The word ‘dreich’ (prounounced as ‘dreech’ … with a hard ‘ch’ as in ‘loch’) perfectly describes today’s weather in Stirling: the kind of misty damp air which can wet your hair and your clothes as you are walking… on a dreich day, the air feels wetter than mist but isn’t falling on you from above… unlike ‘smirr’ (a Scottish word for ‘rain that’s very faint, but not as strong as drizzle’).
I remember, when I lived and taught in Besut, Malaysia, being lectured by the school’s ‘ustaz’ (Muslim religous teacher) about the richness of the Malay language. He was telling me (in Malay) how Malay had, for example, many words for ‘rain’ that didn’t exist in English and then proceeded to list an impressive number of words. In fairness to him, I suppose, this was in the middle of the monsoon and we were under the roof of our school staff ‘canteen’ shivering in our short sleeved cotton shirts – the canteen had the benefit of not having any walls, which worked out well most of the year picking up any faint breeze that might relieve the opressive humid heat – and we were looking out at the constant heavy drizzle which characterised the monsoon in that part of the world, which was going to last for about eight weeks without any time off for good behaviour! And it’s true that that kind of rain was very different to the devastating thunder and lightning storms that hit the area for an hour or so before dusk in the latter part of the oppressive ‘hot’ season later in the year.
I felt obliged to point out to him that his knowledge of English was obviously quite limited as he had not heard of words like ‘drizzle’ and then surprised him by providing a good number of words for rain in Scots… in fact, once I started listing Scottish words for wet weather, they were absolutely hooching down!
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