word for winter/seasons

[MJ]

It's probbably in here some where but what's the shetland for winter? was about to put yule, but that's no right.

 

Voar, Simmer, Hairst and ???

 

are there no more seasons though, or at least words for time of year

[Ghostrider]

I've never heard it called anything but winter. Shetlanders didn't used to reference the season's much in that way, they tended to break in down it to months etc. Voar and hairst have become by default replacements term for spring and autumn, but their usage back in the day refered much more to the state of being of agricultural work rather than a set season.

[Guest Anonymous]

Norwegian seasons are:

Vår, Sommer, Høst, and Vinter

Fairly good chance that Norse has been the influence for the Shetland seasons.

 

Like Ghostrider, I've never heard any other word for winter in Shetland. Apart from the unprintable swearwords which spring to mind, when the winter is a hard one.

[Guest Anonymous]

yay , Yule is xmas/new year kerry ons , an bearing in mind it was old xmas n new year here until 2nd world war times

[Sanchez]

Norwegian seasons are:

Vår, Sommer, Høst, and Vinter

Fairly good chance that Norse has been the influence for the Shetland seasons.

 

Like Ghostrider, I've never heard any other word for winter in Shetland. Apart from the unprintable swearwords which spring to mind, when the winter is a hard one.

My favorite language at work again!

 

...well, second after Spanish.

 

The Icelandic and Faroese is Vetur, which is probably indicative of what people used to call it.

[Dagfinn]

My favorite language at work again!

 

...well, second after Spanish.

 

The Icelandic and Faroese is Vetur, which is probably indicative of what people used to call it.

Well, in Faroese it was also known as Vintur, though you rarely hear that used anymore, but the word is preserved in Faroese Ballads.

 

vetring nm. a one years old cow-calf

 

This, I guess, is the same as the Faroese word 'vetring' meaning 'one-winter-old-calf'; indicating that Winter was also Vetur in Norn.

[shoormal]

I hed a foal born oot o season twartree years ago and an aald wife I ken suggested he wis caad "Vetyr" dis meant winter tae her but it's maybe joost a Wastside wird?

[Oddrun]

In Norway the word "Vetter" has been used....maybe still is in some parts.

 

(PS Dagfinn :Have you started the countdown ?? )

[Ghostrider]

Bear in mind a Shetlander pronounces 'winter" something like 'wynt-ir', which is probably nearer to 'vinter' and 'vintur' than 'winter'.

[Sanchez]

I hed a foal born oot o season twartree years ago and an aald wife I ken suggested he wis caad "Vetyr" dis meant winter tae her but it's maybe joost a Wastside wird?

 

Shoormal, very interesting! Do you mind if I quote your post in a paper I'm writing? I'm looking for Norse words that are still used in Shaetlan, so this would be a great example.

[Dagfinn]

In Norway the word "Vetter" has been used....maybe still is in some parts.

 

(PS Dagfinn :Have you started the countdown ?? )

Yes I have, it's next Thursday night

Where are you guys going?

[Oddrun]

^^

London 11th and Langesund 15th

 

This was off topic, sorry, but we are Willie Nelson fans

[DePooperit]

I think this is one of the cases where the relevant languages - Norse, English and Scots - are so close that the minor differences between the pronunciations of 'Simmer' and 'Winter' aren't very important. However, as Ghostrider points out, the pronunciation of 'Winter' in Shetland isn't exactly the same as the English. This is because of the characteristic I used to call 'soft mutation' where vowels are altered depending on whether they come before a voiced or unvoiced consonant. In this case, the 'i' in 'winter' is centralised before the 't' after the 'n' (as, incidentally, is the 'i' in Simmer, because of the 'r' after the 'mm'.) Compare the sound of the 'i' in the Shetland pronunciations of eg:

 

hit, hip, rick, wint

 

as opposed to:

 

sid, lib, rig, grinnd

 

(Oh dear, here I go again - trying to stifle the quaint variablility of rustic dialect by representing it as if it actually had some characteristics of its own.)

 

Strictly speaking, 'hairst' is a Scots form, and 'voar' a Norse one.

[DePooperit]

I hed a foal born oot o season twartree years ago and an aald wife I ken suggested he wis caad "Vetyr" dis meant winter tae her but it's maybe joost a Wastside wird?

 

Shoormal, very interesting! Do you mind if I quote your post in a paper I'm writing? I'm looking for Norse words that are still used in Shaetlan, so this would be a great example.

 

If that's what you're looking for, there's no need for you to be short of them! Very many of the words used in traditional Shaetlan (by which I mean, as spoken by my generation - I'm 55) are Norse in origin.

 

Just for a start, here's an extract from a paper I once wrote:

 

"The Concise Scots Dictionary explicitly states that it does not contain the Norse vocabulary which is peculiar to Caithness, Orkney and Shetland. This vocabulary comprises not only a large amount of words which would now be regarded as obsolete or literary - Jakobsen's Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland (which is actually not a dictionary of the Norn language but of the Norn vocabulary element in Shetlandic) consists of two substantial volumes of such words - but also many everyday words and expressions such as aaber (eager), aalie (orphan^), broel (bellow), clatch (besmear), clooky (tricky), clour (claw; scratch - not a blow as in Scots), clump (make a heavy noise), duiless (inactive), filskit (high spirited), forsmo (snub), frush (splutter), glaep (gulp down), glinder (peer), gluid (glow), helly (weekend), hent (gather), leid (diligence), lui (listen), luid (mood), minkie (very small), mird (swarm), oag (crawl), oub (moan), peel (scrap; small mussel), pipper (tremble), plag (garment), smuck (slipper), mooratoug (ant), yasp (energetic), rein (squeal), scrime (observe), sloo (lazy person), smeig (smirk), smoot (slink), soe (bait), spret (burst), sprickle (convulse), stirn (shiver), swee (smart*), trivvle (grope), varg (messy work), tully (kitchen knife), tusker (peat cutter), nyaarm (bleat), etc, etc, etc.

 

^but see the recent discussion on this word in another thread here.

 

*that is, smart with pain - not the adjective meaning 'clever'.

 

....

 

In a Shetlandic story printed in Lallans magazine the writer commented that at the top of his list of revolting jobs was "rooin munts-owld oagin crangs" (plucking the wool from months-old carcasses crawling with maggots). This single phrase contains three words - 'roo', 'oag' and 'crang' - none of which are in the Concise Scots Dictionary, and which would be familiar to any Shetland crofter but incomprehensible to a reader of general Scots. "

 

(Footnote: 'crang' is actually from the Dutch 'kreng' originally meaning, I think, the carcase of a whale. It's possible that some other words in this list may not be Norse - my main purpose was to demonstrate words which are not general Scots - but I think most of them would be.)

[deardron]

I hed a foal born oot o season twartree years ago and an aald wife I ken suggested he wis caad "Vetyr" dis meant winter tae her but it's maybe joost a Wastside wird?

 

Shoormal, very interesting! Do you mind if I quote your post in a paper I'm writing? I'm looking for Norse words that are still used in Shaetlan, so this would be a great example.

An interesting example, because the only occurence of the Old Norse word 'vetr' for the winter in Jakob Jakobsen's dictionnary is the following:

 

veterin (Yell, neighbourhood of "de Herra") - a cow-calf one year old; a heifer in her second year. O.N. vetrungr 'an animal one winter (vetr) old, a yearling'. Icel. Faer. vetrungur 'a calf or heifer one year old'.

 

This word can be a sum of vetr 'winter' and ungr 'young (animal)'. However, in this case vetr means rather year than winter (Norsemen used to tell years by winters).

 

Could the Whalsay word "vetyr" be a short from of "veterin" and hence apply not to a winter but to a calf, heifer or foal one year old?