Languge differences between Glasgow & Edinburgh.....

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 9:15 pm

Hi everybody

While looking at a posting in August about a vennel in Leith I realised that there are lots of differences between the Glesca' patter and the equivalent Edinburgh/Leith vocabulary.

Coming , as I do, originally from East Lothian when we went oot tae play we pit oan oor 'gutties'. Folk in Edinburgh understood us but when I moved to Glasgow I got blank looks!
Much the same happened when I asked the Glasgow baker for a 'half loaf' On the East coast they pulled a batch baked loaf away from its partner and you could run home tearing off the strips that were dangling off the side (Mmmmhh I can taste it now!! Still hot out of the baker's van).
My parents first house was a close in Easter road but at the 'posher' end where my grandparents lived it was a 'stair'.
Corrections were given with a disdainful look.

'Galluses' were galusses on both sides of the country but 'peever' became 'beds' and 'Jauries' got chipped and split when I moved into the industrial hinterland where fortunate boys with fathers working in a machine shop could lay hands on 'steelies'.
Trams to me were the narrow gauge lines that the coal hutches were shoved along out from the 'cage' which brought men and their hard earned; black gold' up the shaft. The angled access to a seam near the surface was an 'ingaen ee'.

These are just some of the differences that spring to mind. Anyone like to contribute others?

Russell

Post by **Tracey** » Fri Dec 30, 2005 10:30 pm

Funny you should bring this up as i was having this conversation with a client of mine who was bought up in Edinburgh but went to study in Glasgow her mother was English so she spoke with an English accent. She had a job in a pharmacy in Glasgow in the 70.s. Both instances unfortunately involved men which made it all the more embarrassing !
Remember both products were asked for using patter (or so she thought !) and NOT the actual names of the products......................
Her interpretation and reply to one customer request was " would you like a pack of three, six or ten" The man was horrified as he was asking for baby milk formula

The other was "would that be Regular or Super" (a womans thing !) and the man was asking for Laxatives

What with that and her remembering the song or rhyme My Aunt Mary it was the funniest hour i have spent in a long time

Tracey

Scozzie · Post by **Scozzie** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 8:11 am

Try explaing the regional differences to an Aussie! I had fun translating for both sides.

I was born in Scotland, went back for the first time in 1988, with an Aussie husband. New Years Eve was fun......... my cousins bellowing "Eeeeeeeuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuch" and my husband joining in by bellowing "Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenooooooooooookie".

CatrionaL · Post by **CatrionaL** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 11:52 am

Russell

When I read your post, I recognised the expressions used but realised that I would have been at great pains to tell you which came from where.

Between a Grandfather who spoke the Gaelic and a Grandmother who spoke the Doric, brought up in the Borders by a Glaswegian father and a mother from Lanarkshire, the other Grandmother, from Renfrewshire, staying with us at one point. Student days in Edinburgh. Gave up trying to sort it all out

and moved to the Continent where I've spoken French for the past 30 odd years.

Even here I've ended up with three different accents. No wonder ma wee mind cannae cope wi big issues!

Scozzie
I have taken great pains to teach the French the Scottish Country Dancing Screech/howl .

Catriona

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 1:17 pm

Hi Catriona

I can well imagine!
My mother was out in the States as a young woman and when she came back taught us all the kitchen (below the stairs) french she had learned from the house servants (mostly French) in the big houses. This meant unlearning it all when we went to secondary school where we had to 'enunciate correctly and use the correct form' I could understand the French broadcasts easily much to the chagrin of the teacher but could I master the formal patterns? No way!
My mother, at 93, is still actively country dancing and enjoys acting as demonstrator to the primary school classes. She finds it funny when her dance club do demonstrations for the 'old folks'
She started to learn Gaelic at about 70 - old dogs can learn new tricks!

I'm reading 'the Fanatic' by James Robertson just now and his 17/18th century dialogues bring back memories of Ormiston where many of the old expressions and dialect survived even into the 1940's.

I love the west coast though where a lot of the dialect is mixed with Irish humour but it does play havoc with memories. You need to go back to your roots from time to time to renew your memory banks and now I find that I have outlived most of my childhood contacts. Although born in Ormiston I had no family there once we moved on.
A recent visit was most disappointing because the mines have closed and there are few Ag Labs these days so the village is commuter land into Edinburgh. All posh accents and nae rustic characters. No lines of miners hunkered down wi there pints ootside the pub ha'in' a jaw and a jar; smoking the cigarettes that they were told were good for them -'helped to clear the lungs you know!'

Oh, for a time machine - but No! I wouldn't want to live in the past. I would miss my 'puter and worldwide contacts too much

Russell

Post by **AndrewP** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 1:28 pm

Russell wrote:A recent visit was most disappointing because the mines have closed and there are few Ag Labs these days so the village is commuter land into Edinburgh. All posh accents and nae rustic characters. No lines of miners hunkered down wi there pints ootside the pub ha'in' a jaw and a jar; smoking the cigarettes that they were told were good for them -'helped to clear the lungs you know!'

So you never went back to "Ormiston Miners' Club". I was in that fine haven of cheap drinks a few years back (when I worked in Haddington). It was a Friday night. The drinking was in full swing when along came 9pm. Silence fell over the place, followed by "Eyes down". That was a new experience for me, everything stopping for bingo. Normal service resumed later on, after the bingo.

No such stoppage in Wallyford Miners' Club. Drink "cheap as chips". The bar was so busy we had to buy double rounds to save us going up to the bar and join the queue as often. That probably had something to do with me falling asleep on the bus home and waking up at the terminus, five miles after my stop. Luckily the driver was sympathetic to my plight and let me stay on until he passed back through my area on the return journey.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 2:06 pm

Hi Andrew
I left Ormiston before I was of age to venture into the Miners Club. I could see the billiards table through the windows but never be allowed through the hallowed portals. Come to that neither could the ladies in my day. My mother was instrumental in getting a lending library together then they discovered the only place to keep it was in the Miners Club so men only borrowers. We left the village before that one was resolved.

I have a photo of myself resplendent in maroon velvet as Queen's escort on Gala day saluting the war memorial just outside the Club. That must be about 1953 ( I just dug out the programme for it!) Nan Wise was the Gala Queen that year. The crown bearer was Miller Routledge.
Where are they now?
Ladies were allowed into the Institute for the Gala dance -
admission Ladies 1/6, Gents 2/- Positive discrimination way back then.

My family moved to Musselburgh next so there was no chance of my even thinking about going to the Wallyford Institute!! The rivalry was quite acute then and at Musselburgh Grammar School the 'Keilies'from Wallyford had a hard time.

I feel a song coming on........"Memories, ....."

Thanks for reminding me Andrew

Russell

Post by **AndrewP** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 2:42 pm

Russell wrote:Come to that neither could the ladies in my day. My mother was instrumental in getting a lending library together then they discovered the only place to keep it was in the Miners Club so men only borrowers. We left the village before that one was resolved.

That one has been resolved now. There is a modern library at the south end of the village, just off the road in from Pencaitland. That building looks like 1980s or 1990s, so I guess some other interim facility was found between the 1950s and the new building. I cannot imagine a men-only library to have been allowed to exist up to the 1980s or 1990s.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 3:23 pm

Andrew you have triggered off a severe bout of nostalgia!

The new library must be just past the Kinetone Kinema on the left where the old barbers wooden hut stood. on the wee road leading down to the sawmill. Last time I was there Back Lane had been all built up and given some more upmarket name.

In my day at the far end of Back lane we still had a village blacksmith's workshop.
There was a working farm slap bang in the middle of the village. My father was the ambulance driver and motor engineer for the Ormiston Coal Company and our tied house looked across the Main St directly opposite the Manse.
Davie Armstrong had the local garage and ran the buses from the village to Tranet.

Then the National Coal Board came along and my father changed jobs hence the move to Musselburgh and having to cope with a completely new dialect and everyday language. Was I glad to have the fisherfolk in Fisherraw. they never commented on my wey o' speakin' and taught me what I needed to know about boats and riggin'.

Russell

Post by **AndrewP** » Sat Dec 31, 2005 4:18 pm

Hi Russell,

I think I have the arrow on this map about pointing at the library.

http://www.streetmap.co.uk/newmap.srf?x ... search.srf

Please excuse the temporary drift from genealogy.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson