Scots Word of the week

Wifie n. a woman.

Wifie is the commonest diminutive form of wife but we also find wifock and, as Jack Webster assures us in Another Grain of Truth (1989), “Buchan ...
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Reproduced with kind permission of The Herald Newspaper

Scottish Word of the Week is written by Chris Robinson of Scottish Language Dictionaries www.scotsdictionaries.org.uk

New Testament readings

Scots New Testament

The recordings of the Scots New Testament bring the well known stories of the gospels to life in a distinct Scots voice. Throughout the year the Centre will be broadcasting a series of readings from the Scots New Testament CDs. This first one, the Beatitudes, celebrates the feast of All Saints Day (1 November). The reading is from the Gospel of Matthew 5:1-12. The next reading on 30 November will mark the first Sunday in Advent.

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You can buy the CDs here Buy the Scots New Testament here For more information about Scots worship resources visit www.churchofscotland.org.uk

Latest Scots News from around Scotland

Changes on the way at Scots Language Centre

17th November

The Scots Language Centre will be going through another period of change over the next few months. There will be a new layout on the home page and ...
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"Encourage children to speak Scots" says MSP

17th November

Rob Gibson MSP, convener of the Cross-Party Group on Scots, called on Scotland's schools to encourage children's use of Scots. Speaking in a debate...
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Conference Call

13th November

There will be a one-day conference entitled ‘Language and Literature in the time of Burns’ to be held in the AK Bell Library, Perth on Saturday...
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Year of Languages 2008

The United Nations General Assembly proclaimed 2008 to be the International Year of Languages following on a resolution passed by UNESCO. This year will be used to address questions of linguistic diversity, respect for languages and the idea of multilingualism. The year was officially launched on International Mother Language Day on 21 February 2008. In celebration of this Year, the Scots Language Centre has put together some articles about the languages our neighbours speak in the British isles, including P-Celtic, Q-Celtic, Germanic and Romany.
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Germanic and Other Languages

Germanic

Northumbrian English
This is as its name suggests, is a variant of English spoken in the north of England, but it evolved long before such a thing as Standard English emerged. Indeed, Scots and Northumbrian share a common origin in the Anglo-Saxon that was spoken in the region between the Forth and Humber estuaries during the period AD 500 – 1100, though books and websites dedicated to Northumbrian rarely, if ever, acknowledge this relationship. It was the Anglii (Angles) who brought this language to the region in the 6th century and they called it englisc (Angle-ish). This northern form was first written ...
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Q-Celtic Languages

Q-Celtic

Irish Gaelic (Gaeilge)
The earliest texts in Old Irish consist either of glosses of Latin, short texts and some verses dated during the 7th and 8th centuries AD, of which the Würzburg Glosses are perhaps the most important collection. Irish was also the earliest of the vernacular (non-Latin) languages in the British Isles to be written down. Old and Middle Irish gave way to Early Modern Irish (1200-1600) and this in turn gave way to Modern Irish from 1600 onwards. Ireland was invaded by the English Crown in the 1170s but never fully conquered until 1603. Norman and English settlers began to take on Irish lan...
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P-Celtic Languages

P-Celtic

Cornish (Kernowek)
Cornish was spoken in Cornwall and Devon in the early Middle Ages and is the sister language of Welsh. The earliest texts in Cornish date from the 10th century AD and there are several plays in the language dating from the Middle Ages. Originally a kingdom, Cornwall came under English domination from the 920s and it was created a duchy in 1337 for the eldest son of the English king. The Cornish revolted in 1549 when London tried to impose Protestantism and services in English and for a long time the county was known as ‘West Wales’. It was not officially made a part of England until the...
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At Hame wi Charles Murray

Charles Murray (1864-1941), born and brought up in Alford on Donside, was the most well known Scots poet of the first half of the last century. He wrote in a lively and bold form of Scots drawn from the language of his own Donside. His first collection, Hamewith, was so popular that he came to be known as “Hamewith” himself. It wasn’t only in the North East but wherever the Lowland tongue was used, in and outwith Scotland, everyone youn...

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