Poem S, Chiefly Scottish
POEM S, CHIEFLY SCOTTISH NOTES CRITICAL AND HISTORICAL ADDED. TO THE HEADER. BEFORE perusal of these wonderful Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, it may be of importance to the general reader to have some authoritative rule for pronouncing the language. The following directions by the Author himself, although usually reserved for an Appendix, are therefore prefixed the one from the Kilmarnock, the other from the Edinburgh Edition : The terminations be thus the may known ; participle present, instead of ing, ends, in the Scotch Dialect, in an or in; in an, particularly, when the verb is composed of the participle present, and any of the tenses of the auxiliary, to be. The past time and participle past are usually made by shortening the ed into '. The ch and gh have always the guttural sound. The sound of the English diphthong oo, is commonly spelled ou. The French u, a sound which often occurs in the Scotch language, is marked oo, or ui. The a in genuine Scotch words, except when forming a diphthong, or followed by an e mute after a single consonant, sounds generally like the broad English a in watt. The Scotch diphthongs, ae always, and ea very often, sound like the French <? masculine. The Scotch diphthong ey sounds like the Latin ei. To these may be added the following other general rules : 1. That ea, ei, ie, diphthongs, = ee, English: 2. That ow, final, in words at least of one syllable, = ou, English : 3. That owe, or ow-e, in like situations, . = ow, English : 4. That ch, initial or final, is generally soft, = ch, English; otherwise, or in such syllables as och, ach, aueh, hard, = gh, German : 5.
[Show full text]