Alive and Well ?

[Lachlan09]

For no reason I can think of, a word or phrase popped into my head the other day.

Ava' (pronounced avaw). It means at all. It's not a word I ever used, but it was in the Scottish lexicon. Is it a word from NE Scotland and is it still used ?

That leads me to another point. With ever-encroaching TV etc originating in Glasgow/Edinburgh and indeed global, are Scotland's NE Scottish languages from eg Buckie, Aberdeen, the Howe o' The Mearns etc etc still alive and well or in serious decline ? I remember they used words and phrases not used elsewhere in Scotland and I think pretty incomprehensible to the rest of Scotland (just listen to a couple of Cornkisters to get the drift !), whereas for instance Glaswegian is easy and perfectly natural to understand.

[ANDY-J3]

It's still in use but you're right it is from north East Scotland so it's not a word that is in common usage. My Scots dialect dictionary also gives it as an alternative pronunciation for awa' but again I think only people from the north east would pronounce that as ava'. I think Moray is about the only place in Scotland where a high percentage of people can still be said to speak genuine Scots as their everyday language rather than Scottish English.

[hiorta]

Aye, it's alive an' deein' well, ye ken. It's no died ava'. We're aye spikin tae yin anither in oor ain tongue an' tisnae oor falt if ithirs dinnae ken it.
We still spik o Loons an Quinies and it a' maks pirfect sense tae us.