Come to be…

The so-called "copula" is a grammatical feature that ties a description to the word/phrase it describes: "he IS a teacher" or "the dogs ARE big". Shaetlan has this kind of a copula, but also has a specific copula expression for new or unexpected information: "X comes to be Y". The closest translation for this into StE is something like "it turns out that X is Y":

▪Anna comes tae be his aunt. ('It turns out that Anna is his aunt.')

▪Brian comes tae be da treasurer o da club. ('It turns out that Brian is the treasurer of the club.')

▪"Bannock" comes tae be a Gaelic wird. ('It turns out that "bannock" is a Gaelic word.')

This is very rare worldwide, possibly unique.

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Artwork: Julie Dennison (@juliedennison).

Excerpt: "A wrastle wi a hen" by Joseph Gray read by Ewen Balfour.