![]() One reason a random Scottish folk song has come to be synonymous with the new year is that New Year's celebrations (known as Hogmanay) loom unusually large in Scottish folk culture - so much so that Scotland's official website has a whole Hogmanay section, which notes that, "Historically, Christmas was not observed as a festival and Hogmanay was the more traditional celebration in Scotland." But the song itself is not especially complicated. Since that's basically the opposite of a New Year's Eve party, which is when you usually hear the song, there is a lot of confusion. If this were a song that you normally listened to in a quiet room at full length in English when sober, there would be no confusion. Old friends who haven't seen each other in a while are meeting up again, having a drink, and reminiscing. The "pint-stoup" business is essentially saying, "Surely you'll buy a pint and I'll buy a pint and we'll drink to the good old days." In the next verse we hear about how "We two have run about the slopes / and picked the daisies fine." The lyrics to the later verses, when translated into English, make this perfectly clear. Ye'll be your pint-stoup? What? When Harry Met Sally is right: It's about old friendsĪs Meg Ryan's character Sally says in the movie, this is a song about old friends. But if you delve into the later verses, it becomes clear that the song is not in English. And since conventionally only the first verse and the chorus are sung, the difference between the languages is not very salient except for the unfamiliar titular phrase. It happens to be the case that the phrase "should auld acquaintance be forgot" is very similar in both English and Scots. Translated literally it means "old long since," but the meaning is more like "old times" or "the olden days." The point is that the phrase "auld lang syne" is not recognizable to English speakers because it is not an English phrase. Much of Irvine Welsh's novel Trainspotting is written in Scots, and this lecture in Scots about Scots should give you a sense of its relationship to English: The difference, of course, is that for hundreds of years now there has been no independent Scottish state to standardize and promote Scots as a formal language distinct from Scottish-accented English. ![]() But there is also what is known as the Scots language, which has clear similarities to English without truly being intelligible to English speakers - in much the way that Italian and Spanish are similar, but distinct, languages. What is the meaning of "Auld Lang Syne?"Īmericans are aware that Scottish people speak English with a distinctive accent, and may also be aware of the existence of a language called Scottish Gaelic that is related to Irish and Welsh and is rarely spoken. ![]() We have here a series of rhetorical questions, all amounting to the point that unless you are completely dead inside, you should be able to appreciate the virtues of reconnecting with old friends and thinking about old times. This 1711 printing by James Watson reveals the rhetorical nature of the question very clearly: Fundamentally similar songs and poems existed in other forms in 18th-century Scotland. The version of the song we sing today is based on a poem published by Robert Burns, which he attributed to "an old man's singing," noting that it was a traditional Scottish song. The speaker is asking whether old friends should be forgotten, as a way of stating that obviously one should not forget one's old friends. The answer is that it's a rhetorical question. "Should old acquaintance be forgot?" is a rhetorical questionĪs immortalized in When Harry Met Sally, a casual listener to the song is likely to be confused as to what the central opening lyric means: Bridging the gap is a once-famous, now-forgotten Canadian big band leader who for decades defined New Year's Eve and transformed a Scottish folk custom into a global phenomenon. The problem is that the text on which the song is based isn't in English at all - it's 18th-century Scots, a similar but distinct language responsible for lyrics in the song such as "We twa hae run about the braes / and pou’d the gowans fine" that are utterly incomprehensible to Americans.īut the story of how an 18th-century Scottish ballad became synonymous with the new year is tangled, involving both Calvinist theology's traditional aversion to Christmas and the uniquely central role that watching television plays in American New Year's celebrations. This New Year's Eve, it is almost inevitable that you will hear (and possibly try to sing) "Auld Lang Syne," a song whose melody is synonymous with the new year (and the theme of change more broadly) in the English-speaking world, despite nearly incomprehensible syntax and vocabulary.
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