Regularized Inglish: theory

I see I promised to post on Regularized Inglish (RI) back in 2005, but never got around to it. Here's a brief explanation.

Axel Wijk's Regularized Inglish is a massive multi-decade job (completed in the 1950s, so there's nothing available online about it) of analyzing practically every word in the language, figuring out what the complicated rules behind the spelling system really are, and identifying all the truly irregular words and proposing properly rule-governed spellings for them. English, e.g. is truly irregular in its first vowel only, and so it becomes Inglish.

The underlying principle of RI is that every spelling shall correspond to at most a few sounds, preferably only one; multiple spellings for a single sound, however, are tolerated. Thus -ough is kept for bough, but not for rough, through, plough, hiccough, hough, or borough. Why choose bough? In order to consistently apply the RI rule that says "gh has no effect on the pronunciation of any word".

In my opinion, Wijk goes a bit far in a few places: for example, he introduces dh for the sound of th in father in other than initial positions (the, not dhe) for very little gain; he sorts out long "a" into a as in fat and "aa" as in father; he changes s to z when pronounced that way, except in the plural of nouns (not nounz)and the third-person singular ending of verbs. I wouldn't bother with any of these changes, which have little impact on being able to pronounce words at sight.

But as reformed (not revolutionized) spellings go, RI is a Great Thing.

The lackmus test

In a post to one of the innumerable technical mailing lists I belong to, a native speaker of German used the phrase lackmus test, meaning a simple method for detecting differences. In English, the phrase is litmus test; why the difference?

Middle English had both the native English word lykemose and the Scandinavian borrowing litemose; only the latter has survived. The second morpheme in each case is that of English moss, but the first morphemes are different, meaning 'drip' and 'dye, color' respectively.

Litmus is made by drying and powdering certain lichens; it was originally used as a water-soluble dye, but is now generally used as a quick-and-dirty test for acidity, hence the metaphorical use of the term (it turns red in acids, blue in bases).

The Elements of Style Revised

Get the little book!

I've been working off and on for the last few weeks on updating the original 1918 edition of William Strunk's short book on the basics of elementary composition. No, it isn't "Strunk and White"; White's additions are still in copyright and thus untouchable. Nor is it the book I would have written myself from scratch; that would look a lot more like Mapping the Model, except Rosemary Hake has already written it, so why should I? (Alas, that book is out of print....)

Here's part of the Reviser's Introduction, so you can see if it's for you:

My revisions to the original are founded on the principle that rules of usage and style cannot be drawn out of thin air, nor constructed a priori according to "logic"; they must depend on the actual practice of those who are generally acknowledged to be good writers. For a larger work founded on the same principles and giving much more detailed and up-to-date advice on usage, the reader is urged to consult the current edition of Merriam-Webster's Concise Dictionary of English Usage, as I have done with both pleasure and profit while preparing this revision.

I have attempted to remain within the scope of the original. This book, therefore, is intended as a compendium of helpful advice to novice writers in freshman composition classes, not a code of general laws of writing for all works by all writers in all circumstances. Violations of the rules can be found within the book itself — this is neither inconsistent nor hypocritical, as The Elements of Style Revised is not a paper written for a composition class.

In updating Strunk's work from the 19th century to the late early 21st century, I have retained as much of Strunk's spirit and characteristic style as I could. I have removed the obsolete, the erroneous, and the merely idiosyncratic (Strunk's arbitrary dislike of "student body", for example) both from Strunk's own usage and from the rules laid down in his book. Like White, I have also added a few points to Chapters IV and V that seemed to me important enough to justify their presence, as well as removing Strunk's Chapter VI on spelling. I have not hesitated to replace Strunk's opinions with contrary ones, though I was pleasantly surprised to find that many of those I expected to require changing (strictures against split infinitives and final prepositions, as well as the preposterous which/that rule) did not appear in the 1918 edition at all.

Share and enjoy, and of course send me critiques.

No cross, no crown

Someone used the phrase "No cross, no crown" on a mailing list, and explained it as meaning "Don't discuss religion or politics". I was fairly sympathetic with the intent, but unfamiliar with this use of the phrase: I had always understood it to mean "If you don't take pains you won't achieve anything", and to be a specifically Christian metaphor: "No earthly cross of metaphorical crucifixion, no heavenly crown of sainthood." I decided to look into the question.

I quickly checked the first 500 Google references to the phrase, and all of them except three clearly referred to the sense I already knew, drawn from all over Christianity, mostly Catholic and Quaker, but Episcopal, AMEZ, Orthodox, and even Rosicrucian. The Christian Scientist symbol of a cross surmounted by a crown probably alludes to the saying as well. The saying is of course also found in purely secular contexts, with the same sense.

Two of the three exceptions are basically accidental: a song "Ojo por Ojo", which says "And in that place there is no cross / no crown, no sacred ground / all is done and left unsaid"; and a page denying that the Mormon Temple is a Christian edifice, enumerating the Christian symbols that it does not have (at least on the outside): "There is no cross, no crown, no alpha or omega, no icthys, no lion, no lamb, nor any other recognizable historical Christian symbol."

The final exception appears in a speech on Voltaire by Robert Ingersoll, the 19th-century agnostic, who is clearly using the expression in the mode of parody; he associates it with King James I's maxim "No bishop, no King", by which the King meant that if Presbyterianism came to dominate England as well as Scotland, he would swiftly find himself either out of a job or a tolerated figurehead.

The Quaker references clearly allude to a book of that name by William Penn, in which he says, "No pain, no palm; no thorns, no throne; no gall, no glory; no cross, no crown." The modern phrases "No pain, no gain" and "No guts, no glory" are clearly reminiscences of this. I also found "No pruning, no grapes; no grinding mill, no flour; no battle, no victory; no Cross, no Crown!" and "No laming, no naming, no struggle, no Promised Land; no cross, no crown" in the works of others.

Speaking in Ander-Saxon

Some while back I wrote a posting on partially understanding languages that included a well-known quotation from Old English specialist Tom Shippey about how English became simplified over time.

Here's a translation (by me) of that explanation into Ander-Saxon, a variety of English in which French, Latin, and Greek words and roots are replaced by native English ones.

Reckon what happens when somebody who speaks, shall we say, good Old English from the south of the land runs into somebody from the northeast who speaks good Old Norse. They can without fear pass on with each other, but the hardnesses in both tongues are going to get lost. So if the Anglo-Saxon from the South wants to say (in good Old English) "I'll sell you the horse that pulls my cart", he says: Ic selle the that hors the draegeth minne waegn.

Now the old Norseman -- if he had to say this -- would say: Ek mun selja ther hrossit er dregr vagn mine. So, roughly speaking, they understand each other. One says waegn and the other says vagn. One says horsand draegeth; the other says hros and dregr, but broadly they are onpassing. They understand the root words. What they don't understand are the wizardly bits of the wholespeech.

For a showdeal, the man speaking good Old English says for one horse that hors, but for two horses he says tha hors. Now the Old Norse speaker understands the word hors all right, but he's not sound if it means one or two, byspring in Old English you say "one horse", "two horse". There is no apartness between the two words for "horse". The apartness is carted in the word for "the", and the old Norseman might not understand this, byspring his word for "the" doesn't behave like that. So: are you trying to sell me one horse or are you trying to sell me two horses? If you get enough sittings like that there is a strong drive toward straightening out the tongue.

(I ran this past Professor Shippey in email.)

French fries are not chips

It's commonly held that English "chips" are American "French fries", but I deny it. McDonald's-style fried potatoes are canonical French fries, but they are not canonical chips. Leftpondians don't eat chips very often, and perhaps think of them as "fat French fries" if they don't know any better, but the point is that the two terms refer to different things. Congress is the American Parliament, no doubt, but it would be absurd to say that the terms had the same referent!

Rightpondians often do claim that the fried potato products sold by McDonald's are "chips". Since they have only one term available, they will tend to use it for all fried potato products other than crisps ("potato chips" in American English), whether or not the potatoes are julienned (as in French fries proper) or sliced in large wedges or bars (as in chips proper). But taking a transatlantic perspective, the two terms are not really interchangeable, for they have different prototypes. This is not the case with "crisps" vs. "potato chips", which have only one prototype.

But when an American goes to a place (whether in America or elsewhere; in my case, about 600 meters away) where "chips" are served and openly called by that name, s/he will have quite a different gustatory experience from what results from eating "French fries".

To consider the flip side of the issue for the moment, if I went to England and saw an Erithecus rubecula, I would have to call it a "robin", because no other English term is available. That doesn't mean that I don't know it's a different bird from the specimens of Turdus migratorius that I commonly denote by that term.

Funny things

Well, that last post was #150, though I didn't notice that while posting it.

It's a funny thing, isn't it, that the Latin-based preface is English of several centuries' standing, whereas foreword, apparently quite Saxon, is in fact a calque of German Vorwort and was still being condemned by purists in the latter part of the 20th century?

Another funny thing, and a sort of footnote to my posting on doublets: the Greek root authent- came into English twice: once via Latin and French, giving us authentic, authentication and so on; and a second time via Turkish, giving us effendi 'a man of property, authority, or education in an eastern Mediterranean country'.

Trigrams

Trigrams are sequences of three letters in running text, counting space as a letter. I've had this table around for a while, but never publicized it on my web site index. Now I have.

The table is derived from the Brown Corpus, a million words of American English prose, and contains every trigram that appears at least once in every 10,000 words in that corpus (not once in every10,000 times, as the previous version had it).

The seven dirty words

George Carlin referred to the Seven Words You Can Never Say On Television as "Anglo-Saxon" (i.e. Old English). Piss, however, is not Old English at all; it's a straight borrowing from French. The agent ending -er in cocksucker and motherfucker is also a borrowing from French -ier, though some words ending in -arius, the Latin ancestor of -ier, entered Old English and now show -er as well.

Fuck and cunt are certainly not French, but don't look like Old English either, for phonological reasons; they are probably borrowings from other Germanic languages. There may be a remote connection to Latin cunnus, as in Latin and Englishcunnilingus.

The remaining two words (shit and tits) as well as the roots cock, suck, and mother, would be quite as clear to Anglo-Saxons (allowing for changes in pronunciation) as to us.

The black guard and the house wives

Nowadays the word blackguard is a somewhat archaic insult, but the black guard were originally the kitchen servants, who were so-called because they had to deal with coal. As often, words for lower-class people become words for bad people: villain used to mean 'serf' (this meaning is usually spelled villein these days, but the words are the same), and before that it meant 'village-dweller'.

The narrator of Chaucer's Canterbury Tales says of the Knight:

He nevere yet no vileynye ne sayde
In al his lyf unto no maner wight.

which (in addition to being a spectacular example of Middle English multiple negation) means that the Knight was 1) never rude and 2) never behaved like a peasant.

The standard pronunciation of "blackguard" is "blaggard". It's typical for compounds to be pronounced as single words when they get established, and later to undergo sound-change as if they were single words. For example, English has created three separate compounds from house and wife: the modern formation housewife, the Middle English hussif (obsolete now, but still current in the 19th century) meaning 'sewing-kit', and the one dating back to Old English times, which now takes the form hussy.

Dido. As in Queen of Carthage.

Long and long and long ago, my children, before the Internet became a haven for porn, there was a free email-based erotica server. If you sent an appropriately formatted email to louvre at dido dot fa dot indiana dot edu, you'd get back a story that had been posted to the Usenet group rec.arts.erotica. And all was well... until the postmaster at indiana.edu contacted the archive maintainer, and pointed out to him the large number of undeliverable emails that were coming in addressed to louvre at dildo dot fa dot indiana dot edu!

I don't think these addresses work any more, but I've obfuscated them anyhow. Why give the indiana.edu sysadmins even more spam to deal with? By the way, we're talking Indiana University here, not to be confused with Indiana University of Pennsylvania, so called because it's in a town with the unlikely name of Indiana, Pennsylvania (Jimmy Stewart was born there).

It's spelled "colonel", but it's pronounced "kernel"

But why?

Well, because it's French.

But the French word colonel, amazingly for a French word, is pronounced exactly as it's spelled, with no r sound whatever.

The story turns out to be that the Italian word colonello, from Latin columnellus, the leader of a (military) column, got borrowed into French twice. The first time, it became coronel in French, possibly on the notion that it was from Latin corona 'crown' rather than columna.

The form coronel spread to English and Spanish before being replaced in French itself by a second borrowing from Italian, this time more correctly as colonel. The spelling, but not the pronunciation, of this second form then entered English, leaving us with l in the spelling and r in the pronunciation.

Go figure.

Horhorn, quickening, and wombfruit

Someone asked me the meaning of the following signature line that I use:

Deshil Holles eamus. Deshil Holles eamus. Deshil Holles eamus.
Send us, bright one, light one, Horhorn, quickening, and wombfruit. (3x)
Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa! Hoopsa, boyaboy, hoopsa!

saying: "It reads like the gibbering of a schizophrenic. Is it anything but?"

It is, indeed, anything but. The text is from the "Oxen of the Sun" chapter of James Joyce's novel Ulysses, and consists of remarks that can be heard in and around Holles Street maternity hospital in Dublin. Deshil is Irish for "street", eamus is Latin for "let's go"; the speakers are medical students, who know enough Latin and Irish to fool around in both languages, even simultaneously.

The "Send us" line is the prayer of the expectant mothers. I do not know exactly what "Horhorn" means, but "quickening" is pregnancy, and "wombfruit" is a baby, with reference to the familiar prayer to Mary: "... and to the fruit of thy womb, Jesus." Indeed, the German version "Schick uns, du Heller, du Lichter, Horhorn, Leben und Leibesfrucht" leaves "Horhorn" untranslated. (3x) is just my way of saving space; the original repeats this line, like the others, three times.

As for the last line, it represents what someone (the midwife or obstetrician) is saying at the delivery of a male infant, perhaps a first child (they tend to linger a long time). The German version is straightforward: "Hopsa, ein Jungeinjung."

Two paternosters in Scots

A modern version:

Faither o' us aa, bidin abune,
thy name be halie.
Let thy reign begin.
Thy will be dune,
on the erthe, as it is in Hevin.
Gie us ilka day oor needfu fendin
an forgie us aa oor ill-deeds,
e'en as we forgie thae wha dae us ill
as lat us no be testit,
but sauf us frae the Ill-Ane,
for the croon is thine ain,
an the micht,
an the glorie,
for iver an iver.

A more traditional version:

Oor faither in heiven
hallowt be thy name.
Thy kingdom come,
Thy will be dune,
on the yird as in heiven.
Gie us oor breid for this incomin day.
Forgie us the wrangs we hae wrocht,
as we hae forgien the wrangs we hae dree'd.
An say us na sairlie.
But sauf us frae the ill-ane.
And thine be the kingdom,
the pooer, an the glorie,
noo an forivver. Amen.

Note in each case the semantics of the Seventh Petition: not "deliver us from evil", but specifically "deliver us from the Evil One."

"th" as in "then"

English th represents two different sounds, the sound of th in thin and the sound of th in then. The two sounds are quite rare in the world's languages: only Greek and Icelandic among the European languages have both. Although they are as different as f and v or s and z, there has never been any way of distinguishing them in English orthography (in the IPA they are written Θ and ð respectively). This isn't as bad as it seems, because in fact the second sound is used only in a minority of words, which basically fall into four categories:

1. in native English words between vowels
2. in native English words at the end where there used to be a vowel that has been lost, often with a silent -e that represents it
3. at the beginning in closed-class words
4. just before a final m with no vowel separating them

Examples of the first group are: bother, brethren (formerly bretheren), brother, either, farther, father, fathom, feather, further, gather, hither, leather, mother, neither, nether, other, rather, slither, smithereens, smithy, smother, swarthy, together, weather, (bell)wether, whether, (where)withal, wither, withershins (a variant of widdershins, a rare word meaning 'counter-clockwise') worthy, and their inflected and derived forms. Either appears on this list, but ether does not, because it is borrowed from Greek. Thither belongs to both this group and the third group.

Examples of the second group are: bathe, bequeath, betroth, blithe, breathe, clothe, lathe, lithe, loathe, scythe, seethe, smooth, soothe, teethe, tithe, withe, wreathe, writhe and their inflected and derived forms. The verb mouth (not the noun mouth) also belongs to this category.

Examples of the third group are: than, that, the, their(s), them, then, thence(forth), there (and compounds), these, they, this, those, (al)though, thus, thy(self). All these words belong to closed classes, grammatically similar groups of words that aren't easily added to English, such as pronouns, conjunctions, and articles. Open classes like nouns, verbs, and adjectives don't normally have this sound at the beginning of the word: thigh is a noun and has the first th sound, whereas thy is a pronoun and has the second.

Examples of the fourth group (the only ones I can find) are algorithm, logarithm, and rhythm.

There are very few minimal pairs for these two th sounds; that is, pairs of words which are distinguished only because one has the first and the other the second sound. Thigh and thy, mentioned above, form perhaps the best-known pair. For some English-speakers, thin and then are likewise a minimal pair, because they do not distinguish between short e and short i before m or n.

Earlier varieties of English (and perhaps in some dialects still) had no phonemic voicing contrasts in fricatives. Since then, all fricative phonemes save h have split (f and v, s and z, Θ and ð, and ʃ and ʒ) but to varying degrees, and even now there are not very many minimal pairs for any of the four.

The second person singular in the Lord of the Rings

In Appendix F to The Lord of the Rings, Tolkien says:

The Common Speech, as the language of the Hobbits and their narratives, has inevitably been turned into modern English. In the process the difference between the varieties observable in the use of the Westron has been lessened. Some attempt has been made to represent these varieties by variations in the kind of English used; but the divergence between the pronunciation and idiom of the Shire and the Westron tongue in the mouths of the Elves or of the high men of Gondor was greater than has been shown in this book. Hobbits indeed spoke for the most part a rustic dialect, whereas in Gondor and Rohan a more antique language was used, more formal and more terse.

One point in the divergence may here be noted, since, though often important, it has proved impossible to represent. The Westron tongue made in the pronouns of the second person (and often also in those of the third) a distinction, independent of number, between "familiar" and "deferential" forms. It was, however, one of the peculiarities of Shire-usage that the deferential forms had gone out of colloquial use. They lingered only among the villagers, especially of the West-farthing, who used them as endearments. This was one of the things referred to when people of Gondor spoke of the strangeness of Hobbit-speech. Peregrin Took, for instance, in his first few days at Minas Tirith used the familiar form to people of all ranks, including the Lord Denethor himself. This may have amused the aged Steward, but it must have astonished his servants. No doubt this free use of the familiar forms helped to spread the popular rumour that Peregrin was a person of very high rank in his own country.

In one or two places an attempt has been made to hint at these distinctions by an inconsistent use of thou. Since this pronoun is now unusual and archaic it is employed mainly to represent the use of ceremonious language; but a change from you to thou/thee is sometimes meant to show, there being no other means of doing this, a significant change from the deferential, or between men and women normal, forms to the familiar.

I believe that this table displays all the uses of thou, thee (including the dialectal form 'ee), thy, and thine in the text of The Lord of the Rings:

 I. 2    Ted Sandyman talking to Sam: dialectal
 I. 3    The Gaffer talking to a Nazgul: dialectal
 I. 3    Elvish song to Elbereth: poetic
 I.12   Troll Song: dialectal
 II. 8   translation of Namarie: poetic
 III. 4  Ent/Entwife song: poetic, intimacy
 I. 5    Galadriel to Aragorn (via Gandalf): poetic
 III. 5 Galadriel to Legolas (via Gandalf) : poetic
 III. 5 Galadriel to Gimli (via Gandalf): ceremony
 III. 6 Eowyn to Theoden, bearing wine: ceremony
 IV. 3 Gaffer to Sam (in memory): dialectal
 IV. 5 Faramir apostrophizing dead Boromir : ceremony
 V. 2  Arwen to Aragorn (via Halbarad): ceremony
 V. 2  Isildur to the King of the Dead (told by Aragorn): contempt
 V. 2  Eowyn to Aragorn: intimacy
 V. 6  Witch-king to Eowyn : contempt
 V. 7  Denethor (in madness) to Gandalf : contempt
 V. 10 Mouth of Sauron to Aragorn and Gandalf: contempt
 VI. 5 Aragorn to Faramir: ceremony
 VI. 6 Aragorn to Eowyn: intimacy
 VI.8  Sam to Mr. Cotton: dialectal

Note that except for the characters in the Troll Song, who are dialect speakers, there is not one instance of two people in conversation addressing one another with "thou".

Careers for calves

A bull calf has four possible fates: he can become a veal calf, a steer, an ox, or a bull.

• Veal calves are castrated and killed at about 16 weeks and eaten as veal.
• Steers are castrated and killed while mature but still fairly young (14-16 months) and eaten as beef.
• Oxen are castrated and used as work animals. When they die, the meat is too tough to eat, even in Big Mac format.
• Bulls are not castrated and are used as studs. When they die, the meat is also too tough to eat and probably tastes funny to boot.

(We castrate most calves for two main reasons: it makes the animals docile and easy to handle, and testosterone affects the flavor of the meat, making it gamy and unacceptable to wishy-washy modern palates.)

The number of bulls and oxen is insignificant compared to the other types. Veal calves are generally from dairy herds, of which they are a basically unwanted byproduct.

The short ling

Boontling is the short ling that Boonters used to harp, 1880-1920. Only a few codgy harpers are still with us (the rest piked to the dusties long ago, luckily not before the ling was written down), but there is no question about the usability of Boont, as in this version of a familiar English-language nursery rhyme:

The eeld'm piked for the chigrel nook
      For gorms for her bahl beljeemer;
The gorms had shied, the nook was strung,
      And the bahl beljeemer had nemer.

Still, the Mendocino Mushroom Forager issue for 1980 (the "Boont Ite-Steak Greeley Sheet") contained this sentence by Chipmunk (mundanely Bob Glover), warning against ignorantly mistaking poisonous mushrooms for edible ones:

You must do much graymatterin fore pikin for seekin Ite steaks to gorm, cause the sockers might not be bahlers, but nonchers with dusties dust, so deek your bok well.

Note the slight syntactic difference between Boontling (shared with many non-standard English dialects) and standard English: "pikin for seekin" as opposed to English "walking/traveling to hunt".

"The Brightlighter's Jonnem" is a story in neo-Boont with an English translation.

Macaronics

And now, for your listening pleasure, some Latin/English macaronics. The second one works better if given the "old", or English, pronunciation, saying "Bi" like "bye".

Malum Opus

Prope ripam fluvii solus
A senex silently sat;
Super capitum ecce his wig,
Et wig super, ecce his hat.

Blew Zephyrus alte, acerbus,
Dum elderly gentleman sat;
Et a capite took up quite torve
Et in rivum projecit his hat.

Tunc soft maledixit the old man,
Tunc stooped from the bank where he sat
Et cum scipio poked in the water,
Conatus servare his hat.

Blew Zephyrus alte, acerbus,
The moment it saw him at that;
Et whisked his novum scratch wig,
In flumen, along with his hat.

Ab imo pectore damnavit
In coeruleus eye dolor sat;
Tunc despairingly threw in his cane
Nare cum his wig and his hat.

     L'envoi

Contra bonos mores, don't swear,
It is wicked, you know (verbum sat.),
Si this tale habet no other moral,
Mehercle! You're gratus to that!
     —J.A. Morgan

Motor Bus

What is it that roareth thus?
Can it be a Motor Bus?
Yes, the smell and hideous hum
Indicat Motorem Bum!
Implet in the Corn and High
Terror me Motoris Bi:
Bo Motori clamitabo
Ne Motore caedar a Bo —
Dative be or Ablative
So thou only let us live:
Whither shall thy victims flee?
Spare us, spare us, Motor Be!
Thus I sang; and still anigh
Came in hordes Motores Bi,
Et complebat omne forum
Copia Motorum Borum.
How shall wretched lives like us
Cincti Bis Motoribus?
Domine, defende nos
Contra hos Motores Bos!
     —A. D. Godley

English's nearest relative

If you look it up, you'll generally find that the language that's most closely related to English is Frisian, which is actually three closely related languages: West Frisian in the Netherlands, North Frisian on the Schleswig-Holstein peninsula and the offshore islands, and East Frisian (or Saterfrisian) in the Saterland in northern Germany. (The area called "East Frisia" no longer speaks Frisian, but Frisian-influenced Low German.)

But in fact, there is another language that's much closer to English but still separate: Scots. Not Scots Gaelic, which is closely related to Manx and Irish. And not Scottish English, which is a variety of English heavily influenced by Scots. But Scots itself, which is spoken in various dialects all over Scotland, in Northern Ireland, and in the Orkney Islands.

Like most minority languages, Scots went through a low point in the 20th century, and is now undergoing something of a revival: some of the Scottish Parliament's reports are written in it. Fortunately, it has had quite a lot of literature one way and another: I'm particularly fond of a horror story by Robert Louis Stevenson called "Thrawn Janet". That's a version written in modern standard Scots spelling: Stevenson's original, which is more English-adapted, is also available at the excellent website Scots-Online.org.

Anyhow, here's a bit of Scots that should be fairly easy going while still showing off the contrast between English and Scots: William Lorimer's New Testament in Scots (only the Devil speaks Standard English). Here's the first few verses of the Gospel of John:

IN THE BEGINNIN o aa things the Wurd wis there ense, an the Wurd bade wi God, an the Wurd wis God. He wis wi God I the beginnin, an aa things cam tae be throu him, an wiout him no ae thing cam tae be. Aathing at hes come tae be, he wis the life in it, an that life wis the licht o man; an ey the licht shines i the mirk, an the mirk downa slocken it nane.

There kythed a man sent frae God, at his name wis John. He cam for a witness, tae beir witness tae the licht, at aa men micht win tae faith throu him. He wisna the licht himsel; he cam tae beir witness tae the licht. The true licht, at enlichtens ilka man, wis een than comin intil the warld. He wis in the warld, an the warld hed come tae be throu him, but the warld miskent him. He cam tae the place at belanged him, an them at belanged him walcomed-him-na. But til aa sic as walcomed him he gae the pouer tae become childer o God; een tae them at pits faith in his name, an wis born, no o bluid or carnal desire o the will o man, but o God.

Sae the Wurd becam flesh an made his wonnin amang us, an we saw his glorie, sic glorie as belangs the ae an ane Son o the Faither, fu o grace an trowth. We hae John's witness til him: "This is him," he cried out loud, "at I spak o, whan I said, 'Him at is comin efter me is o heicher degree nor me, because he wis there afore iver I wis born'." Out o his fouth ilkane o us hes haen his skare, ay! grace upo` grace; for, atho` the Law wis gien throu Moses, grace an trowth hes come throu Jesus Christ. Nae man hes e'er seen God: but the ae an ane Son, at is God himsel, an liggs on the breist o the Faither, hes made him kent.

As the slogan says, "Scotland: A Twa-Leidit Folkrick" (a bilingual culture).