Scottish English is the variety of English spoken in Scotland, also called Scottish Standard English.^[1][2] It is also the register normally used in formal, non-fiction writing. Scottish English should not be confused with Scots.

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.)

In spelling and punctuation, Scottish English does not normally differ from other British dialects of English. 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.

Lexis

An example of "outwith" on a sign in Scotland

There is a wide range of (often anglicised) legal and administrative vocabulary inherited from Scots, e.g., depute for deputy, proven 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 that it will rain" instead of the standard English meaning "I think it unlikely that 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 is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Standard English (RP), 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, <r> 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. (Wells 1982, 408).
• 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 , , 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 as in some other dialects.
• In most varieties, there is no : distinction; therefore, bath, trap, and palm have the same vowel; cat and cart are distinguished only by means of the r; and marry rhymes with starry.
• /?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 (especially among young males), 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) ! colspan="3"| Pure vowels |- ! Help key !! Scottish !! Examples |- | || ||bid, pit |- | || || bead, peat |- | || || bed, pet |- | || || bay, hey, fate |- | || rowspan=2 | || bad, pat |- | || balm, father, pa |- | || rowspan=2 | || bod, pot, cot |- | || bawd, paw, caught |- | || || beau, hoe, poke |- | || rowspan=2 | || good, foot, put |- | || booed, food |- | || || bud, putt |- ! colspan="3" | Diphthongs |- | || || buy, ride, write |- | || || how, pout |- | || || boy, hoy |- | || || hue, pew, new |- ! colspan="3" | R-colored vowels (these do not exist in Scots) |- | || || mirror (also in fir) |- | || || beer, mere |- | || || berry, merry (also in her) |- | || || bear, mare, Mary |- | || rowspan=2 | || barrow, marry |- | || bar, mar |- | || rowspan=2 | || moral, forage |- | || born, for |- | || || boar, four, more |- | || || boor, moor |- | || || hurry, Murray (also in fur) |- | (?) || || bird, herd, furry |- ! colspan="3" | Reduced vowels |- | || || roses, business |- | || || Rosa?s, cuppa |- | (?) || || 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 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?"
• Yous, being the plural of you. This is likely a borrowing from Hiberno English, found particularly in Dublin.

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".)

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?).

References

• 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.

See also

• Dialect
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• Regional accents of English speakers
• Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech
• Scotticism

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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