Poem: Old Tongue by Jackie Kay
How does it feel to lose your language or your accent? Is language a part of your identity? In this poem, Jackie Kay considers the effect relocation has on language and accent. She also describes how she misses the evocative words and expressions of her youth.
The poem has a few Scottish words that are a bit difficult to understand. You will find a translation here:
On the internet you can find a video where Jackie Kay reads her own poem. Use the search terms 'Old Tongue by Jackie Kay'.
Listen to her pronunciation of the Scottish words.
Old Tongue
When I was eight, I was forced south.
Not long after, when I opened
my mouth, a strange thing happened.
I lost my Scottish accent.
Words fell off my tongue:
eedyit, dreich, wabbit, crabbit
stummer, teuchter, heidbanger,
so you are, so am ur, see you, see ma ma,
shut yer geggie or I’ll gie you the malkie!
My own vowels started to stretch like my bones
and I turned my back on Scotland.
Words disappeared in the dead of night,
new words marched in: ghastly, awful,
quite dreadful, scones said like stones.
Pokey hats into ice cream cones.
Oh where did all my words go –
my old words, my lost words?
Did you ever feel sad when you lost a word,
did you ever try and call it back
like calling in the sea?
If I could have found my words wandering,
I swear I would have taken them in,
swallowed them whole, knocked them back.
Out in the English soil, my old words
buried themselves. It made my mother’s blood boil.
I cried one day with the wrong sound in my mouth.
I wanted them back; I wanted my old accent back,
my old tongue. My dour soor Scottish tongue.
Sing-songy. I wanted to gie it laldie.
The poem is from the collection: Darling: New & Selected Poems, from 2007.
Relatert innhold
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