An advert has appeared in the Herald newspaper recruiting Glaswegian interpreters and translators. The successful candidates needed to understand general vocabulary, accent and nuances.
The firm told the BBC that so far 30 people had applied for the positions – some of them applied in Glaswegian.
The translation company who placed the advert recently had a number of requests for Glaswegian translators and interpreters and decided to recruit to meet demand.
Glaswegian English can be difficult for tourists and business professionals visiting the area to understand.
Here are a few examples of Glaswegian patter
Baltic (very cold)
Boost (head off)
Buckie (tonic wine favoured by youngsters)
Cludgie (toilet)
Eejit (idiot)
Hampden roar (score)
Hee haw (nothing)
Hen (term used to address a woman or girl)
Laldy (enthusiastic participation)
Maw (mother)
Midden (rubbish tip)
Pure (very)
Moroculous (drunk)
Messages (shopping)
Scooby (clue, rhyming slang – Scooby Doo)
Shoot the craw (leave in a hurry)
Stooky (plaster cast)
Swatch (look)
Toaty (small)
Ya dancer (fantastic)
Yersel (yourself)
This looks cool.
I wonder how you can get to “messages” meaning “shopping”. Perhaps that’s refering to the ads that one sees while shopping but that’s still hard to imagine.
In Welsh, “shopping” is “negesau”, i.e. messages. Welsh was spoken in Strathclyde until about the 11th or 12th century, but I think that “messages” for “shopping” may derive from an early modern English usage no longer current in England itself, but remaining “live” elsewhere.