SUSAN TIPPETT BRAITHWAITE

Happy New Year! I hope 2022 finds you all well. I’m finally venturing out of my cave with a post series I’ve been dying to work on.

In 2019, I teamed up with my wonderful husband, Jez, on our Scots Language project, Things in Scots. Unfortunately, with ever-increasing demands on our time, the project got shelved. Ever since then, I’ve been itching to get back to sharing Scots.

In October 2021, I finally saw the perfect opportunity when Dr Michael Dempster announced on Twitter that there would be a daily Scots language challenge called Scotstober.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep up with the challenge but decided to give it a go, jumping in at the last moment. I’m so glad I did, as I loved the experience of writing entirely in Scots. 

Unfortunately, the daily posting on top of writing Running the Asset took its toll on my health—CRPS—and it’s taken a lot for me to get back to posting to the blog. 

Which brings me to this post

While I was doing Scotstober, an idea for bringing back Things in Scots struck me. Why not share the bits of the Scots language from my work in progress? 

As most of my target audience speaks English and hasn’t much experience with Scots, I’ve written my manuscript in English. My Scots heroes dae drap wee bits o the language in, here and there. But, I’ve tried to avoid the need to have the characters explain the words by relying on context (though some phrases the heroes do explain).

So, here’s the first snippet… (apologies, this is an unedited first draft)

“He’s heading North, K.” Adam sprinted in that direction.

“Got him,” Killian said over the comms. “He’s nearing the shopping centre. Take the next left and go in through the multistory parking. You can intercept him before he gets lost in the crowd.”

Adam pumped his arms and legs, willing them to go faster. He skitit around the corner, almost hitting the opposite wall as he lost traction on the gravel.

Running the Asset (Deniable Unit #1)

Skitit is the past tense of skite (check out my post on skite). Skite means to slide, slip, go fast—and much more—and is pronounced skiyt.

Skitit is pronounced skiy-tih. You’ll notice that the t at the end isn’t sounded. Well, that’s not entirely true. It’s a glottal stop, so the sound comes from the throat.

And that’s it

I hope you enjoyed this post. I’d love to hear your comments on how easy or difficult it was to get the gist of skitit as it appeared in the quote. 

This isn’t exactly a challenge series, but if you find yourself inspired by the Scots words I share, add the tag #TiS or #ThingsinScots to your writing/art/photo post and drop your link in the comments.

Thanks for reading. Take care, and I hope to see you next week for more Scots on Manuscript Mondays!