Slang sign slip-up laughed off by owner
THE owner of a cafe criticised for fumbling Glaswegian slang on a sign has laughed off Twitter trolls. The Glasvegan cafe in St Enoch Square was criticised in a tweet for having a sign which read “Pure Deid Vegan” in its window.
A Twitter user – who we are not naming – said that the sign showed that whoever had written it “hasny spoken a day’s Glesga dialect in their life” and told the cafe owner to “f*** aff back tae Bothwell”.
Arata, the Latvian owner of the city centre cafe, said she researched the sign before putting it up and remains confident she has got it right.
She speaks three languages fluently and while she concedes she hasn’t ever spoken in a Glaswegian dialect, she said: “Not for a second did I think that would cause any trouble.
“We decided it might confuse tourists who are not familiar with the word deid instead of dead and were worried if we wrote ‘Pure Dead Vegan’ in the window then they might think we were actually serving dead vegans.
“I thought to double-check it and
Wikipedia confirmed that you could use ‘deid’ in the phrase ‘pure dead brilliant’.”
The expression, a catchphrase associated with the city’s Elaine C Smith, is listed on Wiktionary as being spelled “deid” – however, most agree that the phrase should be spelled and pronounced ‘dead’ in this context.
Arata continued: “I double checked if I got it wrong when people were talking about it online. I’m not from here so fair enough.
She opened the Glasvegan cafe in March 2018 and is in the process of reopening after lockdown.
The cafe has since reopened from Friday to Sunday but from next week the cafe will return full time, seven days a week.
“I thought the comments calling the person a ‘patter polis’ were quite funny,” she said. “From a language perspective I really enjoyed all the comments and all the chat.
“I get where the guy is coming from and it wasn’t an attack on me as a foreigner but more that only posh people talk like that and saying that this person obviously doesn’t speak Glaswegian. I mean, fair enough, I haven’t but I don’t think there’s any poshness in me.
“I’ve always loved languages and studied to be a teacher before realising it wasn’t for me but making vegan food definite was for me.”
The Twitter user promised to pop in and buy a lunch from the cafe to make up for the fuss caused.
He said: “The shop’s Glaswegian theme definitely made me assume the owner was from somewhere in greater Glasgow, hence the Bothwell comment. Anyone brought up with a strong Glasgow accent will recognise the embarrassing feeling of being outright told or at least socially pressured by middle-class Scottish people to speak ‘properly’ as if it makes you stupid or incorrect to have a certain accent.
“Because I caricatured the cafe owner as being a middle-class person there’s a sense of injustice created by the fact that you’re not allowed to speak ‘their’ Scottish accent incorrectly but they don’t bother to check with anyone whether they’re speaking ‘ours’ correctly. There are undoubtedly genuine examples of this phenomenon out there, it just turns out that this is not one of them.
“The information that she’s from Latvia does change things obviously. I had a Polish colleague whose repeated misuses of the dialect was actually very endearing rather than annoying. I did feel bad when people started pointing out my caricature of the owner was a totally incorrect guess. But hopefully she takes it in good humour. I’ll pop in and buy lunch and say sorry.”