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Scottish English
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Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not include Scots depending on the observer.
The main, formal variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English, the register normally used in formal, non-fiction writing generally follows Standard English in spelling and grammar. Scottish English does have some distinctive administrative and legal vocabulary pertaining to Scottish institutions such as the Kirk, local government and the education and legal systems.
Scottish Standard English is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum and focused broad Scots at the other.
Scottish English may be influenced to varying degrees by Scots.
Many Scots Speakers separate Scots and Scottish English as different registers depending on social circumstances.
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Encyclopedia
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not include Scots depending on the observer.
The main, formal variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English, the register normally used in formal, non-fiction writing generally follows Standard English in spelling and grammar. Scottish English does have some distinctive administrative and legal vocabulary pertaining to Scottish institutions such as the Kirk, local government and the education and legal systems.
Scottish Standard English is at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum and focused broad Scots at the other.
Scottish English may be influenced to varying degrees by Scots.
Many Scots Speakers separate Scots and Scottish English as different registers depending on social circumstances. Some speakers code switch clearly from one to the other while others are style-drifters whose speech shifts in a less predictable and more fluctuating manner. Generally there is a shift to Scottish English in formal situations or with individuals of a higher social status.
Background
Scottish English is the result of dialect contact between Scots and English after the 17th century. 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.)
Phonology
The speech of the middle classes in Scotland tends to conform 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.
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 is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Received Pronunciation, may be an alveolar approximant (although it is also common that a speaker will use an alveolar tap . Less common is use of the alveolar trill (hereafter, will be used to denote any rhotic consonant).
- While other dialects have merged , , before , Scottish English makes a distinction between the vowels in herd, bird, and curd.
- Many varieties contrast and before so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently.
- and are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour and poor.
- There is a distinction between and (also analysed as ) in word pairs such as witch and which.
- The phoneme 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. The pronunciation of these words in the original Greek would support this. (Wells 1982, 408).
- is usually velarized (see dark l). In areas where Scottish Gaelic was spoken until relatively 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 , , and 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 , instead transferring Scots . Phonetically, this vowel may be more front, being pronounced as or even . Thus pull and pool are homophones.
- Cot and caught are not differentiated in most Central Scottish varieties, as they are in some other varieties.
- In most varieties, there is no : distinction; therefore, bath, trap, and palm have the same vowel.
- The happY vowel is most commonly (as in face), but may also be (as in kit) or (as in fleece).
- /?s/ is often used in plural nouns where southern English has /ðz/ (baths, youths, etc); with and booth are pronounced with ?. (See Pronunciation of English th.)
- In colloquial speech, the glottal stop may be an allophone of after a vowel, as in . These same speakers may "drop the g" in the suffix -ing and debuccalize to in certain contexts.
Correspondence between the IPA help key and Scottish English vowels (many individual words do not correspond)| Pure vowels | | Help key | Scottish | Examples |
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| | bid, pit | | | bead, peat | | | bed, pet | | | bay, hey, fate | | | bad, pat | | balm, father, pa | | | bod, pot, cot | | bawd, paw, caught | | | beau, hoe, poke | | | good, foot, put | | booed, food | | | bud, putt | | Diphthongs |
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| | buy, ride, write | | | how, pout | | | boy, hoy | | | hue, pew, new | | R-colored vowels (these do not exist in Scots) |
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| | mirror (also in fir) | | | beer, mere | | | berry, merry (also in her) | | | bear, mare, Mary | | | barrow, marry | | bar, mar | | | moral, forage | | born, for | | | boar, four, more | | | boor, moor | | | hurry, Murray (also in fur) | | | bird, herd, furry | | Reduced vowels |
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| | roses, business | | | Rosa’s, cuppa | | | runner, mercer |
Scotticisms
Scotticisms are idioms or expressions which are characteristic of Scots. They are more likely to occur in spoken than written language.
Scotticisms are generally divided into two types: covert Scotticisms, which generally go unnoticed as being particularly Scottish by those using them, and overt Scotticisms, usually used for stylistic effect, with those using them aware of their Scottish nature.
Lexical Scotticisms
Scottish English has inherited a number of lexical items from Scots which are comparatively rare in other forms of standard English.
General items are outwith, meaning "outside of"; wee, the Scots word for small (also common in New Zealand English); pinkie for little finger and janitor for caretaker (pinkie and janitor are standard in American English). Examples of culturally specific items are caber, haggis, and landward for rural.
There is a range of (often anglicised) legal and administrative vocabulary e.g., depute for deputy, proven for proved (standard in American English), 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 that it will rain" instead of the standard English meaning "I think it unlikely that it will rain").
Grammatical Scotticisms
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).
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 language in England 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?" Youse, being the plural of you.
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 language in England, which has "Aren't I?" but no contracted declarative form. (All varieties have "I'm not invited".)
See also
External links
- - Listen to a lot of the voice recordings from many parts of the UK
- - Multimedia corpus of Scots and Scottish English
- at Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh.
- 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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