Doorbells and Doric

Brace yourselves for you are about to behold a miracle. After 6 months, Jonathan and I finally have a working doorbell.

Isn’t that the most lovely sound you have ever heard? Watch it again. Now, did you notice how ferocious my guard dogs are when someone comes to the door? Watch it again. Did you notice that upon hearing the doorbell Bailey orients her head towards the back of the house? That is because the sound is coming from this little gizmo, which for the past 6 months, I believed was a left over baby monitor from the previous tenants.

Instead, when someone rings the bell, it sends a signal to this gadget which then makes a sound. Our doorbell was broken because for some reason the bell wasn’t sending a strong enough signal to the monitor. Funny story...a few weeks back, I was just hanging out in the kitchen when all of a sudden I heard the sound of church bells coming from this machine. (Imagine my confusion since at this point I still believed it was a baby monitor.) 

Hoping that our doorbell had magically started working, I checked outside but there was no one there. It happened a few times over the next few weeks and yet there was never anybody at our door. One time when it happened, Jonathan rushed outside and noticed that someone was ringing our neighbor’s doorbell instead. Kind of like baby monitors, the signals were apparently getting crossed.

While the handy man was fixing the broken bell, he also gave me some lessons in Doric, which is the native dialect of Aberdonians.  I’m sure it’s a kin to someone from New York trying to decipher the conversation of two Cajuns from down da bayou. For example the word ‘fit’ means 'what'.  As in:
Fit like? How are you doing?
Fit ye deeing? What are you doing?
Fit’s a dee? What’s wrong?

Other examples:
A’m fair fortochten. I’m very tired.
Far aboots? Whereabouts?
Louns an quines. Lads and lassies (boys and girls).

Here’s an example of it being spoken.

If you’ve ever seen DisneyPixar's Brave, the Young MaGuffin (the indiscernible one) is actually speaking Doric and not gibberish.

I'm sorry this is such a short post, but it's been quite the busy week and I'm trying to get all my chores done since the rest of my week will be full of hiking and mahjong! 

So as an extra today, you can read this article on how Aberdeen was ranked as the 3^rd happiest city in the UK...which is kind of like being the 3rd skinniest sumo wrestler in Japan. It's all relative.