Íslenskt mál og almenn málfræði - 01.01.2004, Page 78

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Michael Barnes
In terms of morphology it is to be noted that Shetland speech dis-
tinguishes between familiar du and formal you. Such a distinction is
not apparently found elsewhere in Scotland, not even in Orkney, but is
general in the Scandinavian-speaking world (or has been until recent-
ly). It is also worth observing that a number of fossilised suffixes and
case endings occur in the Nom words that have survived in Orkney
and Shetland (Jakobsen 1928-32:xxxvii-xlii; Marwick 1929:xxix-
xxxi).
Syntactically the extensive use of phrasal verbs consisting of verb
+ adverb has come in for comment: expressions such as Shetland
come at ‘touch’, Orkney lay off‘chatter’ are often ascribed to a Nom
substratum. The use of he to denote meteorological phenomena, e.g
Orkney he’ll be snaa afore long ‘there’ll be snow before long’, has
parallels in the Scandinavian-speaking world, notably Faroese and
Icelandic (see e.g. Höskuldur Thráinsson et al. 2004:287-8).
It is in the lexicon that the Norn substratum is most obvious in both
Orkney and Shetland Scots. It should however be remembered that the
c. 10,000 words in Jakobsen’s 1928-32 dictionary and the 3000 in
Marwick’s 1929 work represent information the two scholars were
able to elicit ffom informants — many of them of considerable age —
some 70 to 100 years ago. There are indications that in Shetland, at
least, only about a tenth of the total are now likely to be recognised
(Graham 1993:xix), and the same is doubtless true of Orkney.
Nevertheless, the modern dialects of both groups of islands do still
preserve a sizeable body of words of Norn origin. These tend to be
restricted to particular areas of the vocabulary. Melchers (1981:260b)
lists the following domains as being particularly rich in Norn words:
types of wind and weather; flowers and plants; animals; seasons and
holidays; food; tools; materials and colours; movement; whims, ludi-
crous behaviour, unbalanced states of mind, qualities.
Finally, it is worth reiterating that the vast majority of place-names
in Orkney and Shetland are of Scandinavian origin. A recent study of
the place-names of Foula showed there to be about 80 Scots or hybrid
names to 800 Norn (Stewart 1970:318-19). It is likely that the pro-
portion would be similar throughout the Northern Isles.