ken
just noticed in the wordorigins thread, that Dave used the word "ken" to mean I think knowledge . . . I always assumed this was a particularly Edinburgh/East of Scotland term... ?
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And, of course, 'Beyond our Ken' was a well-known Radio 4 programme featuring Ken Horne.
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Then there is of course the Edinburgh-based novels of Irvine Welsh, written in the working-class vernacular of the city . . .and not forgetting the British cult movie Trainspotting :"Society invents a...
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No, Eliza, Gerry is not me.However, for what it worth, ken is widely used in the north of England.In the N.E., "ken" and "knaa" differentiate the knowledge of an acquaintance from a fact."Canny" is...
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Why would a Columbian be "English"? Has the UK been running around in South America again?
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The word "ken" is an ordinary English word -- maybe used more in Scotland than elsewhere. It's used by Keats in "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer" -- one of the best known poems in the language...
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Still, it's an archaism for those in the South and Midlands.(btw, Jim, I saw Keats' house in Rome a while ago - I was quite awed and for once, didn't mind being one of the seething tourists).
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M-W2 gives all senses as verb (four distinctions as transitive, three as intransitive) as either obsolete, archaic, or dialect, except as v.t. '3. To know; to understand. Now Chiefly Scot.'As noun,...
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Why the insistence by the "official" sources that the term in now "chiefly scottish"? Is this just an example of "if its not London" then it must be Scotland? Or poor research?
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ElizaD turned up her nose somewhat [in the '... questions of grammar' thread] at my reliance on M-W2 and Partridge 'Origins'No and I wonder why you've made this assumption? I use a SOED which is many...
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response to Steve: broadly speaking, the further north you go, the more you're likely to hear it. If you head south from there, you'll find its use in everyday speech (local dialect included) peters...
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I think you might find that folks from Cumbria, Durham and Northumberland do not regard themselves as Scottish (and I suspect that the Scots are equally proud of their regional identity).This area...
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Possibly so, but my impression is that "chiefly scottish" attempts to locate the word by very rough geographic proximity. The capitalised "Scottish" was mine, btw, and I note that you used lower case....
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Re: old dictionaries. While they are of some use, older dictionaries are definitely not to be preferred to newer ones of comparable scholarship. Older dictionaries reflect usage from the years before...
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Steve, I agree with dmadams that "chiefly Scottish" simply implies that it is not an exclusively Scottish term - I wouldn't be surprised if it is also used in Cornwall, the Isle of Man and Northern...
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I don't want to lose too much time on this, but.....I guess I read the assignment to "Scottish" to mean "not southern England", and it is therefore used innacuratley. This fault is common in many...
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I think it is true to say, as a generalisation, that many northerners feel more of an affinity to the Scots than they do to their southern English counterparts when it comes to language and...
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To dmadams: Keats' house would be worth a pilgrimage. I've been to Camden (W. Whitman) and Amherst (E. Dickenson) but you Europeans have ages and layers to every place and more shrines to visit.
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Eliza, I wasnt suggesting that there was any "emotional" attachment. That would be going too far. Unfortunately, today in the UK, I dont think that any one region feels any emotional attachment to...
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"Northern affinity" yes, michael, but to other northerners, not to the Scots particularly. However, we're light years away from etymology now and I don't propose to argue the point further.
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