Happy New Year to all!!

[alissond]

Hello there to everyone!!

I just wanna greet all Photoalpha Club members.

Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!!!

Best wishes to all from Manila!!!

--alisson

[bakubo]

Best wishes to you and everyone from Hawaii. It is 4:40 PM on 12/30 so we still have a ways to go.

Happy New Year! Boy, how did 2008 pass so quickly?

[Dr. Harout]

Happy New Year from Armenia.

[MFS]

Happy new year from the Netherlands too. I still takes a while overhere, but in a few hours I we have gonna to call our daughter in Australia. 9 hours sooner New year than overhere. Weird but already the second time for us too do so. We miss her a lot.

[bonneville]

Happy New Year from Rutland where the temp hasn't gone above freezing all day.

Cue for a hot toddy, and then another, and then......

Brian

[Greg Beetham]

I've been enjoying the shiny new year for about two and a half hours....so far it seems pretty much like the old one.
Anyway, all the best everyone, and keep smilin no matter what.
Regards
Greg

[[SiC]]

Happy new year!
It's 3:07 in sweden now and I'm off to bed...

[David Kilpatrick]

Come back from the pub - dead spot for mobile phones! Unable to call anyone after midnight. Kelso square, 1am, usual crew of drunk teenagers in a good mood. At least no-one asked me for 'shot' of my guitar - 'hey mon, that a guitar? Gie's a shot!' (answer - 'Nae chance, ah'm aff hame!'). Fixed the PA really badly set up by our front man for the night. Did Leezie Lindsay, Wild Rover, and Athenry to fill in gaps. Walked round the pub playing fiddle to a load of Dylan, Stones, Van Morrison, Johnny Cash songs - great stuff to saw out country fiddle style. Group of Irish folk in for the night visiting Scotland. Happy to shake hands or trade a kiss with so many people I know, some by name, some just by face, some not at all!

I love this town and can't imagine anything better than a small town, where if you go for a walk, you nearly always meet someone you know. Every time I take magazines to the post office, I'll be next to someone I know in the queue. Walk down the street, nod or wave or greet people as you go. Go to the supermarket, my neighbour's daughter on the checkout; get my hair cut, the other daughter!

The best thing that happened to me was moving to Scotland, and then - a bit later - hearing 'Deevie' instead of David. The first time I heard that, ah kent ah wiz hame!

David

[bfitzgerald]

The worst part about Scotland is you need an English translator to come with you. Esp bad are the highland accents, I cannot understand a word they say. They machine gun fast talk too, making it worse (and every other word is "I") The country Irish accent is just as difficult. You get used to it over time, I can even work out what people say now!
I was in Cork city once, asking for directions, and a woman just held her hands up and said "I cannot understand what you are saying", considering I have a mild London southern English accent (not heavy cockney), I was amazed and shocked..
The say over here.."how r tings" the H goes missing..strange. I have not picked up the local accent..what a shame
The odd thing is I have no problems understanding German, French, Spanish people who speak in English. So how is is people who share a native tongue, have problems?? lol

[bakubo]

The best thing that happened to me was moving to Scotland, and then - a bit later - hearing 'Deevie' instead of David. The first time I heard that, ah kent ah wiz hame!

Oh, you are originally not from Scotland? I had assumed you were a Scot. Where are you from?

It is very interesting to hear about your small town life. It sounds like a wonderful place.

The only time in my life I lived in a small town (population about 10,000) was for a couple of years when I was in high school. It was my parent's hometown and we moved there when I was 16 and I left 2 days after graduating from high school when I was 18 -- and then a year later my parents moved away too. Of course, 10,000 is not very small. What is the population of your town? Except for that one experience I have always lived in much more populous places.

[David Kilpatrick]

I can understand almost any Scot talking to me (I have an English accent, born 50 miles over the Border in Cumberland then moved with my father's steel industry job to Sheffield, but I was brought up with Scots - two advantages, I know how it goes, and when Scots hear an English accent from someone they know, they moderate things towards standard English). But I can be amazed by a conversation between two Border Scots, or even two Border Northumbrians, especially older country folk - it can be almost impossible to eavesdrop. Our town has 6000 people but it's growing fast and the incomers are from all parts of Britain and abroad.

I was in Wales before Christmas, doing a concert to open a new folk club. I am not often asked to do anything like that! On the way we stopped in a country pub, and I was bringing my instruments in from the cold, so a few late night regulars and the landlady got curious and asked what it was - I ended up showing them a cittern dating from 1770, and singing them a sample of a Scots song from the late 1600s. It did not involve any Scots words, just common words from the northern language of that period (found anywhere from Derbyshire to Edinburgh), and I explained two or three words before singing it - specifically, that the old Scots for 'love' is 'loo' (English find this one hard) and that 'noddle' was an old word for head. I forgot to explain the names of the birds mentioned - gowdspink is goldfinch (Scots), lintwhite is linnet (16th c British). I did just a single verse:

When Maggie and I were young, I carried my noddle fu' hie!
Nae lintwhite abune the green plain, nae gowdspink mair blithesome than me!
Then I saw her maist fair, and I loo'ed; I wooed, but I made nae great speed -
And now I must wander abroad, and lay my banes far frae the Tweed.

(written by the exiled Lord Yester of Neidpath, who supported the Jacobite cause and had delayed marrying the girl he loved).

When I had done this verse, the landlady asked:

'What language was that? Was that Gaelic?'

And I sing with an English accent, not Scots!

We then had a good chat about Welsh, because there was a leaflet I was reading, and I could tell that the Welsh translation was quite beautiful (poetic repetition of phrases, balance of words, alliteration, the whole structure of the text) while the English was the most appalling PR writing. I thought the English was a bad translation of the Welsh, she said no, it was the other way round - the Welsh was definitely a translation of the English, altered and embellished by the translator. But she could not speak Welsh the same way, as she had only really learned it at school, and everyone spoke English most of the time except when they did not want to be understood!

David

[bakubo]

It did not involve any Scots words, just common words from the northern language of that period (found anywhere from Derbyshire to Edinburgh), and I explained two or three words before singing it - specifically, that the old Scots for 'love' is 'loo' (English find this one hard) and that 'noddle' was an old word for head.

Interesting. When I was growing up my mother, and occasionally others, would often use the word 'noodle' for head. Also, she often used 'noggin'. I don't know if the first has any relation to 'noddle' or not.

[Dr. Harout]

Henry, it comes out that you probably have Scottish ancestry.
David, like Henry I thought you were a Scott.

[David Kilpatrick]

Henry, it comes out that you probably have Scottish ancestry.
David, like Henry I thought you were a Scott.

My father was, the other side is a 1:1 mixture of English and Welsh, so I am certainly more Scots than anything else. It's wrong to think that a Scottish accent means you are Scots. Our daughter's boyfriend is completely Scots, from a very old Scots family, and speaks very much the same way I do. I have other friends who were born and educated in Scotland and you would simply think they were English. Then again, I have German and Polish friends who came to live in Scotland and after only a year or two here, you would think they were Scots - and the young man who runs an Italian restaurant here goes back with his father to the family home in Sicily every year, he's Italian, but broad local Border Scots when he speaks English.

Our daughter is versatile with accents (and language - Scots grammar differs from southern English). She can speak perfect Oxford English, genteel Morningside Edinburgh Scots, or Tweed Valley Scots as required. On Tuesday, she came to visit a friend and they walked up the Eildon Hills. When she was parking her Range Rover she scraped a Mini which she couldn't see properly, and left a note offering to pay for any paint, it was only a tiny mark on the painted fender. She got a phone message from a woman sounding a bit upset, and it was in a Galashiels accent. So when she called her back, she spoke with a Gala accent too (it was funny to hear this). Within a couple of minutes it was all sorted, the damage was so slight it was repaired using T-cut, she was thanked for leaving the note and all was well.

If she had phoned that woman using an English accent and phrasing, you can be sure the outcome would not have been as friendly. I would never try to put on a Scots accent and unlike Ailsa, I did not grow up with the locals and acquire one. But I can tell the different accents for each town, and I don't use southern English words when there is a better Scots word.

Example if visit Scotland: Scots do not say 'I live in Kelso' (some do, because they have learned it from TV English) they say 'I stay in Kelso' - same as French 'vivre' (to live, to be alive) and 'demeurer/habiter' (to dwell, to inhabit). So if a Scot asks you 'where do you stay?', they mean 'where are you from?', not which hotel are you in! There are many more things like this, but this is the most common one that confuses tourists.

David

[mcddeb]

This is all very interesting. Being born and bred in the southeastern United States, I have an accent that is quite different than other parts of the my country. My son is a newly minted US Marine and before being sent to his permanent duty station, brought home a lot of guys from the northern states. His roommate in particular was from Pennsylvania and came home with him a lot. We would be talking away and Dan would just sit there looking puzzled after a while he would through up his hands and declare "I can't understand a word you guys are saying". Our Australian neighbors say the same thing, but then I can't understand of lot of what they say either!hiccup! But we enjoy each others company immensely. When you mention the Irish drop their H's in the south we have a tendency to drop the g at the end of words. For example, when I said we would be talking away, in person you would hear talkin' away and lookin'. Our Austrialian friend was talking about I think camping out and he said something to the effect of "break the ice on billybong and do a wash". Stopped me in my tracks, had no idea what he was talking about. Then he explained a billybong was a puddle of water frozen over. I might not be rememberin' that exactly, but it was sumthin' to that effect.

It's a wonder any of us in this world we all get along as well as we do! May we all be blessed with patience and tolerance for our fellow man in the new year and forward. Wouldn't it be boring indeed if there was only one way to do and say things!

peace,

Debra