(written especially for Doric Future)
What does the North East doric mean to me?” To be honest I’ve never thought of it in that way, and there’s your greatest clue. Having been brought up speaking it, I don’t have to think about it – it’s just there. It’s my language of greatest fluidity, and although I’ve had standard English ‘dinned intae me,’ since the tender age of five years old, when I went to school, and while studying English at university, it has never managed to supplant those first five informative years.
Of course, there are variants even within the North East itself. I was accused a few years back of speaking doric like a, ‘toonser,’ but then, us ‘toonsers’ speak doric as well, and although I accepted what was said, albeit with a little bit of resentment at the ill-informed nature of the person saying, I didn’t let it deter me in the slightest bit.
My mother was born and raised on the ‘Shooting Hill,’ on the road that links Potarch to Strachan, on Deeside, while my father’s family came from around Kintore, and he spent the formative years of his life working on the farms around Inverurie. I therefore have slightly different influences from most, but it’s doric just the same. I will do everything I can to preserve and promote it as a language of everyday use, and although we may have to moderate our speech from time to time, doric is, ‘home.’
Author Bob Knight, is better known as a musician and songwriter of Doric and Scots songs. This first collection of short stories provides a natural companion to his musical output. Bob is keen to preserve Scots as a language of everyday use and these stories, told in Scots/Doric, are drawn from his rich traveller family heritage and his own imagination.
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