English in Scotland

When examining the Scottish form of English, it becomes clear that it shows the characteristics of an autonomous language, however, in the development of Scots in the modern period an officially recognised standard or sociolinguistic norm is lacking. Instead there exists the Scottish standard English. (CHEL, Vol. V: 235)

Nowadays, the most well-defined dialect boundary in Britain lies between England and Scotland. Even though there are several features that dialects from the north of England share with those of Scotland, there are many distinguishing features that are unique. (Crystal, 1995:329) In this article, I will focus on the phonetic and phonological differences represented in writing. Here are some examples of Scots linguistic features listed by Derrick McClure in a chapter on English in Scotland which appeared in The Cambridge History of the English Language which I will present through some examples that are taken from a written document of Edinburgh working class dialect compiled by Rev. Robert Anderson. (The following description is based on CHEL pp. 235-240)

•
The absence of lip-rounding in words like go and stone, thus giving Scots gae and stane, sair for StE sore.
•
A velar fricative is heard in such words as loch and nicht ('night').
• A glottal stop is widely heard in urban accents, in such words as butter, and is spreading throughout the country, especially in the speech of younger people.
• Pitch range and direction tend to be wider than in RP, and unstressed syllables are often pronounced with greater emphasis (e.g. Wednesday with three distinct syllables).
• The close back vowel /u:/ is fronted, so that SE moon and use are heard in several dialects with [y] (in Hu: [ü]). For example, "Somebody's pit a black bag oot on the roof."

There exist various spoken dialects of Modern Scots, which mainly differ from each other in their sound systems. All these dialects derive from Early and Middle Scots, it is possible to describe the historical development of each dialect's phonology, however they lack any agreed spelling conventions. (CEEL, p. 63)

The short vowels of Older Scots have all undergone changes in the modern period. Original /e/ before /r/ has not been lowered, as in English, but raised or left unchanged: /hert/ for heart. [o] has given /a/ when in contact with a labial consonant, such as /tap/ for top, /drap/ for drop etc. /u/ in all Scots dialects, as in southern (but not northern) English, is lowered to / /\ /. However, this vowel when preceding or following a nasal, is often fronted to short / i /, as in /hine/ for 'honey' etc. (CEEL, p. 64)

N: Whit's wrang wi' you?
In this example we can see that the sound / /\ / in 'What's' becomes short / i / before an alveolar stop, although this kind of change normally takes place when / /\ / precedes or follows a nasal sound.

"The change in the word 'with' to 'wi" above can be explained by the fact that in Modern Scots short / i / and / /\ / are not subject to the lengthening process. These vowels have no long allophones. They remain short even before voiced fricatives (v z ) and / r /. This explains why 'with' becomes 'wi" in spoken and written Scots." (CEEL, p. 68)
Although, it is the consonant which disappears here.

Morphology/Syntax

R: Robert, whit are you daein' wi' a tie oan? Has somebody deed or are you goin' tae a weddin'?

D: There are some bad drivers. This morning a car tried tae overtake me comin' oot o' Wallyford. There were two tankers comin' oot o' the sewage works. Where he thocht he was goin', Ah don't know. He could have caused an accident. It wouldnae ha'e made ony difference onyway. He couldnae get to the bypass ony quicker.
R: But David, people say that you never let anyone overtake you.
D: Naw - Ah didnae!

D: Somebody's pit a black bag oot on the roof. I'm no' going oot tae get it. ...later...Dae ye* ken whit was in that black bag? Beer cans an' whisky bottles. I went oot tae see whit was in it.

The underlined expressions and words represent the auxiliary-verb system in contemporary usage and how it differs from those of both older Scots and modern standard English. The Scots cognate of do is written , representing /de/, have as , doing as

Negative interrogatives / affirmatives are formed by placing the full negative between the subject and the infinitive :
Dae ye no hear it?
Goan no do that.

A distinctive development in the Edinburgh dialect is the use of the form isn't it no? It occurs only with negative sentences, and its function appears to be to seek confirmation of the negative: She didnae like him, didn't she no? " (CEEL, p. 73)

• "In the plural, a consistent distinction between nominative ye and objective you survived into the modern period,[...], Ye, however, is now general." (CEEL, p. 73.)

Vocabulary

In the above text the word ken means 'know', the other typical example of the lexical difference is the word wee which means 'small'.
D: There's a lot o' wee Poles runnin' roon Innerleithen.

Finally, here are some other examples of dialectal differences of Modern Scots, here not explained:

R: Ma knees are sair. (absence of lip-rounding)

R: David, wid ye like a piece of chocolate cake?
D: That wid put me off ma dinner.

R: Gie's a fag Liz, Ah'm knackered.

I: Oh no - no that wummin' again.

Bibliography

Burchfield, R. ed. "English in Britain and Overseas", In The Cambridge History of the English Language. Vol. V. Cambridge University Press, 1994.

Crystal, D. The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge
University Press, 1995.