, meaning to 'swarm' or similar, from an Anglo Saxon word meaning to produce. But the English also use it for 'teeming rain', which might be a just a coincidence with the Scots usage, or might show some influence from the same Norse origin.

 

The underlying Scots form is 'tuim' (sometimes spelt 'tume' or, confusingly, 'toom') meaning empty, from Old Norse tómr, perhaps via Middle English tome, etc.

 

According to the regular variants of the UI vowel in Scotland (as with 'guid' for example) this is pronounced 'ø' in Shetland, 'ai' or 'i' (taim, tim) in Central dialects, and 'ee' (teem) in the North East. (compare 'gød', 'gid', 'gweed'). So in the North East 'teem' would be the regular pronunciation of the Scots form, but in other parts of Scotland, 'teem' is more likely to be the English word as the Scots form in these parts would be pronounced differently.

 

The fact that this seems so obscure is owing, again, to the fact that the Scots, like the Shetlanders, refuse to spell their language as a whole. If it were spelt 'tuim' and everyone knew how to pronounce that spelling in their own district, it would be obvious to everybody.

 

I was once at a Burns supper in the North East where - typically - the guy who read the Address to the Haggis (as the address to the Haggis has to be read by someone important he was, of course, one of the very few people present who didn't actually speak Scots) pronounced the word spelt 'toom' as...'toom' - ie, to rhyme with 'room.' If it had been spelt 'tuim', and people knew that in the North East all words of this sort are pronounced 'ee', the pronunciation and the meaning would have been obvious. As it is, it is pronounced as 'toom' - a pronunciation which nobody in Scotland naturally uses - year after (Burns night) year.

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From the central belt, although I have moved around a lot, so it's entirely possible that my version of Scots includes bits of lots of different dialects! Unfortunately, I don't write in Scots at all, so I don't know what spellings to attribute to my pronunciations. But I'm finding the discussions of both Shetland and Scots very interesting.

 

With regard to teeming:

 

If I look out the window and say "It's teeming", then I mean raining very heavily

 

but

 

 

If I was with someone who looked out the window and said to me that "The garden is teeming with sheep", then I would know there was a flock of sheep in the garden and would not think of that as a strange usage although I don't think I would use it in that sense myself (I would maybe use hoaching, which I don't know how to spell either).

 

I can see I am going to have to buy a Scots dictionary!

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From the central belt, although I have moved around a lot, so it's entirely possible that my version of Scots includes bits of lots of different dialects! Unfortunately, I don't write in Scots at all, so I don't know what spellings to attribute to my pronunciations. But I'm finding the discussions of both Shetland and Scots very interesting.

 

With regard to teeming:

 

If I look out the window and say "It's teeming", then I mean raining very heavily

 

but

 

 

If I was with someone who looked out the window and said to me that "The garden is teeming with sheep", then I would know there was a flock of sheep in the garden and would not think of that as a strange usage although I don't think I would use it in that sense myself (I would maybe use hoaching, which I don't know how to spell either).

 

I can see I am going to have to buy a Scots dictionary!

 

The sheep one is definitely the English usage. (BTW - better 'hotchin', with a tch as in 'match' - prevents someone who doesn't know the word from pronouncing the CH like in 'loch'.)

 

The 'teeming rain' one, if you pronounce it with an 'ee' and come from the Central Belt, is probably the English word as well - although the CSD (Concise Scots Dictionary) doesn't show any other pronunciaton for the verb, so it might be the only one that exists on Mainland Scotland. The noun meaning empty - as in 'a tuim gless' or the king (whoever he was) who was known as 'tuim tabard' (again confusingly spelt 'toom') - should be pronounced 'tim' in most of the Central belt, perhaps 'taim' in parts of Fife. Shetland has an [ø] sound - if you know what that is? - for both the noun and the verb.

 

The best Scots dictionary is the Concise Scots Dictionary, edited by Mairi Robinson. There's an extremely scholarly and comprehensive one (actually more than one) here:

 

http://www.dsl.ac.uk/

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The word 'teeming' is actually an English word, meaning to 'swarm' or similar, from an Anglo Saxon word meaning to produce. But the English also use it for 'teeming rain', which might be a just a coincidence with the Scots usage, or might show some influence from the same Norse origin.

This word Töming is also in Faroese:

 

tømingur -s k6e

(veðurfr.) [persistent dry wind blowing from the same quarter (usually from the south-west) with accompanying oppressive atmosphere]

The word tømingur (emptying) means that a (e.g.) low pressure is 'emptying itself' of pressure (if that makes any sense) :lol:

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Guest Anonymous

it does yes , as da old fok used ta say about a gale bein a sook, which, if i understand correctly (n by god al be pounced on if i'm not) wind is generally suction of a low pressure drawing on a high. Also talking of wind , a stoor a wind is definately Norse/Norwiegan as it stands as stor is big.

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it does yes , as da old fok used ta say about a gale bein a sook, which, if i understand correctly (n by god al be pounced on if i'm not) wind is generally suction of a low pressure drawing on a high. Also talking of wind , a stoor a wind is definately Norse/Norwiegan as it stands as stor is big.

 

I'm always wondered if da stoor bit of it was norse/norwegian for big!.

 

Now for my Shetland/Faroese word of the day :wink: .

 

Pirr, as in a "pirr o' wind", a very small gentle breeze.

 

Faroese, Pirra, a little or small thing.

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Guest Anonymous

just waiting here to be publicly torn ta bits by intellect and big wirds, but Papa "Stour" , stour- stor as in big , Papa little , weel papa little.

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