Existentials

A so-called 'existential clause' refers to something that exists or that is present, such as "There is peace", "There are lakes", "There is an otter in the garden", "There are puffins at Sumburgh Head". In Standard English this is expressed with the "dummy" there, which functions as an empty place holder for a form of the verb BE (is/was, are/were). In Shaetlan existentials are expressed with the invariant form de plus either ir for the present tense or wir for the past:

▪︎Look, (de'r)/(de ir) a dratsi inna da gairden. ('Look, there's an otter in the garden.')

▪︎De wir a dratsi inna da gairden dastreen. ('There was an otter in the garden yesterday.')

The forms go back to Norn de, from Old Norse þat 'it', plus Norn er 'is' and vera/vesa 'be'. These forms sound very similar to the Scots forms ir 'are' and wir 'were'. By analogy and hypercorrection the existential was spelled as "dey ir/wir" and anglified even as "they are/were". But the original form was never the word for "they" and the original verb forms were never in the plural. The Shetland dialect existential marker is in fact a direct descendant of a Norn grammatical marker.