# pig's dialect *The Whorl list — 4 messages, 3 voices, 12 Feb 2001* > Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright > in each message remains with the person who wrote it. > Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original > archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than > retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact. --- ### james.kellar *12 Feb 2001, 09:11* hello all there's no doubt whatsoever that Pig's dialect is intended to be Scottish, as opposed to Irish or Welsh. 'dinna fash' and other similar expressions are giveaways (to British ears, at least). I don't have the book in front of me, but the author even goes as far as to explain that when Pig says 'wind' it sounds like 'fiend'. Has anyone got an idea as to which part of Scotland he's from? It sounds reasonably old-fashioned to me, I think. Pig as godling sounds like a plausible hypothesis - after all, the chapter's title could easily be read as referring to more than just the last paragraph, couldn't it? gerbil *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Spectacled Bear *12 Feb 2001, 11:23 · follows james.kellar* > At 09:11 2001-02-12 +0000, james.kellar at quantel.com wrote: > hello all Hello! > there's no doubt whatsoever that Pig's dialect is intended to be Scottish, as opposed to Irish or > Welsh. It is - *but*, why does he add all those H-s like a Cockney? It made Pig's speech tongue-twistingly difficult for me to read, even though I wasn't reading it aloud. > Pig as godling sounds like a plausible hypothesis - after all, the chapter's title could easily be > read as referring to more than just the last paragraph, couldn't it? Very plausible. The trouble with the Tartaros idea, on the other hand, is that Pig gets his sight back, as indicated by his reaction when he sees where his new eye came from. Spectacled Bear. --- ### james.kellar *12 Feb 2001, 12:50 · follows Spectacled Bear* >> there's no doubt whatsoever that Pig's dialect is intended to be Scottish, as opposed to Irish or >> Welsh. > It is - *but*, why does he add all those H-s like a Cockney? > It made Pig's speech tongue-twistingly difficult for me to read, > even though I wasn't reading it aloud. I was trying to work this out, and it did seem a little incongruous - I wonder if it could be that the author of these passages (Hoof/Hide) was confused by Horn/Silk's description of this accent - it must have sounded peculiar to all of them, I suppose. I agree that it's clear that Pig has been blind for some time (i.e. he wasn't blinded immediately after his attack on Silk) - otherwise how can we explain his skill at navigation in the dark? He would only be able to do this if he'd been blind for some time and had had a chance to get used to the idea. gerbil *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. --- ### Dave Lebling *13 Feb 2001, 21:24 · follows james.kellar* < Couldn't agree more re Pig. Did he like deciphering that dialect? He did nae! >> Thank you, Kieran! LOL, as they say on the web. I have, however, read _Riddley Walker_, _Feersum Enjin_, and several even harder-to-decipher works, so I found this pretty mild. As with other dialect-overload books, it helps to mutter along as you read. I find Remora and Incus more annoying auctorial devices. Dinna fash yourself. Dave Lebling aka vizcacha (some small fraction Scots through a Farquahar ancestor, but far more Irish overall) *This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun. ---