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SLD News

Scottish Language Dictionaries have moved to 25 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LN. This new location is just around the corner from our old address, and we look forward to maintaining our close links with Celtic and Scottish Studies. Our phone and fax number and email addresses will remain the same.

Projects Update

Concise Scots Dictionary
The priority project over the last few years has been the re-editing of the Concise Scots Dictionary. That work is now progressing steadily even building up a head of steam. This is not in any way a simple reprinting with minor cosmetic surgery. We are adding material from the later stages of A Dictionary of the Older Scottish Tongue, additional material from Orkney and Shetland and, of course, updating the dictionary to take into account changes which have taken place between 1985, when the CSD was first produced, and now. All headwords which are still current will have the pronunciation provided. All headwords will have the etymology given, as far as we can. Many words are being promoted to headwords to make them easier to find and, even within entries, subentries are being ordered in a more consistent and user-friendly way. The editorial files that we are working on are tagged in such a way that future editions can be undertaken much more quickly and easily.

National Word Collection
Thanks to the hard work of Peter Bell, our IT Consultant, and Eileen Finlayson the National Word Collection is now up and running. We are busy organising existing material and adding new evidence for words old and new. Staff increases will allow for the expansion of both collecting and keying of Scots language.

Dictionary of the Scots Language www.dsl.ac.uk
We have been making a note of updates and improvements that we would like to make and one of the benefits of our increase in funding is that we will be able to dedicate a member of staff to working on the website. The plan is to initiate a rolling programme of revision once some substantial priority updates have been made. In addition, a version which is consistent with the printed Dictionaries will be retained for posterity.

A Word from the Weans
Primary 7 pupils of St Ninians Primary School in Stirling are now taking forward a project begun by a past class of P7s who collected a vast number of Scots words from primary schools all over Scotland. SLD's Ms Finlayson has created a database into which she has keyed a large proportion of the data and the school, with the help of some of the original pupils, who are now in secondary school, are producing a dictionary. SLD have agreed to act as consultants and we hosted a meeting of the P7 editorial committee. They have excellent committee skills, plenty of enthusiasm and a great love of the language. We look forward to seeing their work in print.