Order 1107834: Scottish English

Modern-Day Scottish Standard English as an outcome of extensive language contact in Scotland

2Chapter One: Language situation in Scotland

1.1 Introductory remarks 2

1.2 Scotland as a multi-lingual speech community 2

1.3 Scots: evolution and present situation 5

1.3.1 Roots of Scots 6

1.3.2 Lowland Scots (Lallans) 9

1.3.3 Scots spoken in Ulsters (Ullans) 10

1.3.4 Doric 11

1.4 Scots Gaelic 12

1.5 Scottish Standard English (SSE) 15

1.6 Concluding remarks 18

Chapter One: Language situation in Scotland

1.1 Introductory remarks

The purpose of this chapter is to present information about Scotland as a linguistically diverse socio-geographic area. Secondly, the aim is to point out the grounds for the selection of topic for the research performed in this thesis. The compiled material starts with a basic consideration of the language situation in Scotland and briefly characterises the co-existing dialects along with their evolution. The material is concluded with the introduction to Scottish Standard English (SSE) as the main topic of this thesis.

1.2 Scotland as a multi-lingual speech community

To begin with, during the collection of materials for use in this chapter, it was noticed that the 14-volume second edition of Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics (2006) does not contain a separate article regarding the history or the current linguistic situation in Scotland. It is a surprising discovery considering that dedicated encyclopaedic entries are available for Wales, the Channel Islands and the Isle of Man. After a closer examination it is observed that subsections devoted to Scotland and Northern Ireland are only found as parts of a larger article about the overall language situation throughout the United Kingdom.

According to the recent demographic information, Scotland has a population of roughly 5.3 million people, out of whom more than 20 percent live in one of the two main urban centres, namely Edinburgh or Glasgow (Scotland.org). English functions as the official language across all public domains, as in the entire UK. Probably the most common element prominent in the spoken interaction in Scotland is the distinctive accent characterised by noticeable rhoticity and a total or partial loss of variation with regards to vowel length. The second mentioned aspect is very rare in the south of Britain (Brown 252). Moreover, the use of English typical of Scotland also features differences observed in the use of vocabulary and fixed or semi-fixed expressions (idioms and other formulas). According to Brown (252), there are also minor differences concerning the use of grammar and specific syntactic structures.

Furthermore, the aforementioned variety of English, which will be called Scottish Standard English (SSE) in this thesis, co-exists with several other dialects many of which are grouped under the name of Scots. In north-eastern Scotland, there is a variety called Doric, while in the areas situated closer to the English border people use so-called Lowland Scots. Aitken (3) reports that some of the most traditional varieties of Scots are used in the north-eastern territories as well as in the Northern Isles. In the context of this thesis, the Ulster Scots dialect also needs to be mentioned. even though most of its speakers stay in Northern Ireland (Brown 252). It is also noticed that the same area, also including the Northern Isles, has been enduring constant tension between people advocating ‘dialect loyalty’ and the proponents of adopting Standard British English as a more practical choice.

Among the above-mentioned Scottish urban centres, Glasgow in particular is famous for its dynamics of speech among its inhabitants. People living in the largest city in Scotland regularly code-switch between Scottish English, British English and Scots. Despite the current situation, the British government has not recognised Scots as an official language in the UK. However, the range of dialects and their continuity are supported by Scottish Executive’s National Cultural Strategy (SENCS, Brown 252), in which there is a special section focused on the promotion of the Scottish linguistic heritage. Local institutions and various academic centres are also involved in initiatives of this sort, for example the Scots Language Society (Scots Leid Associe) and the Scottish Association for Language Teaching (SALT). A noteworthy joint project was started by the University of Glasgow and the University of Edinburgh in 2002 with the objective of building and maintaining the Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech so as to facilitate future research and offer open access to materials in SSE and Scots. Considering that approximately 30 percent of all people living in Scotland can communicate using at least one type of Scots, such attempts appear to be very important (Brown 252).

The linguistic landscape in Scotland also features Gaelic, a Celtic language also referred to as Scottish Gaelic or Scots Gaelic. despite its rapid decline witnessed before the onset of the 20th century, Gaelic was able to survive as a language in continual use. It is currently spoken and written or at the very least understood by the fraction of 1.9 percent among the Scottish population. It has maintained a comparatively strong presence across the Western Isles: according to the Scotland’s Census of 2011, Gaelic was, at that time, spoken by the group of over 40 percent (15.5 thousand out of nearly 27 thousand inhabitants). The same census estimated the total number of Gaelic users in Scotland at 1.1 percent (nearly 25 thousand speakers).

Gaelic has been taught at universities in Scotland and other countries, especially in Canada. In addition, numerous primary schools offer Gaelic medium courses alongside English. Regarding the mass media, BBC and other stations broadcast television as well as radio channels in Gaelic. Finally, the European Union has officially recognised Gaelic as a minority language (Brown 252). A more detailed account of the language will be presented in Section 1.4.

In 2000 the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages was signed by the British government. It particularly concerned Scots and Gaelic, a fact which is observed in Part II, Article 7 of the Charter. In the same article, there is also a reference to the dialect called Manx Gaelic which is native to the Isle of Man. The aforesaid Ulster dialect of Scots was also mentioned, but it was not officially granted equal status with the above-mentioned languages (Council of Europe).

Last but not least, it must be underlined that the summary of information on the languages in Scotland provided in this subchapter does not present the linguistic abundance of Scotland in its entirety. The data collected during Scotland’s Census in 2011 indicate more findings showing the linguistic transition that has been happening in Scotland over the last decades. For example, with more than 54 thousand speakers, Polish is almost on a par with all different types of Scots combined. Moreover, approximately 230 thousand residents use (at home) languages that are not native to Scotland. It is mostly due to the growing ethnic as well as national diversity of the Scottish population, which currently includes more that 140 thousand of inhabitants calling themselves either Asian, Asian-British or Asian-Scottish. In addition, according to Scotland’s Census 2011, there are also nearly 30 thousand citizens of African descent. Lastly, the fact that over 12 thousand of people in Scotland use British Sign Language should not be ignores, also including distinctively Scottish vocabulary.

1.3 Scots: evolution and present situation

Scots signifies a group of dialects mainly found in Lowland Scotland, where they function in a continuum with various Northern English dialects. Users of Scots can be found in Orkney and Shetland Islands as well. Additionally, Scots has also been present in Ireland since the 17th century. Contemporarily, its active use has survived in several parts of Northern Ireland and in County Donegal. Certain selected aspects and lexical items typical of Scots can also be identified in the Canada, the USA, and New Zealand (Macafee 33). As mentioned in subchapter 1.2, the British authorities have granted Scots its due status. It was listed in a dedicated section of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages; however, the inclusion does not imply any particular commitments. The dialect of Ulster Scots, on the other hand, has received economic support from both the British and Irish governments (see also subchapter 1.3.2).

As a set of dialects, Scots has coexisted with SSE in a kind of sociolinguistic continuum. That is why it is also natural that both systems are used interchangeably by many speakers. The most intense stress on sustaining Scots during everyday communication exists mostly in rural areas and small-town communities located away from the large industrialised areas. Macafee (33) elaborates on the fact that in the north-eastern areas of Scotland and also in the Northern Isles, it is considered as normal even among professionals to code-switch and mix English and Scots at will. Moreover, it is believed that this form of flexibility will probably decline over time as a result of exposure of the young generations to the British and international mass media and the language used on the Internet. It must be taken into consideration that in densely inhabited urban areas of Scotland, Scots dialects are mostly used by people representing the working class.

It has to be highlighted that urban Scots dialects are normally thinnest (least prominent and dominated by the influence of English). This is particularly visible in the use of traditional vocabulary. Therefore, urban dialects are also unlikely to be linked to the historical heritage of Scots, its status, dignity and linguistic attributes. Alternatively, such urban dialects tend to be recognised as forms of a sociolect or local slang. To address the situation, academic teaching and studies relating to Scots have been encouraged across Scotland and Northern Ireland. What is more, the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow has expressed incessant interest in Scots dialects. In Northern Ireland the Ulster Scots Agency has also conducted and facilitated a variety of cultural and linguistic projects. Nevertheless, as outlined by Mcafee, the projects mostly concentrated on the modern variations of Scots (34), hence the tendency did not receive considerable enthusiasm among native speakers of Scots and many scholars. Conversely, the Scots Language Society has tried to encourage a more methodically modernised and standardised type of Scots referred to as Lallans, described in more detail in subchapter 1.3.2.

1.3.1 Roots of Scots

Similarly to Standard English, Scots dialects generally derive from Old English (OE), particularly its Anglian dialect generally known as Anglic (Woolhiser 510). The roots of this variety of OE point to the region south of Forth around the 7th century. The later development of Scots was also stimulated by the influx of speakers originating from Yorkshire in the 12th century, officially invited by King David of Scotland. The Anglian dialect became common throughout the Lowlands (Macafee 33-34). Its popularity further increased with the progressing growth of cities and the Norman management of both church and civil life. Consequently, present-day Lowland Scots contains numerous lexical borrowings (loanwords) from Old Norse, also shared with Northern English dialects. Moreover, in the regions of Orkney, Caithness, and Shetland, where historically a considerable Norse settlement occurred, Scots at some point replaced the Scandinavian dialect called Norn (Tröster-Mutz 460).

The characteristic Scots orthography was developed around the 15th century. To begin with, the double spellings indicating vowels, such as: ‘ee’, ‘oo’ and ‘ea’, had been eliminated. What was also characteristic was that the sound /x/, started to be represented by ‘ch’ in spelling, as in nicht (‘night’). A number of words were written as ending in ‘-ill’, for example litill (‘little’). Amongst other regularities, the spelling ‘quh’ became more prevalent than ‘wh’, whilst ‘sch’ was more common than ‘sh’ – note that this pattern can also be seen in Northern English. It was also typical of Scots that the letters ‘u’, ‘v’, ‘w’ could be used virtually interchangeably. In fact, ‘w’ could be found in the word-initial position in lexemes such as wp meaning ‘up’ (Macafee 34).

As far as consonants are concerned, it was typical of Scots dialects to employ the spelling ‘lʒ’ for the phoneme /ʎ/ which had been adopted from French and Gaelic, as in the noun tulʒie (‘struggle’). In a very similar manner, the spelling ‘nʒ’ represented the sound /ɳ/, as in cunʒe (‘coin’). The presented examples and the preservation of the described speech sounds in Early Scots demonstrate that the influence of French on the evolution of Scots was mostly independent of the English impact. The situation was similar with regards to Latin-based items. Due to numerous external influences along with the acquisition of loanwords of various origin, Scots progressively obtained its distinctive nature (Macafee 34).

Amongst other important influences a variety of borrowings from Middle Dutch deserve a mention; they mostly entered Scots as the immigration towards urban centres (‘burghs’) progressed along with the development of trade connections and the fishing industry. Last of all, forms borrowed from Gaelic must not be ignored, despite the fact that, according to Macafee, their number is comparatively low, particularly the items which managed to survive a longer period of time in the lexicon of Scots (34). Nonetheless, the impact made by Gaelic on the Scots phonology is important. The most salient example is the North-Eastern sound /f/ for /hw/ (previously also /xw/), for instance in the word fa (‘who’). Grammatical aspects acquired from Gaelic are more apparent, for example the emphatic use of reflexive pronouns, as in “It’s yourself!”

Early Scots progressively evolved into Middle Scots. It included the use of syllables with i-digraph spellings symbolising stressed monophthongs from Northern English dialects, e.g. ‘ai’, as in haim (‘home’); ‘ei’, as in leid (‘lead’ – used as a verb and a noun), ‘oi’ as in rois (‘rose’ – the flower), and ‘ui’ as in muin (‘moon’) (Macafee 34).

Aside from orthographic and phonological patterns, Scots has had a very rich literary legacy. Documents, including historical texts, have existed already during the Older Scots period. Works of ‘makars’ ought to be mentioned at this point – a Scottish literary term indicating a poet or a bard, usually performing at the royal court or for noblemen – such as Robert Henryson (1425-1500), William Dunbar (1460-1520) and Gavin Douglas (1474-1522). Concerning renowned modern-day writers, one should list Walter Scott (1771-1832) and Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894) as well as Robert Burns (1759-1796) and John Galt (1779-1839). A number of folk tales and song lyrics have been compiled also including extended narrative ballads called ‘muckle sangs’ (Macafee 34).

New literary creations have been stimulated by the movement generally known as language revitalisation or language revival. Notable examples include poetry by Christopher M. Grieve (1892-1978) also called Hugh MacDiarmid, songs by Hamish Henderson (1919-2002) and dramatic works or their translations. In addition, numerous examples of literary works have been composed in various vernacular language forms, e.g. poetry in North-East Scots (Doric, see subchapter 1.3.4) by Sheena Blackhall (1947-). As mentioned earlier, the dialects found in urban settings are normally ‘thinner’. Within the context of literary rebirth, the goal was to make the works accessible for a larger readership; it can be observed in the successes of writers like Tom Leonard (1944-) and Liz Lochhead (1947-) from Glasgow and Irvine Welsh (1958-) from Edinburgh (Macafee 33). For similar reasons, the variety of Scots employed in television broadcast and other mass media also remains thin.

Modern Scots, which is believed to have started around 1700, has retained only a handful of features from Older Scots in terms of spelling. On the list of rare exceptions, there are ‘ch’ and ‘ui’ spelling clusters mentioned above. During the 18th-century, the combination ‘oo’ started to represent the /ø/ sound, as in /tøm/ or /tɪm/ (‘empty’). It is also relatively common to find apostrophes in the positions of ‘missing’ letters, e.g. for /d/ immediately after /n/, as in en’ (‘end’), or when /d/ is found after /l/, as in aul’ (‘old’). The same tendency can be found in word-final positions, as in wi’ (‘with’); however, it has recently been advocated to forego such abbreviations as part of the spelling reform (Macafee 35).

Macafee (35) adds that modern Scots also includes some slight grammar differences in comparison to the English dialects used across the British Isles. For instance, there is double agreement in the present tense of verbs. To be more specific, if the grammatical subject is a personal pronoun located next to the verb, then that verb must be inflected only in the third-person singular, and in particular cases, also in second-person singular. Otherwise, the verb needs to be inflected in all grammatical persons (in both grammatical numbers). What is interesting, the dialects spoken in Orkney and Shetland continue to use du to mean ‘thou’, i.e. the second-person singular pronoun. Moreover, youse – a novel form of second-person plural pronoun – has gradually spread from Ulster to Glasgow. Another ‘trademark’ characteristic of Modern Scots is associated with its system of demonstratives, containing forms such as yon (and thon) conveying a distance greater than the one symbolised by that or thae (‘those’) (Macafee 35).

It ought to be emphasised that the Scots lexicon also features a considerable ratio of words that are shared with English including some of the most popular lexical items like the article ‘the,’ the noun ‘cat,’ and the verb ‘tell’. There are also forms that survived as loanwords from OE, such as neep (‘turnip’) and een (‘eyes’) (Woolhiser 510). What is more, Scots features many original coinages, e.g. gully ‘knife’ and a more complex lexical form tapsalteerie (‘head-over-heels’). There is also vocabulary indicating historical roots of Scots, such as words sourced from Old Norse (nowt – ‘cattle’), Middle Dutch (craig – ‘neck’), Anglo-Norman (leal – ‘loyal’), Latin (stravaig – ‘roam’), Central French (Hogmanay – ‘New Year’s Eve’), and Gaelic corrie-(fistit) (‘left-(handed)’) (Macafee 35).

1.3.2 Lowland Scots (Lallans)

The first discussed dialect of Scots (mentioned already in subchapter 1.3) contains elements taken from Gaelic, despite the fact that its lexis and grammar have been heavily affected by English (Whittaker 47). The contemporary Lallans, i.e. Lowland Scots, is recognised chiefly as a language of literary works, having limited potential in everyday speech. As outlined by McClure (5), the name refers to its proprietary geographic area, i.e. the lowlands. It is often seen in contrast with the Gaelic-influenced speech characteristic of the highland parts of Scotland.

During the mid-1960s the BBC commissioned and broadcast a series of short programmes in Scotland entitled Poets’ Places. The person in charge of production was Finlay J. Macdonald (1926-1987); he commissioned a number of Scottish poets to compose longer verse forms about places they personally found significant. Some of the most notable figures included Sydney Goodsir Smith (1915-1975) writing about Edinburgh in his Kynd Kittock’s Land, and Alexander Scott (1920-1989) who wrote a poem about Aberdeen entitled Heart of Stone. Remarkably, both texts were created in the literary vernacular variation of Lowland Scots. However, in accordance with Corbett (261), this variety is also sometimes described as a ‘synthetic’ or even ‘plastic’ variety of Scots. The view is held, among others, by Whittaker (47), who elaborates on the fact that Lallans was able to survive partly due to the continual and extensive activity of writers and poets.

Lowland Scots was developed as a modern-day literary medium by Hugh MacDiarmid through short lyrical compositions and a longer poem titled A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle from the 1920s. MacDiarmid aided the popularisation of the literary Scots to make it a national language capable of assimilating words and expressions which had previously become outdated and might otherwise have fallen into a complete disuse. According to Whittaker (47), the poet experimented with cleaning up the language in order to help it enter the new historical era. MacDiarmid coined a number of neologisms to breathe a new existence into the local dialect and simultaneously avoided referring to words that would betray his own local identity.

During the early post-war years, MacDiarmid’s example motivated a new generation of Scottish writers and poets, for instance, Douglas Young, William Soutar Sydney Goodsir Smith and Alexander Scott. During the 1950s the entire Lallans movement was expanded to include drama, particularly in plays composed by Young, Goodsir Smith, Scott and also Robert Kemp. The truth is, Kemp was a BBC radio producer whose theatrical pieces and translations of other playwright’s shows into ‘stage Lallans’ received popular and critical acclaim (Corbett 261).

1.3.3 Scots spoken in Ulsters (Ullans)

Aside from the Lowland variety, it is worth presenting basic information about the variety of Scots used in Ulster. According to a general definition, the Ullans dialect “is to be understood as the variety of the Scots language traditionally found in parts of Northern Ireland and Donegal” (Albert 186). Its legal recognition and linguistic normalisation allowed Ulster-Scots to be viewed as more than a corrupt or distorted local English-based sociolect.

It must be understood that Ullans has been co-existing with English as well as Irish especially in the lands located within and close to the Ulster province, Northern Ireland. Whittaker (47) explains that some scholars and sources refer to this form of Scots as Scots-Irish. Local people simply call it Scots. According to Whittaker (49), to an outsider, Ullans may sound as a slightly modified variation of Lowland Scots. This is because the language came to the Ulster province from the Scottish lowlands, chiefly during the mid- and late 17th century.

Being a minority language, Ullans is used by roughly 30 thousand speakers throughout Northern Ireland. The mission of the Ulster Scots Agency has been to attempt to raise popular consciousness and expand the reach of Ullans to ensure the dialect’s long-term survival (Whittaker 2009: 47). What is interesting, Gallagher (93) asserts that the term ‘Ullans’ was, in fact, coined by the Ulster-Scots Language Society in order to create a proper name for the variety. The scholar also suggests that the name might be an acronym meaning ‘Ulster language, literature, and native speech’.

Ullans was officially recognised as a language in the Good Friday Agreement of 1998, albeit in the regulation it is called Ulster-Scots. The agreement states that the language is an inherent part of the Northern Irish cultural heritage and an element of its linguistic diversity (Gallagher 93). The above-mentioned Ulster-Scots Language Society considered this legislation a success, although the government did not assign any funds for the promotion and popularisation of Ullans in Northern Ireland (Gallagher 93).

1.3.4 Doric

Doric is the last variety of Scots presented in this chapter. According to the nomenclature employed by McClure (1), Doric is the main dialect in North-East Scotland. The area itself is described as the distinct ‘hump’ of land near Aberdeen, which is famous for its beautiful farmlands, woods, moorlands and hills. The local coastline features sandy dunes as well as high cliffs, both within but a fragment of the Scottish coastline. Communication in this area is mostly influenced by fishing and agriculture, which represent the two key branches of local industry. The specific character of the region can also be seen through its literature and folk tales (McClure 2002: 3). It must be underlined that Aberdeen is among the largest European urban centres located so far north. McClure (3) states that the historical evidence concerning the area dates back to the Mesolithic culture, i.e. around 6000 BC.

Due to the reasons presented above, Doric Scots and the literary legacy of north-eastern Scotland are defined in a fashion that appears stronger and more closely related to the history of the region compared to the two dialects discussed in the previous two subchapters. Already at the end of the 19th century, there was a great interest in Doric poetry. Vernacular writing was progressively gaining more recognition both in Scotland and beyond its borders (Lumsden 96).

In subchapter 1.3.1, Hugh MacDiarmid was mentioned to have been the symbol of the Lallans’ revival in the 20th century. As far as the contemporary position of Doric is concerned, Violet Jacob should be mentioned. She travelled the entire region composing poetry and carefully observing that her use of the dialect would remain compliant with the north-eastern canon. In addition, her novels The Interloper (1904) and Flemington (1911) were largely based on the sense of local identity. Afterwards, the task was continued by Charles Murray and, notably, Hugh MacDiarmid as well. Nevertheless, in comparison to the latter writer, aiming at the integration of the Scottish linguistic and literary traditions, Jacob’s effort drew “strongly on the oral and folk traditions, her language reflecting the continued strength of local dialect in North-East Scotland” (Lumsden 96). The region has maintained its excellent reputation for the abundance of balladry and folk songs.

Lastly, in comparison to the two varieties described earlier in this chapter, Doric has never had to face extinction. McClure (15) confirms the ever-stable local position of the language as an inherent element of the region’s image. The scholar asserts that even the name of the dialect has become a symbol of regional pride and status of the discussed variety of Scots. Its norms are commonly discussed also by non-linguists; articles on Doric can be found in the local press and academic sources. There is also an annual Doric Festival with recitations, interpretations and song contests. What is more, even local pubs regularly organise the so-called “Doric Nichts”. The image is also sustained by local bookshops which often offer prescriptive (rule-driven) literature concerning the lexis and grammar of Doric Scots (McClure 15).

1.4 Scots Gaelic

In order to understand the position of Scots Gaelic, also referred to as Scottish Gaelic, in the linguistic landscape of Scotland, the account of its origins must be presented first. Essentially, the Scottish settlement started with the appearance of Gaelic-speaking people who arrived from the north-eastern parts of Ulster. They built their homes in the north-western lands and islands of Caledonia by the end of the 5th century. Later their kingdom called Dal Riata was moved from Ulster to Argyll. Gradually, the community grew larger, thanks to the inclusion of the Picts as well as the conquest of the Britons and Angles in the south. Until the 11th century, it was already common to refer to the area as Scotland. It is also noteworthy that Viking townships which emerged in the late 8th century in the Northern Highlands and Northern Isles introduced the Norn language to the area. It managed to survive till the 18th century in Caithness, Orkney and Shetland (MacKinnon 36).

During the rule of Malcolm III Ceannmòr (1054–1096) Gaelic began to lose its popularity at court and also amidst the aristocracy. Norman French started to become more prominent, except the Lowland areas in which the Anglian speech was popularised in the towns and cities of the eastern Scotland established by David I (1124–1153). The language first became known as Inglis and later as Scots. It soon became the most common language throughout the Scottish Lowlands. Nonetheless, Gaelic continued to exist and develop until the late Middle Ages in places, such as Carrick and Galloway in the south-western Lowlands. According to MacKinnon (36), the last speakers could be found living in Ayrshire till the 18th century.

In essence, Scots Gaelic is classified as a Celtic language. To be more specific, it belongs to the Goidelic or ‘Q-Celtic’ branch which has close links to Irish and Manx. Its sentence structure normally follows a VSO (verb-subject-object) pattern. Adjectives usually follow the nouns, unlike in English. In Gaelic, as in most other Celtic languages, personal pronouns are combined with prepositions and can be declined. Verbs, however, are not normally declinable for person. There are, in fact, only ten irregular verbs in Scots Gaelic (MacKinnon 36).

It is an interesting fact is that Scots Gaelic features two different forms of the verb ‘to be’. Firstly, there is bi – the basic form used to form simple statements. It is similar to its English equivalent: it is conjugated for tense and it can be used to express progressive tenses when combined with the present participle forms. The form is serves the function of expressing emphasis and can only be found in the so-called present-future and past tenses. These two verbs, together with various prepositions (also prepositional pronouns), are sources of a substantial collection of idioms that represent physical actions, as opposed to mental or emotional states and other abstractions (MacKinnon 36).

Scots Gaelic contains numerous borrowings from English, as shown in Table 1 below:

Scots Gaelic	English
ad	hat
breacaist	breakfast
brot	broth, soup
comhfhurtail	comfortable
geata	gate
mionaid	minute (time)
paidhir	pair
rathad	road
stràid	street
targaid	target

Table 1. Selected English borrowings in Scots Gaelic (MacBain 163, 200)

Furthermore, MacBain (310) documents a group of lexical borrowings sourced directly from Latin, e.g. aingeal (‘angel’), airgiod (‘silver’ or ‘money’), crois (‘cross’), eaglais (‘church’), ifrinn (‘hell’), feasgair (‘evening’), gineal (‘off-spring’) and manach (‘monk’). Extensive contact with Norse brought the following loans: faodhail (‘ford’ or ‘crossing’, from Norse vadhil), gocaman (‘lookout’, from Norse gokman and gauksman), sgalag (‘lackey’, from Norse skalkr), sgioba (‘crew’, from Norse skip), and uinneag (‘window’, from Norse windauga) (MacBain 310, 315, 386).

Concerning the phonological system, present-day Scots Gaelic and its more specific dialects use pre-aspiration. Most of the time, it can be heard before the word-final vowel in items, such as mac (‘son’), sop (‘wisp’), and sloc (‘pit’); consequently, the listed words are pronounced as mahk, sohp and slohk, correspondingly. This specific phenomenon frequently occurs not only in north-western Scots Gaelic dialects, but also in south-west Norwegian ones (McKenna 82). Historically, Scots Gaelic dialects used in the north-west (also including islands) were noticeably different from the languages spoken in the eastern and east-central highland areas. Presently, the latter group is nearing extinction, and the mainland variations continue to be stagnant. What is unique about the Eastern dialects is that they never diphthongised the long /e/ in nouns, such as beul (‘mouth’) or meud (‘measure’), which are pronounced meeutt and beeal, correspondingly. What is more, the intrusive /s/ does not occur inside word-final ‘-rt’ cluster, as in tart (‘thrirst’) and neart (‘strength’), normally pronounced in other variations as tarst and nyarst, respectively. In a similar fashion, the north-western dialects intrude /t/ between word-initial ‘s’ and ‘r’, for example in sruth (‘stream’) and srath (‘strath’, a wide valley), which are pronounced strooh and strah, respectively (MacKinnon 37).

Similarly to Irish, Scots Gaelic adheres to the spelling convention known as caol ri caol is leathan ri leathan (‘narrow to narrow and broad to broad’). If a narrow vowel (/e/ or /i/) occurs before a consonant, then it has to be followed by one more narrow vowel. On the other hand, when a broad vowel (/a/, /o/, or /u/) is located before another vowel, then, analogically, it also has to be followed by a broad vowel. The manner of pronouncing consonants is determined by the adjoining vowels. To be more specific, the consonants with narrow or broad vowels on both sides are called, respectively, ‘narrow’ or ‘broad’, which consequently reflects the length of their production. As an illustration, the noun feasgar (‘evening’ or ‘late afternoon’) is pronounced as fessgar: the first ‘a’ is silent, but it determines that the consonants /s/ and /g/ are broad (longer). Another example of this type is the noun seillean (bee), in which the first ‘e’ causes the initial s to be narrow and pronounced as ‘sh’, whilst the ‘i’ and the second occurrence of ‘e’ cause the ‘ll’ cluster to be narrow and produced with the tongue at the front of the palate (MacKinnon 37).

Scots Gaelic uses a narrowed down selection of the standard seventeen characters from the Latin alphabet, namely: ‘a’, ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, ‘e’, ‘f’, ‘g’, ‘i’, ‘l’, ‘m’, ‘n’, ‘o’, ‘p’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’ and ‘u’. The letter ‘h’ is not regarded as a regular character; its usage is restricted to specific lexical loans. No words can start with ‘h’, aside from toponyms (place names) derived from Norse, such as Hearadh (Harris). It cannot stand by itself in spelling; instead, another consonant is needed to represent a distinctive phoneme. It is also possible for ‘h’ to stand before words beginning with vowels, as in bun na h-aibhne meaning ‘the foot of the river’. The character ‘h’ may also indicate aspiration or lenition (adding more sonorance to a consonant, making it sound somewhat like a vowel) (MacKinnon 37).

1.5 Scottish Standard English (SSE)

As outlined by Schützler (1), the key strength of Standard Scottish English (SSE) is not rooted in the number of its speakers, but instead in its historical importance and the ways it has inspired the cultural development of the British Isles. Along with the growth of urban areas in the second half of the 19th and the early 20th century, a progressively clearer division started developing between the ‘proper’ or conventional rural dialects and their allegedly ‘corrupt’, hybrid urban variants. This perspective was shared by numerous local speakers, and was not limited to the difference between Scottish English and ‘pure’ Scots. By the middle of the 19th century, the majority of Scotland had achieved high literacy rates in English, therefore, a continuum had to emerge between the more ‘dense’ forms of Scots and much thinner SSE.

Generally, SSE could be described as “the standard dialect of English used in Scotland, including a Scottish standard accent” (Schützler 20). Consequently, it may be viewed as a counterpart of the standard dialect of southern English, i.e. Southern Standard British English (SSBE) characterised, among others, by the famous and prestigious southern British accent. In practice, the terms SSE and SSBE are mostly employed to represent the respective accents themselves. Even if minor morphological or syntactic dissimilarities can be found, then a given language is commonly perceived as a form of Scots. In this narrow sense, SSE can be described by referring to the statement made by Carr, who asserted that “SSE is the standard accent which many Scots speak when speaking the Standard English dialect” (156).

There is an interesting observation made by Millar (63). The researcher draws attention to the point that the inception of SSE which started approximately during the 18th century allowed the dialect to preserve the primary attributes of the Scottish accent. In addition, SSE helped strengthen the public and political status of Scots not only in Britain, but also across Europe. Lexical as well as structural portions of Scots can easily be found in the performance of a typical SSE speaker.

It can be noticed is that many definitions of SSE regularly refer to SSBE as a reference point. Nevertheless, it continues to be an open question whether or not the grammatical systems of SSBE and SSE are, in fact, sufficiently similar to be regarded as a single Standard English grammar. The problem, however, is too complicated to be fully accounted for in this thesis. Giegerich (46) believes that it is not possible to select a single accent in Scotland to be termed standard, not in a clear sociolinguistic sense. According to Schützler (1), the only potential candidate could be the SSE accent. However, it is still much less clearly specified compared to other types of English worldwide.

Alternatively, McClure (79) is of the opinion that SSE might be viewed as an acceptable local and globally recognisable standard. Importantly, McClure does not use the narrowed down meaning of SSE restricted to the characteristic Scottish accent, even though his book clearly points to the fact that pronunciation is an important, if not focal point. Lastly, SEE is frequently discussed in association with SSE. Aitken (99) even describes SSE as the “educated Scottish accent”. Similarly, Stuart-Smith (48) relates the discussed form of English with educated speakers mostly representing the middle-class. A similar approach to the issue can also be found in McClure, who views the standard Scottish variety of English as denoting the “speech of the professional class and the accepted norm in schools” (79-80).

In the context of defining SSE, it is worth referring to the following excerpt from Grant published more than a century ago:

The standard adopted in this book is the speech of the educated middle classes in Scotland. It is the speech of our Universities, of the pulpit, the platform, and the school, and although in different districts it may present some variations, it constitutes on the whole a type of pronunciation quite distinct from that of England. (4)

It has to be explained that Grant does not, in fact, use the name Scottish Standard English. Instead, the scholar simply calls it Standard Scottish. However, it can be presumed from his description that the researcher is discussing the same variety characteristic of the “educated middle classes” (Grant 4) along with educational institutions and styles present in official, public performances. From the context, it seems clear that Grant refers to the English variant widely known as SSE.

As already stated, the narrow understanding of SSE perceives it as a variety of SE characterised by the Scottish pronunciation. Therefore, even though there is no longer a rigid division between Scots and SSE in contemporary Scotland, scholars like Machaň (11) claim that for the descriptive clearness morphological and syntactic elements ought to be understood as the existence of Scots’ characteristics within SSE. As already observed, pronunciation is considered to be the foremost aspect that distinguishes SSE from SE, in a similar manner that General American can be easily recognised as different from British English based on its accent. In the case of SSE, the dialect is associated with rhoticity, the use of epenthetic vowel [ə], and the fricatives [x]/[ç] (used exclusively in Scottish words, such as loch, and not occurring in any shared lexemes, such as ‘night’) and [ʍ]. The realisation of word-final [-eɪ] and [-oʊ] as [-eː] and [-oː], respectively, is another common attribute of SSE. Lastly, there is the opposition between Scottish [əi] and English [ʌɪ].

Importantly, all of the listed characteristics can be heard in the interaction between educated people, e.g. teachers, lawyers, politicians, etc. Concerning the lexicon, it is standard to use Scottish vocabulary in order to express one’s affiliation with Scotland and its sociocultural setting and the customary attitudes. For this reason, it is not uncommon to hear television news readers summarising the weather forecast report using the expression a dreich day ([dri?ç], “bleak”). In a similar manner, a university professor may invite his colleague for a wee dram (“small drink”) of whisky (Machaň 11). On the other hand, a great number of other words and phrases and noticeable differences in pronunciation might be considered improper or regarded as elements of local slang and uneducated speech.

1.6 Concluding remarks

The information presented in this chapter indicates the complexity of the language situation in Scotland. Due to extensive language contact, modern-day varieties of the respective dialects have adopted a number of features and patterns from other languages spoken in the neighbouring regions. This fact refers not only to the lexicon, but also to phonology, syntax and other levels of linguistic analysis. The same remarks apply to SSE, which is studied in more detail in Chapter Two. As will be shown, the analysed variety of English spoken chiefly in Scotland depends on many items brought from Scots – a fact that is to be confirmed empirically in the study conducted in Chapter Three.