Scottish English

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Scottish English is usually taken to mean the standard form of the English language used in Scotland, often termed Scottish Standard English. It is the language normally used in formal, non-fiction written texts in Scotland. Although the terminology has often been used vaguely, modern usage distinguishes clearly between Scottish English and Scots.

Background

Scottish English is the result of language contact between Scots and English after the 17th century (dialect contact may be more accurate in that the indigenous language Lowland Scots was a related variety). The resulting shift to English by Scots-speakers resulted in many phonological compromises and lexical transfers, often mistaken for mergers by linguists unfamiliar with the history of Scottish English (Macafee, 2004). Furthermore, the process was also influenced by interdialectal forms, hypercorrections and spelling pronunciations. (See Phonology below.) The standard spelling, grammar, and punctuation of Scottish English tend to follow the style of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). However, there are some unique characteristics, mainly in the phonological and phonetic systems, many of which originate in the country's two autochthonous languages, the Scottish Gaelic language and Scots. The speech of the middle classes in Scotland often conforms to the grammatical norms of the written standard, particularly in situations that are regarded as formal. Highland English is slightly different from the variety spoken in the lowlands in that it is more phonologically, grammatically, and lexically influenced by a Gaelic substratum.

Lexis

Scottish English has a number of lexical items which are rare in Southern British English (and possibly other forms of standard English). General items are outwith, meaning "outside of"; wee, the Scots word for small (which also occurs in Hiberno-English); pinkie for little finger and janitor for caretaker (both of which also occur in North American English). Examples of culturally specific items are caber, haggis, and landward for rural.

In some areas there is a substantial non-standard lexis (shared with Scots) apparently acquired from the Romany language and from Eastern European languages; examples include shan (harsh, unfair), gadge (lad, chap) and peeve (alcoholic drink).

There is a wide range of (often anglicised) legal and administrative vocabulary inherited from Scots, e.g., depute /ˈdɛpjut/ for deputy, proven /ˈproːvən/ for proved, interdict for injunction and sheriff substitute for acting sheriff.

Often, lexical differences between Scottish English and Southern Standard English are simply differences in the distribution of shared lexis, such as stay for "live" (as in: where do you stay?); doubt for "think the worst" (I doubt it will rain meaning "I fear it will rain"). Correct is often preferred to right (meaning "morally right" or "just") when the speaker means "factually accurate"..........

Phonology

While pronunciation features vary among speakers (depending on region and social status), there are a number of phonological aspects characteristic of Scottish English:

Scottish English is a rhotic accent, meaning /r/ is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Standard English (RP), /r/ may be an alveolar approximant ([ɹ], although it is also common that a speaker will use an alveolar tap [ɾ]. Less common is use of the alveolar trill [r] (hereafter, will be used to denote any rhotic consonant).

While other dialects have merged /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ʌ/ before /r/, Scottish English makes a distinction between the vowels in herd, bird, and curd.
Many varieties contrast /o/ and /ɔ/ before /r/ so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently.
/or/ and /ur/ are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour and poor.

There is a distinction between /w/ and /ʍ/ (also analyzed as /hw/) in word pairs such as witch and which.
The phoneme /x/ is common in names and in SSE's many Gaelic and Scots borrowings, so much so that it is often taught to incomers, particularly for "ch" in loch. Some Scottish speakers use it in words of Greek origin as well, such as technical, patriarch, etc. (Wells 1982, 408).
/l/ is usually velarized (see dark l). In areas where Scottish Gaelic was spoken until recently (such as Dumfries and Galloway), velarization may be absent.
Vowel length is generally regarded as non-phonemic, although a distinctive part of Scottish English is the Scots vowel length rule (Scobbie et al. 1999). Certain vowels (such as /i/, /u/, and /æ/ are generally long but are shortened before nasals and voiced plosives. However, this does not occur across morpheme boundaries so that crude contrasts with crewed, need with kneed and side with sighed.
Scottish English has no /ʊ/, instead transferring Scots /u/. Phonetically, this vowel may be more front, being pronounced as [ʉ] or even [y]. Thus pull and pool are homophones.
Cot and caught are not differentiated as in some other dialects.
/θs/ is often used in plural nouns where southern English has /ðz/ (baths, youths, etc). with is pronounced with θ. (See Pronunciation of English th.)
In colloquial speech (especially among young males), the glottal stop may be an allophone of /t/ after a vowel, as in /ˈbʌʔər/. These same speakers may "drop the g" in the suffix -ing and debuccalize /θ/ to [h] in certain contexts.

Correspondence between the pronunciation and Scottish English vowels (many individual words do not correspond)
Pure vowels
Help key	Scottish	Examples
/ɪ/	/ɪ/	bid, pit
/iː/	/i/	bead, peat
/ɛ/	/ɛ/	bed, pet
/eɪ/	/e/	bay, hey, fate
/æ/	/a/	bad, pat
/ɑː/	/a/	balm, father, pa
/ɒ/	/ɔ/	bod, pot, cot
/ɔː/	/ɔ/	bawd, paw, caught
/oʊ/	/o/	beau, hoe, poke
/ʊ/	/ʉ/	good, foot, put
/uː/	/ʉ/	booed, food
/ʌ/	/ʌ/	bud, putt
Diphthongs
		buy, ride, write
/aʊ/	/ʌu/	how, pout
/ɔɪ/	/oi/	boy, hoy
/juː/	/jʉ/	hue, pew, new
R-colored vowels (these do not exist in Scots)
/ɪr/	/ɪr/	mirror (also in fir)
/ɪər/	/ir/	beer, mere
/ɛr/	/ɛr/	berry, merry (also in her)
/ɛər/	/er/	bear, mare, Mary
/ær/	/ar/	barrow, marry
/ɑr/	/ar/	bar, mar
/ɒr/	/ɔr/	moral, forage
/ɔr/	/ɔr/	born, for
/ɔər/	/or/	boar, four, more
/ʊər/	/ur/	boor, moor
/ʌr/	/ʌr/	hurry, Murray (also in fur)
/ɜr/ (ɝ)		bird, herd, furry
Reduced vowels
/ɨ/		roses, business
/ə/	/ə/	Rosa’s, cuppa
/ər/ (ɚ)		runner, mercer

Grammar and syntax

Syntactical differences are few though the progressive verb forms are used rather more frequently than in other varieties of standard English, for example with some stative verbs (I'm wanting a drink). The future progressive frequently implies an assumption (You'll be coming from Glasgow).

Prepositions are often used differently. The compound preposition off of is often used parallel to English into (Take that off of the table).

Idiom

In colloquial speech shall and ought are wanting, must is marginal for obligation and may is rare. Many syntactical features of SSE are found in other forms of English, e.g. English English and North American English:

It's your shot for "It's your turn".
My hair is needing washed or My hair needs washed for "My hair needs washing" or "My hair needs to be washed".
Amn't I invited? for "Am I not invited?"
How not? for "Why not?"
What age are you? for "How old are you?"
Yous, being the plural of you. This is likely a borrowing from Hiberno English, found particularly in urban areas.

The use of "How?" meaning "Why?" is distinctive of Scottish , Northern English and Northern Irish English.

Note that in Scottish English, the first person declarative I amn't invited and interrogative "Amn't I invited?" are both possible. Contrast English English, which has "Aren't I?" but no contracted declarative form. (All varieties have "I'm not invited".)

Scots and Scottish English

As many Scots use both Scots and Scottish English depending on the situation, there is a strong influence of Scots, and sometimes it is difficult to say whether a Scots form also belongs to Scottish English or whether its occasional appearance in Scottish English is simply code-switching. Borderline examples might be aye for "yes", ken for "know" (Ken what I mean?), or no for "not" (Am I no invited?). The touchstone is whether the speaker would feel comfortable using these in a very formal situation.

References

Abercrombie, D. (1979). Languages of Scotland. Edinburgh: Chambers.
Aitken, A. J. (1979) "Scottish speech: a historical view with special reference to the Standard English of Scotland" in A. J. Aitken and Tom McArthur eds. Languages of Scotland, Edinburgh: Chambers, 85-118. Updated in next.
Corbett, John, J. Derrick McClure, and Jane Stuart-Smith (eds.) (2003). Edinburgh Student Companion to Scots. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 0-7486-1596-2.
Foulkes, Paul; & Docherty, Gerard. J. (Eds.) (1999). Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-70608-2.
Macafee, C. (2004). Legacies of Colonial English: Studies in Transported Dialects. Cambridge: CUP.

Hughes, A., Trudgill, P. & Watt, D. (Eds.) (2005). English Accents and Dialects (4th Ed.). London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-88718-4.
Scobbie, James M., Nigel Hewlett, and Alice Turk (1999). Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. London: Arnold.
Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-22919-7 (vol. 1), ISBN 0-521-24224-X (vol. 2), ISBN 0-521-24225-8 (vol. 3).

External links

Scottish Corpus of Texts & Speech - Multimedia corpus of Scots and Scottish English
The Speech Science Research Centre at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.
Sounds Familiar? — Listen to examples of Scottish English and other regional accents and dialects of the UK on the British Library's 'Sounds Familiar' website

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Last updated on Tuesday March 11, 2008 at 02:41:37 PDT (GMT -0700)
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