Talk:John Jamieson

'Boswell’s Scottish dictionary discovered in Oxford after 200 years'
By Lindsay McIntosh, The Times, 2 May 2011:

''... now a dictionary written by James Boswell himself has been found after 200 years. And, significantly for a writer criticised for forsaking his Scottish heritage in favour of England, it is a Scots language dictionary. The unsigned manuscript, confirmed by Boswell scholars as being in his writing, consists of 39 pages including about 800 Scots words and phrases... Although the existence of the dictionary was known of through the journals, held at Yale University, its whereabouts were a mystery until Susan Rennie, a Scots language expert, stumbled on it while researching John Jamieson, the 19th-century Scots lexicographer. She uncovered the manuscript in the Bodleian Library in Oxford and compared the handwriting with Boswell’s letters in the National Library of Scotland. The Bodleian had bought it as part of Jamieson’s papers in 1927... More details about the Boswell manuscript are available on the internet at boswellian.com'' --Mais oui! (talk) 07:43, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Pictish or Gothic?
The text correctly quotes the Dictionary of National Biography in referring to Pictish as follows:

"The introductory dissertation, ingeniously supporting an obsolete theory regarding the Pictish influence on the Scottish language, has now a merely antiquarian interest".

But the 40 page dissertion in Jamieson's dictionary is really more about Jamieson's pet theory that Scots has its origins in ancient Gothic. Pictish or Gothic however his theory was to say the least eccentric. Cassandra — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.5.2.230 (talk) 11:45, 18 February 2013 (UTC)