A Practical Orthographie for a Scuil Grammar o Scots

(Pairt 1 Hae, Gae)

I hae aye been sweir tae tak pairt in ony campaign tae impose prescriptive spellins on Scots screivers. This process in the past haes been mair divisive than ithirweys an gin ony stannart is tae be achieved, there maun be a consensus amang scrievers, for as shair as death, thay winna be telt. The obvious road til a consensus is by wey o the Dictionars. Gin the spellin variants for ilk an entry is ordered by frequency, stertin wi the maist yaised, the heidword will aye be the maist common. This is the principle that will be adhered tae in the new edition o The Concise Scots Dictionary. Fowk luikin up the dictionar tae finnd a spellin will tend tae tak that awreadies preferred heidword and thereby its frequency will increase until sic times as it emerges as an acceptit stannart form. For the feck o wirds, this will wirk jist fine, but for ithers a bit o guidance micht no gang amiss.

The last time I spak tae John Law, he wis priggin Scottish Language Dictionaries tae tak a mair active role in the stannartisation o spellin and I haed tae admit that whan it comes tae teachin Scots in scuils, we canna jist staun back. We maun narra doon the descriptive data, ithergates the bairns will be fair bumbazed. But the leid belangs tae the bairns and it wad dae hairm gin we didna respeck the dialect o Scots thay bring tae the scuil, or impose a form o Scots on thaim that is jist as fremd tae them as the orra Inglis. Tae this end, we maun stress tae teachers that gin a bairn scrieves a weel-attestit local form, that bairn isna wrang. It pits the onus on teachers tae ken whit is Scots and whit isna and it pits the onus on those o us that provides Continuing Professional Development opportunities for teachers tae mak siccar that thay are gien the best support possible.

Verbs are the maist kittle pairt o grammar an are therefore a guid place tae stert.

HAE

Whether as a main verb or as the auxiliary yaised tae express the perfect aspect, the spellin o this wird as hae is the walin o the vast majority o scrievers. This haes arisen oot an affa raivel o variants. The spellin o the infinitive appears variously in ADictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue (DOST) as have, hawe, haw, haiw, haive an haf, wi ha and hae as cuttie forms. In DOST, the form hae is supported by a single quotation datit 1570 fae the Miscellany of the Bannatyne Club: “Ye man hae respect to sum grit houssis”. Sae forms wi the labiodental fricative predominate at this stage. Muivin forrit tae the Scottish National Dictionary (SND), the spellins for the infinitive is hae, ha, he hiv(v), hive,ha’e (we’ll no wale that ane), and hev, wi the cuttie forms a and ’e, but there is nae doot ava that hae comes oot on tap. It is a trig and snod spellin. The loss o the dental fricative by the weel-kent an regular process o v-deletion is reflectit, an the ae gies as guid an indication as ony o the commonest pronunciation. The etymological, rule-thirled theorist, the wysiwyg, phonetic-spellin modernist and the dour lexicographer is aa canty.

The picter gets mair murky as we kest wir een doon the declension tae the third person singular present tense. DOST options is havys,hawys, (h)as,hase,hace,hayis, and hais(e). SND records his, hes, haes, hees, huz an has. The past tense an past participle is jist as bad. Fae DOST we hae had(e),haid(e) anhayd. Fae SND we hae had haid hid hed(d), hud and haed. Whit wey dae we narra aa this doon?

As weel as dictionars, we maun hae the grammar buiks an, at least for the bairns, we maun pu some rules thegither. We ken eneuch o the descriptive grammar o Scots tae be able tae say whit is widely acceptit, whit is marginal an whit is jist plain wrang. Just as we dae in the teachin o Inglis, we need tae gie some guidance on whit wey tae scrieve weel. We ken fine that the third person singular present tense is merkit wi an –s. We ken the weak past tense is merkit wi a –d efter a vowel. That wad gie us haes and haed, twa weel attestit forms that allous the bairns an lairners o the leid tae yaise a consistent rule. Cairryin on tae the present participle an verbal noun, we ken that we mak them wi the addition o –in. That will result in haein. Haudin tae the principles o simplicity and regularity, the past participle o this as a weak verb wad be haed, but there is eneuch support for the strong form haen tae flag it up as a possible alternative. There’s exceptions eneuch in verb conjugations athoot makkin mair. This suggestion isna new; David Purves in his buik A Scots Grammar adopts the same forms and een tho thae walins is arbitrary thay are the least confusin tae the lairner.

GAE

This is a less problematic verb. In Scots it is a complete verb wi the weak past tense gaed. The past participle appears as baith gaed and, less commonly as gaen (or, less gane) which itself is differentiated fae the present participle and verbal noun by observing the morphological rule o addin –in tae gie gaein.

SUMMARY

Inf3sg prespast tensepast part. pres part/verbal noun

haehaeshaedhaedhaein

haen

gaegaesgaedgaedgaein

gaen

gane

GAE, WEND, GANG

It is ane o the vagaries o language that this verb in Inglis haes become incomplete maun supplement its past tense wi went. For aa that prescriptive grammarians wince at what they perceive to be an abuse o this verb in constructions sic as he haes went micht like tae tak tent tae a puckle o the quotations in DOST including this one dating from c1500 in The Talis of theFyve Bestes in the Asloan Manuscript: “Gundulfus with his frendis assent To Oxinford to study is hewent”. (Is is regularly yaised rather than haes wi verbs o motion an chynge o state at this period, a feature which still survives for some Scots spikkers.) Even John Barbour, the faither o Scots literature yaises this construction mair nor aince, a salutory reminder tae the pedant that, as Shakespeare screived, “there is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so”. The present tense o this verb, wend, which confusinly aften appears in Aulder Scots as went seems tae hae deed oot in baith Scots an Inglis but the past tense is still yaised by Scots an canna be expungit fae the lexicon in favour o gae or gang. Gang, curiously has suffered the same fate as go in English, having lost its past tense afore the Aulder Scots period.

APOLOGIE

Gin ye think I hae been statin the obvious, I wis mindit tae lay oot wir plans for the scuil grammar stertin wi the least controversial. I’ll wirk my wey up. The weel-considert thochts o a nummer o Scots activists are available an we will be takkin aa that intil accoont. For noo, I wad be blythe tae hear the thochts o ony o you that’s Scots teachers an scrievers. Whit aspects o Scots spellin an grammar mak thair heid birl. Ye can contack me by email at