Word: wi
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...four Herriot books are bolts cut from the same Scottish tweed, carefully interweaving the local patois (Owt a gurt cow wi' nawbut a stone in t'kidney) and technical jargon ("You can get hypertrophy of the rumenal walls and inhibition of cellulose-digesting bacteria with a low pH"). Each volume has become increasingly formulaic. But it is Herriot's original formula, an unfailing blend of exotica-for The Lord God Made Them All, a recollection of trips to Russia and Turkey-and accounts of extraordinary happenings to ordinary people and creatures. Volume IV of the tetralogy offers...
...other countries their versions of foods that seem traditionally American: the turkey, the yam, the potato, the pumpkin. For starters, how about pumpkin soup? Or bawd bree, the rich hare broth of Scotland? It might be followed by Colombia's pato borracho (drunken duckling) or Gaelic roastit bubblyjock wi' cheston crappin (roast turkey with chestnuts) and rumblede-thumps (creamed potatoes and cabbage). Dessert could be Mexican torta del cielo, or a rum-flavored nut tart from France, or Irish plum cake...
...just her Olympian long-windedness that is troubling, but the things she writes. She describes sex with her lover (another correspondent): " 'Appen I enjoy it (as, despite all and faute de mieux, I sometimes do), bully for me; 'appen I don't, it up wi' me knees and nightie anyroad, and to't till I'm proper ploughed and seeded." This language has nothing to do with Lady Amherst, a 20th century gentlewoman; it is present only because it echoes the 18th century patois of The Sot- Weed Factor...
...about the same level as under the old contract, but will tighten up considerably on cost-of-living payments, which are made automatically every six months as inflation goes up. Though consumer prices are rising at an alarming 11.4%, Administration officials are hopeful that the rate of increase wi now begin to ease as food prices start to decline, and that inflation will average 7% for the year as a whole. If so, the postal workers should get no more than 6.5% in total pay increases during the contract's first year...
Mcllvanney captures the speech of his Glaswegians with similarly high fidelity. At first glance, the dialect seems designed to try the reader's patience: "If there's no somethin' wrang wi' her the noo, there'll be somethin' wrang wi' her when Ah get ma haunds oan 'er." Gradually, though, the "hoot, mon" appearance of words on the page disappears, replaced by the odd, lilting music of street, sitting room...