Category Archive Language

Doric – The Dialect of the North-East of Scotland

Part 1

Doric is the Scots dialect spoken in the North-East of Scotland and, as of 2018, has gained the status of the third official language of Scotland, along with English and Scots Gaelic. While you will easily get by with standard English, knowing of a few phrases of the language will be useful if you need to converse, e.g. with the mannie an wifies, an loons an quines a Fittee, i.e. the men and women, and boys and girls of Footdee (an area down by Aberdeen Harbour).

A common characteristic of Doric is changing the sound of “wh” to “f”. So “what” becomes “fit”, “when” becomes “fan” and “who” becomes “fa”.

You can download a copy of the Doric Dictionary which contains a list of some of useful words in Doric with the English translations

Although Doric is no longer as prevalent as it was, it is still a live spoken language. A transcript of a conversation can be found here.