Page:Studies in Lowland Scots - Colville - 1909.djvu/218

194 branches of the great Teutonic family. Though in usage the Afrikander's vocables largely follow German, his consonantal system is frequently identical with English. Thus he speaks of somer and winter, dag and daa'e (g elided) and nooit, hart and bleed, vleesch and bane, steen and leem, vuur and water, and ijs, melk and hotter, and brood and drank, a Bijbel and a boek—all easily recognisable under the thin guise of altered spelling and pronunciation. His familiar epithets are obviously akin to ours, such as—

The wearing-down process is very apparent in epithets like goeje (good), rooje (red), breeje (broad), weije (wide), ouwe (old), koud (cold). The Scottish vernacular does not go quite so far, though one may hear 's-awfyka' the day for "It's awfully cold to-day." On the other hand, an unnecessary dental was added as in publict, witht. Such forms are found late in the eighteenth century. A medial guttural is also objectionable to the Boer. Thus he says daa'e for daage (days), and oo'ies for oogies (eyes), and even a final g may go as in lui, lazy, where we have an interesting modification of the syllable seen in English lag and laggard.

Action words also show close resemblances, such as we find in leef (live), groei (grow), kom, gaan (go), ken (know), vergeet, vergee (forgive), dek (deck), bloos (blush), sit, staan (stand), seg (say), and leg (lie). "Words for relationship exhibit equally affinity and lazy articulation—va'er (father), broer, neef (nephew), but others have been little changed, as moeder, suster, and sussie, seun, dochter. In North-eastern Scotland dialectic variations