Philipps University Marburg
Winter Term 2005/2006
Submission Date: 31.03.06

English in Scotland - a phonological appraoch

by: Manuel Kaufmann

Contents

1 Introduction  3

2 The History of languages in Scotland  4

2.1 The languages of Scotland in the first millennium AD 4
2.2 The emergence of Scots 5
2.3 National Identity 6
2.4 Today’s situation  9

3 The Phonology of Scottish English 10

3.1 Consonants  10

3.1.1 The consonantal inventory  10
3.1.2 Rhoticity  10
3.1.3 Stops  11
3.1.4 Glottallization  12
3.1.5 H-dropping  12
3.1.6 Yod-dropping  13
3.1.7 /ξ/ and /Ω/  13
3.1.8 /l/ 14
3.1.9 /Τ/ and /∆/  14
3.1.10 Voicing assimilation  14

3.2 Vowels  15

3.2.1 The vowel inventory  15
3.2.2 Vowels before /r/  16
3.2.3 Scottish Vowel Length Rule  17
3.2.4 Back merger  18
3.2.5 Diphthongs  18

3.3 Suprasegmental features 19

4 Scots - a language it its own right?  21

5 Conclusion 23

6 References  24

1 Introduction

What is a language? How can we define it and what is its use? Without a speaker it would not exist, without a second speaker it would be useless. Everybody owns a part of it and contributes to its existence. It can only be defined by paying attention to the individual competence. This is important to consider when it comes to the description of a language as it is always only an approach towards reality.

This paper aims to outline the phonological aspects of Scottish English, where this notion is of great importance due to the complexity of Scottish English. Most competences of the Scottish population rank from broad Scots to Scottish Standard English (SSE) depending on class and occasion (SSE being the wellaccepted accent of Standard English with only slight variation across the country and Scots referring to the actual dialect with large variation). There is an ongoing debate concerning definitions and categorizations around Scottish English which this paper aims to outline. “What is the historical background of today’s phonological situation in Scotland?”, “How can we understand attitudes of the Scottish people towards their own language?”, “what are the phonological aspects of SSE and Scots?” and “can Scots be considered a language in its own right?” are the main questions which will be discussed in this paper. Neither the vocabulary and grammar, nor the language Gaelic (spoken by only 1,16% of the Scottish population) will be included in the phonological discussion.

2 The History of Languages in Scotland

In this chapter the historical development of the languages spoken today in Scotland will be outlined. It has to be stated that it is almost impossible to connect certain phonological features to concrete historical dates in the history of Scotland, because they always depend on a longer period of time to arise. However, there are a number of historical events which explain today’s attitudes of the Scottish population concerning their languages. Furthermore, they help us understand why the situation in Scotland is most different from the rest of the British Isles.

2.1 The languages of Scotland in the first millennium AD

The very first people known to have lived in the area what is now Scotland were the Picts. Today, very little is known about them. In the 6th century the people living in Ireland settled in the west of the mainland and founded the kingdom Dalriada. Scotia was the Latin name for Ireland and “Scot(t)i” the name for its Gaelic speaking people. Paradoxically, the Germanic language Scots is named after Celts (compare McArthur 2003:81). By the time the Irish settlers had established themselves in the 7th century there were four kingdoms:

1. In the Eastern Highlands the Picts
2. The Scots (the Irish settlers) in the Western Highlands and the Hebrides
3. The Britons (kingdom Strathclyde) in the area of Glasgow
4. The Angles reigned north of the river Humber

In AD 867 the Danes established a Norse-Kingdom and contributed the fifth language spoken at that time in Scotland: three Celtic languages, Old English and Norse (Murison in Aitken 1979:3ff.).

2.2 The emergence of Scots

The Anglo-Saxons spoke a northern dialect of Old-English (OE) which was highly influenced by Norse. Murison points out how strong it affected the Old- English speech: Above all, the Norseman profoundly affected the speech of northern England by introducing a Scandinavian or Old-Norse element into the sound-system and vocabulary which still strongly survives today in modern Scots. (Murison in Aitken 1979:4)

Murison speaks about the “absence of the palatalisation of gutturals in connection with front vowels” (Mursison in Aitken 1979:4) in Norse. Where English employs ch and y, Norse retains k and g which can be found in Scots vocabulary: kirk (Scots), church (SE); rig (Scots), ridge (SE); and so on. On the other hand Gaelic is said to have only very little influence on OE at all (see Crystal, 1995:8). Nevertheless, the northern dialect of OE spoken by the Anglo-Saxons can be considered the source of what is today Scots: During the tenth century the monarch of the Scots extended its borders south of the Forth, into Anglo-Saxons territory since the latter were not able to control the region. In 1122 King David reunited the kingdom north of the Forth with the kingdom south of the Firth of Forth. When he died in 1153, Scotland had achieved the stature of a nation. The following two centuries it fought for independence, since the Anglo-Saxons would not accept Scotland’s claims. What is Scots today was called Inglis in the beginning as it derived from a dialect spoken in England (see Mursison in Aitken 1979:3ff.). During the course of history, however, Scots moved further away from the English language: what was spoken north of the Humber in England and Scotland until the 15th century, became limited to Scotland after the 15th century, but remained intelligible with English varieties (Early Scots 14th to 15th century, Middle Scots 15th to late 16th century).

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