Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/107

Rh guttural aspirate. This double consonant has disappeared from modern English entirely. A popular novelist's "whisps of fog that had lost their way" must surely be a misprint. A Scotsman and an Englishman found themselves at cross-purposes when talking on the golf links about the dangers of erratic driving. What the one called whins the other took to be winds, the sounds appearing alike from the Englishman's dropping of the h in wh, and the Scot's favourite softening of d after n. The Scottish schoolboy is actually warned by his teacher nowadays to look out for a wippin', so rapidly is the Anglicising process advancing. This is nothing, however, to the Anglican criticism of a boy's exercise, read in the class-room, as "all rot."

The Scot has his own sins of omission, chief of which is his slovenly treatment of dentals between vowels, such as Se'erday for Saturday, waa'er for water. Dr. Murray thinks it due to the neighbourhood of the Gaelic speaker, but it is a well-known feature of the Romance transition from Latin to French. Nor is there any Celtic influence in the Lanarkshire vulgarism of hree (pronounced chree) for three, and Foorsday for Thursday. The same change is found in Cumberland, where Furesday is also spoken,—

The Scot, however, still manfully takes the trouble to articulate his strong gutturals, though the poet Malloch changed his name to Mallet to suit Southron ears. Murdoch, who introduced gaslighting, became Murdock, but the young Anglo-Scot goes further when he asks his lady friend if she is "gowin' to the Merrdok's," when he means Murdoch's. On one point, the dropping of the last letter in the combination—ing, he is approximating to what has always been the Northern and truly archaic practice. In cases like finger, anger, and hunger again the Scot, like the German, nasalises the ng instead of doubling the g as the Englishman does. He is unfortunately imitating the Englishman, however, in such a blunder as reconise for recognise. He still keeps to the old ways in strongly sibilating words like weiss (wise) and hoosses (houses), whereas his