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by Bob Fairnie

Thursday 5t o Mey 2011 wis an awfie guid day for me. In the airly oors o the mornin ma third gret-grand-dauchter hid her hame-comin an saw her first licht o day. Weel mibbie mair the electric licht nor the daylicht at thon time but onywey, it wis a richt guid stert tae a day that wis tae juist keep on gettin better an better the aulder it got.

by Reid Wyllie

The Scots language has been variously, and often disparagingly or in ignorance, referred to as a regional dialect, as patois or, as a family friend said to me the other day when we were discussing the subject, “Och, it’s jist Inglish bit wi a Scoattish accent.”

“Awa an bile yer heid, wumman.” I replied, “If Rabbie Burns kent there wis onybdy in Ayrshur that thocht whit they wir bletherin wis Inglish he’d be birlin in the caul, caul grun.  Noo, Ah’m awa ben the hoose, fur Ah’m baith scunnert and wabbit fae listenin tae yer brattle.”

bi Bob Fairnie

Hou aften hiv oo heard the cry gaun oot that Scots isnae a real leid in it’s ain richt but is juist a local byleid o English?  Weel, so is English!  Whan the Angles an the Saxons arrived in sooth-east England, they baith spake a diffrent byleid o an auld Germanic leid that they cried aither Inglis or Englisc.  The Angles spreidit aw the wey up the east coast tae the Firth o Forth takin thair Inglis wi thaim but the Saxons steyed in the sooth east o England an spreidit alang the sooth towarts the Welsh mairches an the wast kintrae.  Ower the centuries, as baith byleids growed up intae leids o thair ain, they baith chynged but it wad seem that English wis the yin that chynged the maist.

bi Bob Fairnie

On the eve o the battle o Bannockburn in 1314, Robert the Bruce, King o Scots, speirt his men gin they shuid staund an fecht for independence or no.  A 14t century verbal referendum reportit an screivit aroond 1375 bi John Barbour wi some o the mair obscure auld words an spellins owerset intae a mair modren form.  Ye micht weel wunner whit wey sic a report wad be screivit in Scots but the fack is, aroond 1300 maist o the lawlan nobles o Scotland gied up thair Norman French in favour o the language o the fowk that wis cried Inglis at the time.

Yestreen French border polis stappit a train cairriein Tuneisian migrants an activists fae Italie whan hit gaed tae corse the border at Ventimiglia-Menton.  The French accion gart the Italian governament tae mak a furmal diplomatic protest.  Tensions atwein Italie and France is growin ower the weird o Nor African migrants at is lowpin thair ain kintras, feirt fae persecucion an violence.

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