Family Reunion

I spent the weekend at my home away from home - Irvine, Scotland.
Irvine is perched on the western coast of Scotland, halfway between Glasgow and Ayr. For those unfamiliar with Scotland, the west has the very broad (for many, unintelligible) accent - and it is one of my favorite parts of visiting. I usually adjust to the dialect quickly (only after many years of visits), but here's a snippet of one of the first conversations I had upon arriving.

Scottish dad: "Hae are ye, hen?"
Me: "I'm great."
Scottish dad: "That's smashin. Hae ye seen the cart?"
Me (frowns and glances in the back garden): "The cart?"
Scottish dad: "Aye, the cart."
Me (still looking for said cart): "The cart?"
Scottish dad: "Aye, the cart, she should be around."
Me (finally figures it out): Oh, the cat. (winces when I hear the how horrible the nasal aaaaaaa sound is when I pronounce the word). Yes, I've seen the cat. (winces again)

I was visiting some folks who I always refer to as "my Scottish family." To be technical, this family are not my blood relatives, but for all the love and kinship I share with them, they might as well be.

I first met John and Sandra Davidson when my father did a work exchange in the summer of '92. I was thirteen years old and John and Sandra quickly took our family under their wing, and became my Scottish mum and dad, as they have been ever since.

Over the years I've spent enough time in Irvine that after being there no more than an hour, I find myself slipping into Scottish patterns of speech and even thinking with a Scots accent.

One of the best courses I took in college was "The History of English;" I love learning about words and their origins. Going to Scotland is a wonderful way to learn about the diversity of language. There are Old Scots words that are brilliant. Here are just a few of my favorites:

skint - having no money: "I canna go up the road fer a pint, I'm dead skint."
drich - dreary, rainy day "Och, I'll nae go down the shore, it's an awffa drich day."
greet - cry. "Stop yer greetin, it's nae tha bad."
steamin - very drunk. "How's yer head? You were steamin las night."

And this is a hairy coo (Highland cow)...

and a wee hairy coo (Highland calf): I'm seriously not making these words up. My Scottish family and friends all use them constantly. I love these words, they have such a wonderful onomatopoetic (i.e. their sound evokes their meaning) quality. When I'm in Scotland every conversation becomes something of an adventure.

Unfortunately it wasn't all good news from the North. Ayrshire has recently been shocked by the announcement that Diageo (the corporation that owns the Johnnie Walker label) will be closing their factory in Kilmarnock, cutting 700 jobs.

Scotland has already been hard hit by recession, and this loss will devastate Ayrshire's economy. Local politicians, who were given no warning of the closure, are in talks with the company now to try to find an alternative solution to the job losses. Since Johnnie Walker is a major export, particularly to America, I'd encourage anyone in the U.S. who consumes this whisky or cares about Scotland to let Diageo know that you support any concessions they can make to save jobs in Kilmarnock.

Lang mae yer lum reek.

Bumper Sticker Dialogues

While my own car doesn't sport any, I like to have imaginary conversations with bumper stickers. Pasted images and taglines on the backs of cars reveal a lot about the state of the world. This afternoon I pulled up abruptly in a parking lot to read this:

"Your body is a temple. Mine is an amusement park."

This line propelled me into a mental conversation that was a more of a confession about my own penchant for clandestine reading of romance novels. As a Ph.D. and P.K. (pastor's kid), such an activity is frowned upon by both academic and spiritual camps. My acts of contrition go like this: if I read three "lit" books I get to read one "romance," much in the way of if I go for that jog I can eat all these french fries. And lo, the guilty self-abuse cycle goes on. But I've decided it's time to come clean and break free. The lovely ladies at Smart Bitches, Trashy Books make the process a little less painful.

Face it. Romance novels are fabulous. It's a great genre, an audacious fearless genre, and it holds the highest market share of the publishing world. Snap.

When I was a little girl I hid romance novels under my bed so I could consume them without discovery (sorry mom). I think the secretive ritual made reading the books all the better. Maybe now that I've written this post my romance novel cravings will drop. But I don't think so. Why? Because those romances that are truly well executed demonstrate the master craft of sustaining tension. The taut emotion and pacing of this genre are what draw such massive readerships.

So I was more than little surprised when in the midst of my last indulgence I slammed up against a tension-ruining wall. It came in the form of a single word.

Pulchritude.

I kid you not.

Pulchritude.

Dear author, I appreciate that you're writing a historical romance that takes place in the early nineteenth century and focuses on the lives of the oh-so-proper British upper crust. But please, please do not believe you sustain my rapture if you force me to swallow a word like PULCHRITUDE as a descriptor. To refer back to my previous post about words I can't handle, let's add pulchritude to that list. Stat.

For me pulchritude does not evoke "beauty which pleases the eye," it brings to mind "one who is adept at projectile vomiting."

In the midst of satin stays, heaving bosoms, and sultry gazes I cannot stomach pulchritude. Not for the sliver of an instant. And yet, much to my dismay the word appears not once but a few dozen times in the narrative.

I've somehow found myself in a romance novel that rides like bumper cars.
Hmmmm, this?





























Or....this:





















Maybe a body like an amusement park isn't the best idea after all. When it comes to the land of love I'd rather be worshiped than jerked around.

Pulchritude?...nuh-uh. It is no good. No good.

Word Friction

I spend much of my day mulling over words. For the most part I adore words, but a few bother me to the point of distraction. The reason: the sound of the word negates its meaning.

Two key culprits - bucolic and sanguine.

Bucolic. This word purports to evoke benign, pastoral, even soothing settings. For me it's much too close to bubonic. When I picture a bucolic meadow, an image of undulating grasses kissed by a summer wind manifests...but the field is littered with bodies in various states of decay. Like this:













Sanguine. The problem with this word is its relation to sanguinary - one of my FAVORITE words. For any of you who don't know sanguine = enthusiastic, cheerful, optimistic, whereas a sanguinary event involves lots and lots of blood. Or better yet, if you've been exsanguinated you had a date with a vampire that went badly for you, but had a happily-sated nosferatu at evening's end.

Though sanguine has come to dominate the lexicon, sanguinary is the older word, from which sanguine derived. In the past the two words had a more direct affiliation, sanguine also meant a ruddy, flushed complexion (get it? from blood rushing to one's face....aha!) but as language is always evolving and words grow distant from their own origins, at some point the relation of these two drifted apart and now the two meanings have become oppositional.

I stand firmly in sanguinary's camp.

So for me a sanguine pastime equates to turning lazing laps in the pool at your Beverly Hills Estate...but the pool is filled with AB negative instead of water.

(Hmmm, I'm really not sure what to make of the fact that I actually had a successful hit upon Googling "pool filled with blood"...I guess their "Don't be evil" motto went out the window (or was defenestrated for any fellow word freaks out there).





If anyone else has a word they can't stomach, let me know. I'd love to hear your own word sound/meaning divergence quirks.