Sitooterie

It's hot. sunny and still: three unusual things to meet one at 5.30am on a Wednesday morning  on Lewis.

In an ideal world I would have had three or four hours in the garden before I toddled off to town to get my bloods done for my cancer review in a week or two. However I decided that I couldnae be earsed wearing my midge suit this morning so would do indoor things instead. That unsettled me because I usually prefer to do indoor things when the weather is less clement (ie more like its usual Lewis self).  So I've actually done a fraction of the things I wanted to do. Apart from anything else I couldn't find some of the pictures I needed for birthday cards. 

Anyway I decided I'd do a blog post instead. I'd been given the idea by Marcheline's use of 'sitooterie' a day or so ago.

Every place has it's language quirks and, often, its own unique or special name for something. In Scotland a place to sit out in your garden is called a sitooterie.

This is my sitooterie

This is my rear conservatory (and my polycarb)

And this is I suppose my sitinerie - which reached over 40 ºC  today even with the doors open.

"You're Welcome"

In a recent post Bob Brague of the blog Rhymes with Plague said:

An example of slower change [in customs] is the way people respond to being told "Thank you." In my age group (the Older Than Dirt crowd), we were taught to say "You're welcome".  Around the time my children became adults, people didn't say "You're welcome" any more, and everybody was saying "No problem." Now that even my grandchildren are adults, "No problem" has fallen by the wayside. and Gen Z'ers and millennials say "Of course!"

I commented that I was never taught to respond "You're welcome".  In my view when someone says 'Thank you" no response is needed.

Bob's reply was "Not to respond to 'Thank you' strikes me as very odd indeed. It seems to indicate the feeling that the 'thank you' is well-deserved. I could be wrong, of course, but it smacks of a lack of humility. Not you, of course, but others. Other responses I used to hear often (but don't any more) include "Don't mention it" and "Not at all" and "It was nothing". The Spanish say "por nada" and the French say "Il n'y a pas de quoi"."

This is something that genuinely puzzles me. I am roughly of an age with Bob. I was brought up in a family and at schools where good manners were important and were insisted upon. However I can never recall at any stage in my life being told that a response was needed to a "Thank you."  Over the last few decades I've been well aware of the response "You're welcome" being used and, of course, when in Italy I would never dream of not responding "prego" to"grazie".

So I am genuinely very puzzled indeed. My readers come from many generations and many countries. So I would ask you all whether I am living in a bubble of ignorance and whether, particularly where the UK is concerned, my lack of a response is out of order.

The American Language

Why are we in the UK so hung up on the use of British English versus the use of American English?

In Shakespeare's time English was totally different to that used today. There was no 'am ...ing', 'is ...ing' or 'are ...ing'. If you read Shakespeare you will read "I go." not "I am going". That's a pretty fundamental change in our language. That's before I start on all the other 'archaic' words and forms of a language as written 400 years ago. I'm sure that there are many books written on this paragraph's subject alone.

No one holds a candle for a return to Shakespearean or even Victorian English. 

Years ago someone very close to me was appointing a new PA. He offered the job to an existing employee who happened to be American. He made the appointment conditional on the person ceasing to use the term "trash can" for the waste paper basket. On her first day in the job when he arrived at the office, in the centre of his blotting pad was a small treatise on the origin of the term "trash can". As you have probably guessed it was originally a British term.  

There are also many American words in daily use in the English language which originated in America bur are generally accepted in the UK. Some examples are: commuter, double-decker, do-gooder come immediately to mind as do many words of native American derivation. Examples being: avocado, barbecue, cannibal, chocolate, husky, kayak, jaguar, opossum, potato, quinine, squash and tobacco. However my all time favourite is mugwump. I'm sure I did a blog post about that many moons ago.

I recently mentioned Wordle. Some people in the UK really have got their knickers in a twist because the game - owned and published by the New York Times - uses American spellings for some words. 

I think that it's about time that we on this side of the pond stopped being so precious about our strange, and often bizarre, spellings.

Scots (Language)

I happened to say to my brother this morning that I'd got myself into a bit of a fankle. It's a stoater of a word and I use it frequently and have done for as long as I can remember. CJ remarked that it was a wonderfully descriptive word. I commented that it was like so many Scots words that I use and hear used on an every-day basis. It made me realise just how many Scots words there are that fall into that category but which are not every-day words even in other parts of the UK. 

I am assuming that everyone can imagine what 'fankle' means. Can you? Do you use the word outside Scotland?

Dreich (dreek - but the k is gutteral) is another adjective and it's used to describe dreary, bleak weather but no words really describe it better than it sounds.

Having started this it occurs to me that I could go on for ages just with the words that I know and I'm sure there are many hundreds or even thousands more. I'll mention a few more favourites that come to mind.

Wabbit (as in rabbit. Although posh people I'm told say wahbit) is used if one is slightly unwell or in low spirits or 'under the weather'.

Scunnered  is a feeling of revulsion or loathing although many people just use it to mean 'fed up'.

Gallus is a word one doesn't hear very often. I have a friend (of my generation) who calls herself Gallus Lass so obviously regards it as a Good Thing (thank you, Sellars and Yeatman). Generally it means forthright or bold or possibly cheeky. I think a lot depends on the context.

Finally 'stoater' which I used in the first paragraph. I think it's principally a Glasgow dialect Scots word used to to mean it's a great example, fantastic, excellent. It's not to be confused with Scots, 'stotter' which means to stumble.

I would be really interested to hear what 'unusual' words you may have from where you live - or anywhere else for that matter.

Dialects

In his post on 2 March entitled Pinpointing, Yorkshire Pudding drew attention to a survey which claimed to determine where one was brought up (in the British Isles or the USA) from the words one uses and how one pronounces them - one's dialect. It pinpointed YP perfectly.

I was intrigued. I was born and brought up in Liverpool. There is an old joke about Liverpool back in my youth before any people from the Indian sub-continent lived there (they all lived in the mill towns of central Lancashire).  The joke was that if you were a Liverpudlian you were Liverpool Irish, Liverpool Welsh, Liverpool Scottish, Liverpool West Indian, Liverpool Chinese (Liverpool has the oldest ethnic Chinese community in Europe) or Liverpool Jewish. It was rumoured that there were Liverpool English but no-one had ever met one.

After I left home I lived in Cheshire until I came to the Isle of Lewis in the far north west of Scotland 44 years ago. Since then I have usually been taken for someone from the South of England. If you are a Northerner there are few greater insults. Well that's not quite true, as a Lancastrian it's a greater insult to call me a Yorkshireman. 

However I went to a small private prep school and was subjected to elocution by a French lady teacher. My parents didn't have particularly Liverpool accents. Neither do I. I do, however, use many Liverpool words from my childhood.

When I took the first part of the quiz it came up with the following results:

After my full quiz with the additional questions it came up with a slightly more refined result.

 The one thing it definitely shows is that I have no dialectic link to the South of England.

There's a British version of the quiz. Go here. And there's also an American version. Go here.