Scots and the Scottish Cringe
I’ve been away to Denmark for a few days, and I took the opportunity to read Bill Kay’s Scots: The Mither Tongue.
For people like myself who didn’t grow up in Scotland, the Scottish Cringe is often somewhat of a mystery, but as an independence campaigner I often also feel the whole campaign is a fight to overcome that sentiment.
I therefore felt it interesting to see how the linguistic persecution of Scots (and of Gaelic, of course, but people are probably more aware of that) has formed the basis for the creation and preservation of the cringe:
The effects of centuries of stigmatisation and cultural colonisation cannot, of course, be overcome instantly with a new political attitude. The Catalans are a few decades into the recovery of their language but they concede that it will take several generations of confidence building before what they call the ‘slave mentality’ of their people can be removed. In public perceptions of Scots, we face similar problems and have not even seriously begun the process of recovery. Our equivalent of the slave mentality is the Scottish cringe.
If the people of Scotland started taking pride in both the languages of Scotland again — Gaelic and Scots — it would become so much more difficult to perpetuate the belief that we’re uniquely too wee, too stupid and too poor to be independent. The unionists have a much easier time when the world is also linguistically seen through the prism of London.
@arcofprosperity I enjoyed this blog. Will order the book. After nearly 15 years of marriage to a Scotsman, still don’t get the “cringe”.
Why isn’t it the Mither Tingue?
Serious question by the way, not facetious.
Ah ayeways felt it wrang that ma family, who speak the Broad’s Scots every day o thir live, felt compelled to get their son to say woter inteed o’ waatter, when I kent fine weel that to make yirsel understood in international settins yi need wan accent and an ither to spake at ease amongt yer ane folk. Its tha same the warld o’or- Here in Finland, each area has it’s ane dialect- Karelian, Savolax, Same. So theer is nae shame in yir ane brogue, neether is it shameful to have a standirt voice to speak unto the wirld.
Aye, naebodie haes ivver suggestit that we soudna lear Inglis in Scotland for the purpose o international communication, juist that it’s wrang tae mak fowk feel bad aboot thair ain leid.
Because ‘mither’ comes from Old English ‘mōdor’ (with the usual Scots development of o: > ø: > ø > ɪ, just like ‘fit’ “foot”), whereas ‘tong(ue)’ comes from Old English ‘tunge’ (with the usual u > ʌ development, just like in English).
Interesting, thanks!
BTW, I’ve no idea why ‘mother’ is ‘mother’ in English and not *’moother’ as you’d expect.
Ah, the OED has the answer to that: “The shortening of Middle English close ō to ŭ (giving modern English /ʌ/ ) is regular in the case of words in -ther , -der (compare brother n., other pron. and n., rudder n.); E. J. Dobson Eng. Pronunc. 1500–1700 (ed. 2, 1968) II. §18 notes that most of the late 16th- and early 17th-cent. orthoepists who mention the word record pronunciations in ŭ . The form moother (with spelling reflecting the original long vowel although it may well have been shortened in pronunciation) persists in standard English into the 17th cent.”
(And those words they mention are “brither”, “ither” and “rither” in Scots.)