George's Mingin Medicine as theclassreader - why, exactly??

[SirChenjin]

Apart from the SNP'S obsession with all things Scoa'ish obviously . We don't speak like that, none of our friends or family do, I don't understand the majority of the words and have no idea how to pronounce them - so when I listen to him reading I haver no idea of what he's saying is correct and then have to sign his readi g record. They would have been better giving him a book written in Mandarin - far more relevant and about as understandable to 99% of his class.

Ah but peelywally can also mean scrawny and malnourished surely? Pretty sure mingin' is never marvellous though?

Any excuse for a bit of Stanley. ParliamoGlasgow is an extremely complex science.

peeliewallie doesn't mean white . It means pale.

There's a rather insidiously scornful tone to some of the posts on this thread. I feel a bit sorry for those being taught by teachers with this attitude to the language of their charges.

Most wallie dugs are white. But it doesn't mean a wallie dug can't be another colour.

Wally is the word for china (or porcelain). Old fashioned false teeth were made of porcelain and were called Wallies. They were much paler than the natural colour of teeth, and I think the "gums" were pale too. So they could in theory look peely wally compared to natural teeth, but also be stained brown.

That's my guess anyway

Juice is the modern west coast word for ginger. It's generational. It's a living language - it changes with time and usage.

Ginger is still used of course - but juice is common too.

For some reason I keep thinking of Lavinia Derwent reading Tales at Teatime just before Crossroads in the 1970s. And that bloody Tammy the Troot, who would have been better off filleted and served up in a supper.
Crickey Francis you've got a good memory.

I say juice dad and Dh say Ginger which was apparently used for irnbru according to my dad

Just come back to this - interesting stuff

As always, I agree with everything Luna says, esp the implication that Scottish children 'should' know these words. I'm more concerned with the quality of the text and the storytelling, and question whether presenting a bunch of children who don't speak this way with 100-odd pages of words they don't understand and who will have to refer to a dictionary to translate is inspiring. It's actually bloody frustrating and if anything will turn them off the 'language'.

Opening the book on one random page of 14 line and here are the following words we'll have to translate via a dictionary. The rest I can make a stab at, but it will sound stilted and contrived:
snocher
pyocher
beglamourin
stacherin
neb
ferlie
faem/in
flisken
sworlin

Yeah - this is absolutely what will turn kids onto reading. Perhaps they should present 9 year old kids who do speak this way on a daily basis with Shakespeare or old Cornish texts, because they are, after all, still British and 'should' understand their heritage - and besides, it's good for language enrichment

Have you complained to the school SirChenjin?

Why do you ask maw?

I would be interested in what the school had to say about it.

And also, it's all very well complaining on here, but if you're actually wanting answers or change, then surely the school is the place you need to complain to.

It's still the same word though Francis.

I won't share the details of a private conversation with his class teacher on MN maw - I'm sure you understand that.

So, were you happy with the response from the teacher?

Nicely done - but I am giving nothing more away.

Have you heard of Jabberwocky?

I love loads of "scots" words, I don't have a problem with people having a variety of Scots accents or indeed children being exposed to texts written in local dialect, as long as they are being taught how to read and write in proper English first.

It took me a while to convince DS1 when he started school that a jaikit wasn't a similar garment to a coat and jacket but a different way of saying jacket.

I just wish the Nats would stop interfering and trying to turn scotland into a Shortbread tin.

Yes, most Scots are different to most English people, just as people from Glasgow might be different to people from Inverness or people from Yorkshire might be different to those from Milton keynes, or people from Govan might be different to those from Kelvinside. We are not one homogenised group that are intrinsically different from anyone the other side of the border. I probably have more in common with a middle aged woman in Manchester than I do with an 25 year old bloke from Aberdeen. DH and I come from different areas of Scotland and have different local words that we use even though we were born about 25 miles apart.

Teachers should be free to choose from the whole world of texts available to best suit her or his pupils including those from Scotland or written in dialect. Instead of "preserving our heritage" we are in danger of becoming a parochial wee back water.

The 20-odd line original poem written by Lewis Carroll which is not taught to the 9 year olds here, who are instead subjected to 100 pages of a translated text? Yes, of course - I was taught it as a child. Was it the thing that turned me onto the works of Lewis Carroll? No, that would be his other works which I found far more interesting.