The dialect of Caithness

The dialect of Caithness follows that of the North East of Scotland, by and large. In 1735 Aneas Bayne, in his 'A Survey of the County of Caithness', commented that the local dialect was then spoken in five or six parishes, with Gaelic in the other four. He also commented that 'the commons speak it tolerably well where they are not much corrupted by the accents and idioms of the Irish' (by which he meant Gaels). The compilers of the Old Statistical Account said in 1791 that the speech of Canisbay was “Scotch with a intermixture of Norwegian vocables” while in Wick (1791) the people spoke the “common provincial dialect of the north”. The same was said of Canisbay and Wick in 1840-41. In Halkirk in 1840 Gaelic was giving way to Scots and had been doing so for some forty years previously. The dialect of Caithness shares much in common with the North East of Scotland. For example, the sound ‘f’ replaces the ‘wh’ of other regions, as fat (whit) or fan (whan). Th at the start of a word, is elided, giving rise to such forms as e (the), at (that), is (this) and ey (they). It is also common, perhaps even more so than the North East, for the sound ‘ee’ to replace a number of vowels such as ai, oo an u. For example, soon becomes seen, moon/mune is meen, bane is been, hair is heer, and made is meed. There are also a few features which are probably derived from cross over with Gaeilc. The sound ‘ch’ is softened to an ‘s’ or’sh as in shapel (chapel), and she/her/hers replaces it/its. There were a number of publications in the local dialect, such as 'E Silkie Man' (above right), published during the 20th century.