Wi dat sam

Photo © Julian Paren (cc-by-sa/2.0)

A phraseme or set phrase is a fixed expression that consists of more than one word, but that functions as one unit. The choice of words in the expression is fixed, and the order of them is also fixed. You can't split the phrase. Very often they translate into another language as one word. For example, in StE 'all of a sudden' or 'of course' the words can only sit in that order, and can't be split by other things (eg not *sudden of an all/*all, however, of a sudden... or *course of/*of, I would say, course,...). These StE phrasemes can be replaced with 'suddenly' and 'certainly'.

Shaetlan has a number of phrasemes that neatly translate into one StE word (see post from 7 Nov 2021). A particularly interesting one is:

▪︎wi dat sam (StE 'immediately', not "with that same"):

– I texted him, an he cam wi dat sam ('I texted him and he came right away').

This phraseme is a pattern replication of Scandinavian med detsamma 'immediately' (lit. "with the same"), as in:

– Jag smsade honom, och han kom med detsamma ('I texted him and he came right away').

Compare also the Old Norse phrase (með/við) þár sem 'at the same time (as), on the same occasion (as)'. This looks like yet another Scandinavian substrate feature that has been hidden in plain sight in Shaetlan, where the words all look StE but the structure is not.