[Script Info]
Title: 
[Events]
Format: Layer, Start, End, Style, Name, MarginL, MarginR, MarginV, Effect, Text
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,My name is Christine De Luca, but that's\Nmy married name, and my real name
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,is Christine Pearson. I was born in\NBressay in Shetland, and then most of
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,my life, my childhood, was spent in\NWaas on the west side of Shetland,
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,a group of islands at the\Nvery north end of Scotland.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Quite isolated from the mainland, really.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Waas is called Walls. But it really means\N'inlets of the sea' and it's one of these
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,things that the army making the maps got\Nconfused with, and they put down the word
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,'Walls'. So when you say "I come\Nfrom Walls," you feel as if it's
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,sticking in your mouth, because you come
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,from Waas. Anyway, that had a fundamental
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,effect on me, being brought up in a
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,peerie (tiny) crofting fishing community
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,all my childhood. When I came away to
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Edinburgh, where I live now and I've lived
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,for 50 years, I found Edinburgh really
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,quite awe-inspiring and quite scary.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,And of course I had to be careful how I\Nspoke, because I had to speak English.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,We learned to speak English at school,\Nof course. We had to be bilingual.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,And not be rude. But I did miss not being\Nable to speak in my own way.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,I think when I realised later on that the\Nchances of me going home was likely
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,very slim, I thought... I found release\Nin writing, in Shetland dialect.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,It was a peerie (tiny) bit difficult to write in the\Ndialect, because we never learned
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,to read or write it. It was kind of\Nmainly spoken. There was a dictionary,
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,there was ways of writing it, but we\Nnever learned it formally, so we had to
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,kind of... just manage ourselves.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,But anyway, I started writing subversively\Nin Shetland, in Shetland dialect. And then
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,as I wrote more and was moving among folk interested in poetry
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,then they became aware of that and I found they quite liked it
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,and that was really quite strange. I thought they would think it was awful queer.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,so i wrote more and enjoyed doing that. And as time is going on
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,and i'm writing more and more, I would say now about half and half
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,maybe more than half in Shetland dialect, or Shetlandic, and the rest in English.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,And it's been translated into all kinds of languages. Which to me seems bizarre and strange.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,I thought I might read this poem. It's mostly in English, because it's about the relationship between language and dialect.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,I had been working away with a Nordic poet, an Icelandic poet, and his poem was all about a bird, the snipe, and the Icelandic word for the Snipe is "hrossagaukur" and the Shetland work for it is "hrossgauk"
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,And i had been working away with a Norwiegen poet, and his poem was called "hegre [hoyden?]" which is about the bird called the "heron." And the Shetland word for, for a heron is a hegrie, and I thought that was quite interesting.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Anyways, it starts off in English. It's a kind of a manifesto.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,Spelling it out
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,It’s the way a cat fawns, a bird flaunts,\Na dog recoils and whimpers;
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,it’s the way\Na cricket chooses from his bag of chirpings\Nor a whale sends a long distance message.
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,\NIt’s the way our fore-fathers moved\Nto the forest floor, and in the tonality\Nof their vocal chords said ‘I’ and ‘you’\Nin a thousand different ways;
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,The tenses that made sense of time past and time to come
Dialogue: 0,9:59:59.99,9:59:59.99,Default,,0000,0000,0000,,picked up\Nthe grammar of polemic and persuasion,\Nthe lexicon of lewd and lovely,\N\Nthe tenses that made sense\Nof time past and time to come.\N\NIt’s the borders, armies and classes\Nthat cornered the limits of Language:\N\NPatois or Pidgin; Colloquial or Kailyard;\NVernacular or Slang.\N\NIt’s the famous thesaurus that suggests\Nthree meanings for dialect – other than\Ndialect and language – \N\Nspeciality, unintelligibility and speech defect.\N\NIt’s the funding that flows from decisions;\N\Nit’s the boundaries and commissions\Nthat decide that pub is kosher in Norwegian,\Nbut only if pronounced püb;\N\Ndat Heron Heights an Hegrehøyden\Nis baith languages but Hegri-heichts is dialect,\N\Ndat Hrossagaukur an Snipe is language\Nbut Horsegock is dialect.\N\NHit’s da passion we hadd whin we nön ta wirsels,\Nwhin we bal soond fae wir bosie inta da heevens\N\Nwhin we lay a wird o love apön een anidder\Nwhin we dunna budder wi nairrow definition.