Walking from Cowcaddens station to Sauchiehall Street, I spot a familiar name.
'There's a Dalhousie [Dal-how-zee] Square in Kolkata,' I say to my friend. 'Do you think it's named after the same person?'
'We say Dalhousie [Dal-who-zee],' says my friend, 'but, yes, probably.'
I feel a moment of despair. How humiliating to be caught out by Dalhousie when I've mastered Bearsden, Milngavie and Scotstoun. Looking further afield, I've even got Kirkcudbright under my belt, although I've never actually been there.
Of course, challenging pronunciations are not exclusive to Scottish place names. As a child in Dorset, I used to find it very funny when visitors asked for directions to a nearby village, Houghton, pronouncing it Huffton. How could they be so ignorant? Locally we said Howton. London, too, has its share of names seemingly designed to trip up the phonetically unwary - Marylebone [Mar-le-bon], Holborn [Ho-bun] and Southwark [Suthuck] being three of the worst offenders.
When I stayed in Kolkata, pronunciation was less of a problem than the confusion caused by post-independence street names. For example, Dalhousie Square (which was named after a nineteenth century Scottish governor-general of India) is now officially called Benoy-Badal-Dinesh Bagh (BBD Bagh for short) in honour of three young independence activists. And Elgin Road, named after another Scottish governor-general and viceroy, is now called Lala Lajpat Rai Sarani. Bus conductors, taxi drivers and most of the general population, however, would look baffled if I used the official names. I had to learn to overcome my post-colonial discomfort and use the Raj-era names instead, because if you get these things wrong, you might as well walk around wearing a badge saying 'I'm new here.'
In Glasgow - nearly four months after my move - I'm not so new anymore and am feeling pretty settled. I've been down to London a few times during the autumn and each time when I return to Scotland I feel that I'm coming home.
This raises an interesting question of identity. Because although I now tell people in London that I'm from Glasgow, in Glasgow I'd be more likely to say, for example, that I stay in the West End. What's more, while in London I'd rarely describe myself (or self-identify) as English, in Glasgow I often find myself saying I'm English.
This isn't because my move has made me feel any more English than I did before but rather because I feel it's presumptuous to say I'm Glaswegian or Scottish after such a short residency. And even though I know how to pronounce Wemyss Bay (listening to the announcements at Central station is very educational), sometimes spontaneously say aye and nearly always remember to say turnip instead of swede, I nonetheless feel marked out by my accent. As soon as I open my mouth, it's obvious that I haven't spent very much of my life in Scotland.
But why am I judging myself by this standard? (It's certainly not because anyone in Glasgow has suggested I'm an outsider.) After living so long in London - reputedly a city of 300 languages - I'd never usually make a judgement about someone's geographic identity based on their accent or where they were born. Londoners have all sorts of accents, and the same is increasingly true of Glaswegians.
Maybe my hesitancy is related to my unease about using the old colonial street names in Kolkata: a fear of appearing to be culturally imperialistic, although in this case in a rather inverted way.
If Scotland votes for independence next year, then perhaps my identity problem will be solved, at least at a national level. Despite my birthplace and my accent, I will be a Scottish citizen. Otherwise, and as an interim measure, can I claim to be Scottish on the basis that - despite being a very late starter - I've already eaten a lifetime's ration of empire biscuits? Added to my intake of Tunnock's and macaroni pies, they must mean I'm largely composed of Caledonian carbohydrates.
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