Page:The dialect of the southern counties of Scotland - Murray - 1873.djvu/10

vi old guttural -gh, -ch, has sunk into the -f and -w of modern English, and that by which the long ī and ū in so many of the Teutonic tongues have from simple vowels, become the diphthongs in English mine, house, German mein, haus, Dutch mijn, huis.

As the history of the Lowland Scotch division of the Northern tongue, and its relations to the adjacent dialects in England, have been the subject of much wild theory and but little research in the direction whence light was to be obtained, the Historical Introduction has been made especially full and complete.

The spelling employed to represent Scottish sounds will probably be objected to in many points by Scotchmen, who would prefer our shoon, to oor schuin. I have no quarrel with their taste; when they give specimens of the speech heard around them, they may choose what symbols they please, provided they only explain what sounds their symbols mean. My own aim has been truth and distinctness. Spelling is only a means (a cumbrous one at best) to an end: the written forms so often misnamed words, are but conventional signs of the real words, the spoken sounds for which they stand. To convey to the reader's ear and mouth, by the circuitous medium of the eye, a clear and correct idea of the real word, is the first use of spelling. At the same time, no student of a language can be insensible to the associations of the "historical spelling" which has grown up along with its spoken forms, nor will he willingly discard the drapery with which it was clothed in earlier times, and which in so many cases is our only guide to the living organism which once breathed within. Still in dealing with a living dialect of the 19th century, one cannot always do justice to its own form and spirit by confining it to the winding sheet which decently enough envelopes the dead language of the 16th. If the spelling used, with help of the key and account of the pronunciation, succeed in giving an idea of the living words to those who never heard them spoken, it will fulfil its purpose. Of course in quoting the ancient language, where the spelling is the only guide we have to the words, care has been taken faithfully to preserve their original written forms; the quotations are, wherever possible,