Shetlandic has been described as 'English taught by Lowlanders...to
Norwegians.' (Alexander Ellis, quoted Catford Shetland Dialect,
p. 72). This definition was intended to make the point that Shetlandic
is not sufficiently typical as a dialect of English to be useful
in extrapolating earlier English pronunciations. Although this
conclusion was challenged by Catford, the description does make
the valid point that modern Shetlandic is a language closely related
to English, which was adopted from Mainland Scotland by Shetlanders
who had hitherto spoken a form of Old Norse.
The Death of Norn.
A more useful description of Shetlandic would be that it is a
form of Scots superimposed upon a Nordic substratum. The exact
time and manner of the replacement of the Nordic language Norn
by the form of Scots which is modern Shetlandic is disputed. Traditional
explanations, such as those of Jakobsen, Flom and Marwick, saw
Norn being gradually replaced by Scots until the speech became
more Scots than Norn. The radically different view of Danish scholar
Laurits Renboe saw an unadulterated form of Norn surviving until
the 1880s, as an expression of resistance against Scots oppression.
More convincing than either of these rather speculative conjectures
is the explanation offered by Michael P. Barnes, based on modern
studies of language death - that Shetlanders, over a period of
time, adopted Scots and rejected Norn because Scots was the more
useful language with the greater status at the time, and Norn
had come to be seen as irrelevant. As Barnes puts it:
The reason Norn died, both in Orkney and Shetland, was because the Northern Isles became more and more orientated towards Scotland. By the seventeenth century most if not all the inhabitants could speak fluent Scots, and as ties with Scandinavia, in particular Norway, weakened, the motivation to perpetuate a low-prestige vernacular with no official status or written form disappeared.
(Barnes, p. 26).
This perception of Scots as the 'high' and Norn as the 'low' language
can be illustrated from both Norn and Scots texts. The first,
a fragment of (mostly) Norn from Unst preserved from the eighteenth
century, shows the pride of Shetland parents that their son has
been to Scotland and learnt to speak Scots:
De vara gue tee
When son min guid to Kadanes:
han can caa rossa mare,
han can caa big bere,
han can caa eld fire,
han can caa klovandi taings.
"It was a good time when my son went to Caithness. He can
call 'rossa' (O.N. hross) 'mare'..." etc.
(The Norn here shows interesting parallels with Faroese, the words
gue (good) and tee (time) having lost the [ð]
in Old Norse góðr and tíð
rather than changing it to [d] as the
modern Scandinavian languages do. Compare Faroese góður
and tíð, in which the <ð> is not pronounced,
with Swedish god and tid.)
The second example (from Orkney, 1633) illustrates the official
attitude to Norn as contrasted with 'right longuag' (Scots):
'Scho aundit in bitt, quhilk is ane Nourn terme and to (be) exponit into right longuag is alse mikill as scho did blaw her breath thairin.'
'She aundit (blew) into a bitt (bucket), which is
a Norn term and to be expressed in proper language is as much
as to say she blew her breath therein.'
This view of the decline and demise of Norn - which, unlike those
of Jakobsen and Renboe, is based on an increasing body of modern
knowledge of language death - is important both with regard to
the traditional perception of Norn in Shetland, and because of
the parallels which it offers to the decline of modern Shetlandic
today.
Implications of the Death of Norn.
Firstly, this view recognises that modern Shetlandic is a different
language from Norn. On the basis of the traditional view which
saw Norn features being gradually replaced by Scots ones, it would
be possible to represent Shetlandic as (depending on your point
of view) a continuation or corruption of Norn. The 'language death'
view recognises that, whereas there may have been a stage where
Norn was increasingly influenced by Scots features, there must
nevertheless have been a point where, both individually and collectively,
Norn was abandoned and Scots adopted. Though this may have happened
at different times in different localities, and even in different
families in the same locality, it ultimately happened throughout
Shetland.
Secondly, this model offers striking parallels to the situation
in Shetland today. Until recently, the almost universal assumption,
in local writing expressing concern at the decline of Shetlandic,
was that this decline would follow the model which it was assumed
had taken place in the case of Norn. That is, that the uniquely
Shetlandic vocabulary would slowly die out until what remained
would be a depleted dialect consisting mostly of common English
words with Shetland pronunciations. This gradual decline of the
characteristic Shetland vocabulary certainly continues throughout
Shetland. In the town of Lerwick, however, a situation much more
like the model of language death offered by Barnes has arisen,
in that the younger generation (at the time of writing, those
in their teens and younger) does not speak any kind of Shetlandic,
but simply standard English. That is, although they have a Shetland
accent, they speak a language which could be written as standard
English without any misrepresentation of grammar, phonology or
vocabulary. The change which is taking place is not a gradual
blending of one form of speech into another; it is the abrupt
replacement of one language - phonology, morphology and syntax
as well as vocabulary - by another.
The way in which this appears to be taking place does not exactly
follow the model given by Barnes, which concentrates on the failure
of parents to transmit the lower-status language to their children.
One of the most striking features of the loss of Shetlandic in
Lerwick is that children of Shetlandic-speaking parents, both
of whom always speak Shetlandic to their children, may nevertheless
speak English. In some cases, apparently, older children of the
same family speak Shetlandic while their younger brothers and
sisters speak English. Whatever the factors involved - and owing
to the lack of research explanations which have been suggested
(such as the influence of playgroups and a preponderance of English
speaking children in the community) must be conjectural - the
effect of the wider community seems to be more decisive than that
of the family. Nevertheless, it is doubtless the case that toleration
of this state of affairs by parents reflects a lowering in the
status of Shetlandic as compared to that which it had, say, thirty
or even twenty years ago. On the whole, however, much of the description
which Barnes gives of the death of Norn could be applied to the
death of Shetlandic in Lerwick, between two and three hundred
years later.
Thirdly, the Barnes model of the death of Norn makes the important
point - which is again reflected in the modern situation - that
Norn probably did not die out as the result of a gradual and insiduous
process alone; still less was it extirpated by Scots oppression.
Ultimately it died out because Shetlanders themselves had come
to perceive it as irrelevant.
The Scots Aspect.
Shetlandic, then, is essentially a form of Scots. Insofar as the
grammar of Shetlandic differs from English, the differences can
almost without exception (the use of the verb to be to
form the perfect tense is one) be shown to be characteristic of
traditional Scots. Morphologically, features such as the principle
parts of verbs - e.g. fin (find), preterite fan, past
participle fun - are in most cases similar or identical
(allowing for regular phonological and phonetic differences between
Shetlandic and Mainland Scots) to those listed in David Purves's
A Scots Grammar. Although these are frequently different
from the forms found in contemporary Mainland Scots dialects,
which tend to converge preterites and past participles - e.g.
'I fun(d) it' rather than 'I fan(d) it' - the Shetlandic forms
can be found in writers of more traditional Scots, such as Robert
McLellan. In this respect, the grammar of Shetlandic is more conservative
than that of most forms of Mainland Scots.
Syntactically, Shetlandic exhibits a number of features typical
of traditional Scots, such as the use of singular verb forms with
plural nouns but not with plural pronouns (e.g. 'Da men wis
comin haem' but 'Dey wir comin haem'.) Shetlandic does
not use the singular past tense of the verb to be with
plural pronouns as most forms of contemporary Mainland Scots do
(e.g. 'Wis ye gaun oot the nicht'; 'Whit wis thay daein thare?').
Again, Shetlandic is more conservative in this respect.
Phonologically, the question of whether Shetlandic exhibits traditional
Scots characteristics is rather less clear. Shetlandic shares
most of the phonological features which characterise Scots as
against standard English - forms like haem (home); lang
(long); oot (out); speerit (spirit); ruif
(roof), are immediately recognisable as Scots. There are, however,
certain features of consonant phonology - such as the lack of
a phonological distinction between initial 'qu' as in queen, and
'wh' as in wheel - which are almost certainly of Norse origin.
It is generally thought that the tendency of Shetlandic to turn
initial and medial voiced and unvoiced 'th' into 'd' and 't' respectively
is because of the previous loss of the 'th' sounds in Norn - compare
the extant Nordic languages, all of which, with the exception
of Icelandic, have lost the 'th' sounds. On the other hand, both
the unvoiced, and in some dialects the voiced, 'th' sounds are
pronounced in other positions - e.g. rooth (rowing-block);
braeth (breath); boedh (booth - [bø:ð]
in some dialects; in others boed [bø:d]);
and Shetlanders seem to have learned to pronounce the unvoiced
velar fricative 'ch', as in 'loch', which non-Scots speakers of
English seem to find difficult.
As far as vowels are concerned, Barnes states that 'The vowel
systems of modern Orkney and Shetland dialects...are Scots' and
adopts Catford's suggestion that Norn speakers, with a rich vowel
system but relatively small number of consonant phonemes, could
more readily imitate the vocalic than the consonant distinctions
of Scots. On the other hand, Catford considers that Norn influence
is probably to be seen in one of the most general characteristics
of Shetland speech - the structure of the syllable, which generally
consists of either a short vowel followed by a long consonant,
or a long vowel followed by a short consonant, a characteristic
of the Scandinavian languages. As the structure of the syllable
involves vowel as well as consonant phonology, this raises certain
problems for analysing Scots vowel length purely in the terms
generally used for Scots. It is certainly true that, from a practical
point of view, the Scottish Vowel Length Rule cannot be relied
upon to predict the long vowel sounds which occur in words like
loumie, oil-slick; peig, a glimmer of light; and
broel, to bellow; and this is an important consideration
when it comes to questions of spelling. Another consonant feature
noted by Catford (p. 72), the palatalisation of certain consonants
in certain circumstances, is related to changes in the preceding
vowel sound. While these changes - which are described on this
website as 'soft mutation' - are not phonological in themselves,
in that they do not affect meaning, they do impinge upon phonology
because they are related to the convergence of phonemes in certain
localities - for example, the pronunciation of hael (whole)
as 'hell' in the Central Mainland and 'heel' in the Northern Isles.
Phonetically (that is, with regard to features which characterise
the Shetland accent, rather than features which carry meaning)
the pronunciation of Shetlandic exhibits features such as consonant
palatalisation and vowel diphthongisation which make it strikingly
different from most forms of Mainland Scots.
The Norn Influence.
To characterise Shetlandic as a form of Scots is not to underestimate
the profound influence of Norn upon its vocabulary in particular.
The Faroese scholar Jakob Jakobsen, researching in Shetland in
the 1890s, found enough Norn vocabulary (about 10,000 words) to
fill two substantial volumes (in the English edition of his An
Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland).
Although many of these words were obsolete or obsolescent at the
time, and many more have become obsolete since, the Norn element
still forms an important part of the traditional Shetlandic vocabulary.
Derick Herning, analysing the vocabulary in the glossary to Jarm
an Jeemsie, his translation of Max und Moritz by
Wilhelm Busch, found that about 23% of the words were of Norn
origin, 6% could be either Norn or Scots, and most of the rest
were Scots. While the proportion of non-English cognate words
used in a literary text such as this is much greater than in normal
speech, the relative proportion of Scots and Norn words is perhaps
not likely to be much different. Many everyday words in Shetlandic
- such as smuck (slipper) - are of Norse origin, whereas
some words which would now probably be regarded as 'old' - such
as antrin (occasional) - are Scots. In other words, under
the influence of standard English, Scots vocabulary is now as
likely to become obsolete as Norn vocabulary.
The influence of Norn may also be seen in less obvious features
of Shetlandic vocabulary, such as the liking for combinations
such as come at (perk up, rehabilitate); aa aboot
(alert, intelligent); tak at (be upset) etc. The following
sentence contains just one word which does not have a direct cognate
in English - guid (went) - and yet would not be easily
understood by an English speaker:
He wis dat doon apon it wi dem layin oot for him at I tocht ill aboot him, sae I guid ower wi dat sam an took in for him
doon apon it - depressed
lay oot for - verbally abuse
tink ill aboot - feel sorry for
wi dat sam - immediately
tak in for - defend; stick up for
Although some such phrases are almost identical to those in contemporary
Scandinavian languages (e.g. wi dat sam) it is not always
clear whether such phrases are of Norn origin or not. Certainly
they are of a type which is more characteristic of Scandinavian
than of English or Scots. Unfortunately, however, Shetlandic is
usually studied by experts either in Scandinavian languages or
Scots, rarely in both; and it is possible that there is a tendency
for characteristics to be attributed to Norn which can be equally
well explained as Scots. Barnes, for example, comments that the
distinction in Shetlandic between familiar du and formal
you is 'not apparently found elsewhere in Scotland, not
even in Orkney, but is general in the Scandinavian-speaking world.'
However, the same distinction is certainly found in Orkney between
thoo and you. Shetland du is, allowing for
the regular change of Scots and English initial voiced 'th' to
'd', the same word as thou, pronounced 'thoo' in Scots,
as found in older English (e.g. the Authorised Version of the
Bible) and Scots (e.g. The Wyfe of Auchtermuchty); and
its parts dee, dy, and dine correspond exactly to
older English thee, thy and thine. It is true that
the usage in The Wyfe of Auchtermuchty is rather different
from that in modern Shetlandic - the wyfe addresses the
farm hand as thou and her husband as yow - but the
essential distinction between familiar and formal is the same.
Similarly, Gunnel Melchers describes Shetlandic phrases such as
'minds du?' (do you remember?) and 'kens du' (do you know?) as
'obviously Norn'; but it is not clear why these could not be explained
in terms of older English phraseology, such as 'knowest thou.'
Shetlandic as a linguistic system.
Although the question of the origins of phrases such as the above
is interesting from some points of view, it is peripheral to the
practical study of Shetlandic. Shetlanders use such phrases without
agonising over their etymology, just as English speakers use words
such as man, nation and bungalow, irrespective
of whether they come from Anglo Saxon, Latin or Hindi. The important
point is that Shetlandic, whereas it shares many features with
Scots, Norn, standard English and Germanic languages in general,
is a linguistic system in its own right, and is used as such by
those who speak it.
Paul Johnston writes that the dialects of the Northern Isles 'are
not wholly conservative: they are better described as going their
own way relative to the rest of Scots, adopting sometimes striking
but highly localised innovations including an extensive Clockwise
Vowel Shift, far-reaching diphthongisation, a consonant system
recast to match the inventory of the Norn that was spoken alongside
of Scots, and a strongly Norse-influenced vocabulary and syntax
scattered among the archaic features in the linguistic system.'
(11.2.6. p. 477). This website seeks to present Shetlandic, its
phonology, morphology, syntax and vocabulary, as an entity with
its own internal rules and conventions, whether these stem from
Scots, Norn, or elsewhere.
Bibliography.
Barnes, Michael P. 1998. The Norn Language of Orkney and Shetland,
Lerwick, The Shetland Times Ltd.
Barnes, Michael P. 1996. 'Jakob Jakobsen and the Norn Language
of Shetland' in Doreen J. Waugh (ed.) Shetland's Northern Links,
Language & History. Scottish Society for Northern Studies.
Catford, J.C. 'Shetland Dialect', in Shetland
Folk Book vol. 3.
Johnston, Paul. 1997. 'Regional Variation'
in Jones, C., ed., Edinburgh History of the Scots Language.
Edinburgh.
Smith, Brian, 'The Development of the Spoken and Written Shetland
Dialect: A Historian's View', in ibid.