Waxing Scottish With Stevenson

Speaking of language studies. . . . I've long been fascinated by the brogues and dialects of peoples from different English-speaking countries. Especially intriguing are the distinctions, stark and subtle, between Scottish and Irish pronunciations.

If you'd care to probe along those lines, read "Thrawn Janet," a 19th-Century supernatural tale by Robert Louis Stevenson. It took us forever to typeset and proofread it for presentation in our "Vintage Short Mystery Classics" e-book series (www.hornpipe.com/mysclas.htm), but it was well worth the time. It's just one of countless angles on how the language has evolved.

A more taxing but no less rewarding exercise is to read Gullah tales or listen to some of the dedicated Gullah story-tellers of our Carolina Low Country. More on them later. . . .