ah'll hae a peh, twa bridies an' an ingin ane an aw!

i love being scottish. more than that i'm really proud to be dundonian, something i get mocked for quite a lot but i don't care.

on my way home tonight i popped into my local supermarket to get stuff for dinner and i came across a book that inspired this blog.

it's the collins book of scottish words and i've spent the last hour reading some extremely weird words and some that i thought were the real name... la la la.

i didn't know that there were so many scottish words for backside! and they're awesome words, get these:

• bahookie or behouchie (pronounced ba-hoo-kee)
• bumbaleerie (pronounced bum-buh-lee-ree)
• doakie (pronounced doe-ki)
• doup (pronounced dowp)
• erse (pronounced erss)
• hurdies 

okay, hurdies is actually the plural noun for buttocks and hips but in my mind that still counts. how brilliant are those words tho?!! i have no idea why i've being saying arse for the last however many years when bumbaleerie has been available!

and then there's the words i thought were the real words....

• forkietail - real name - earwig
• harl - real name - actually none. it's a term to describe an exterior building surfacing technique... apparently!

now, dundonians are known for adding syllables to pretty much every word and we like to make words end in "ey" that shouldn't. examples:

• it's not a film it's a filum
• it's not time it's tiym
• it's not a pole it's a poley
• a fireman or woman is known as a firie

there's a great book called dundonian for beginners that may help with understanding a group of dundonians talking to each other!

roy claims that i use makey up words too and claim they're dundonian (he also thinks that the staff in starbucks and i are making up a language when  i order my coffee but that's another blog!).

in dundee we know that a roundabout is in a play park, the thing in the road is called a circle!
a dub seems to be better known as a puddle, but it's still a dub to me
some people may call the boundaries of  road a curb... we call it a krib, and there's a great game called kribby that we used to play when we were bairns

i learned from my book that a haar is specific to the east coast cos it comes off the north sea. i thought it was just another word for a low lying mist!

a howff is a place, especially a pub, used as a regular meeting place. strangely the howff in dundee is a cemetery in the city centre....

so, now i'm thinking a lot about the scottish dialect and on the whole i'm thinking it rocks! and in appreciation of the fabness of the language i'm going to post a scottish word or phrase on facebook. feel free to join in!