"Doubt", in Scotland, means to think or suspect. Does it, and if so, which part of Scotland? SlimVirgin 04:58, Jan 11, 2005 (UTC)

The only reference I can find refers to Elizabethan English: [1]. Giving the Scots fondness for archaisms, it seems quite plausible though. Mark¹ 05:24, 11 Jan 2005 (UTC)

It comes from Scots dout [dut]. Ken Mair 12.01.05

Lanarkshire heavily uses it in this fashion.

The realisation /x/ for "ch" in loch, technical, etc.

The latter's a new one on me. I'd have thought /x/ was only common in Scots (or Gaelic) words, rather than there being much prevalence of "Scouse k" in Standard vocab. Alai 08:30, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It's inherited from Scots. More likely in particularly Scottish words like loch, recessive in other positions but usually never in SSE for gh as in night etc.

Ken Mair 23.02.05

"In some variaties, there's a contrast made between the diphthong /ɔɪ/ in boy and the diphthong /ʊɪ/ in buoy. See buoy-boy split."

/ʊ/ isn't a vowel that occurs is Scottish English. Have you a reference for this? Perhaps [bəɔɪ]?

Ken Mair 24.02.05

User 152.163.100.5 has been adding a lot of info on vowel length contrasts which seem to contradict the Scots Vowel Length Rule. Any references for this info?

I've not come accross such like in the literature about SSE I've read but perhaps it wasn't extensive enough.

Fay R. Doilt 28.02.05

Never heard anyone use "amn't", and "shew"? GB Shaw spelt the word that way, but I've never seen that in Scotland though.

My sister always used to say "amn't": mainly to annoy me, but it was definitely popular among a certain class in Aberdeen in the 1980s. I don't know of anything particularly Scottish about "shew",but some of us do like our archaisms. Mark¹ 06:28, 3 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I've never thought of amn't as being archaic, or as being a product of the 1980s. I can assure everyone that I and the people who I met as I was growing up in Northeast Scotland during the 1960s and 1970s were certainly using it when speaking Scottish English rather than Scots. Mind you if you used it in written work at school, you were marked down for using an ungrammatical construction. -- Derek Ross | Talk 22:27, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

I have added amn't into the syntax section. Not only is it characteristic of SSE, it can be used in declarative, not merely interrogative sentences, unlike aren't. Wiki_Scot | Talk 18 Nov 2005.

I note that someone has reglossed "Amn't I?" from "Aren't I?" to "Am I not?" which is perhaps replacing a Southern British biased gloss/transliteration with a North American one. I'll clarify the "Aren't I?" thing. Wiki Scot 09:54, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

For some reason this was deleted. Anyone know why?

in school and scheme is definitely nonsense. Some of the others are dubious. A lot of the other descriptions in the phonology section are extremely dubious. Can the authors cite any literature to back up their edits? Why half in IPA and the other half in Sampa?

Noah Winner 07.02.05

Wells (1982:408) writes:

[Scottish English] retains the velar fricative, /x/, as a member; although in English (as opposed to Scots) /x/ is really restricted to proper names... and sometimes to Greek- or Hebrew-derived words spelt with ch (technical /ˈtɛx-/, patriarch /-rx/, epoch, parochial).

--Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 08:08, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Definitely not in technical. Never heard a Scot use /x/ in technical in my life. Charlie Tango 11:45, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

I'm a Scot and I use it in "technical" (and in "technician", "polytechnic", an so forth) but then we've never met so that explains why you've never heard a Scot use it. -- Derek Ross | Talk 02:36, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

I'll get round to adding some references, but in the meantime I tidied up /x/ a bit. You get it in Munich, van Gogh, Bach and other loan names, but I think all regular vocabulary with it in is borrowed from Scots or Gaelic. Of course, loch has a very special status. Wiki_Scot | Talk 18 Nov 2005.

Scottish English vowel chart at [2] ([3]). Contrasts and length [4] Length [5] [6] Vowel system with key words and sound files [7] Yasser Wull 08.02.05

152.163.100.69 added 'Some speakers, however, distinguish some pairs by vowel length' and gave examples Any references for this. It doesn't seem to be mentioned in standard reference works. See talk Phonology.

I've deleted it. Provide a reputable reference and I#ll be glad to have learned something new.

Murdoch Soulis 09.05.05

I've re-deleted the sentence "Some speakers, it is sometimes claimed, may distinguish some pairs by vowel length, for example leek /lik/ vs. leak /liːk/, vane /ven/ vs. vain /veːn/, creek /krik/ vs. creak /kriːk/, etc" until someone provides a specific reference. I don't think this is true of Scottish English at all, but perhaps some dialect of Scots, in which case it should go into that article. Wiki Scot 11:31, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

I've redone the phonology section using The entry "Scottish English" from The Oxford Companion to the English language and The English Language in Scotland by Charles Jones as references. I also compared with the links suggested above. I removed all that wasn't mentioned in the references as incorrect - why didn't the references mention it? If the originators have references for what I've deleted they would be much appreciated.

Ken Mair 10.03.05

This doesn' seem too much like syntax to me. My hair needs washed could be, but some of the others, especially She's a bonnie lass seem to be a matter of diction. Also, I would like to meet this bonnie lass... :). Notthe9 18:12, 4 May 2005 (UTC)

I'm afraid I removed Sheriff-substitute as a peculiarly Scottish term, because it no longer exists, and never designated an acting Sheriff in any case (that would be a temporary Sheriff until recently, and a part-time Sheriff now). Sheriffs-substitute were the professional full-time judges who sat locally to hear cases, while the titular Sheriff would be an Edinburgh advocate who would hear appeals from his Sheriff-substitute. When reformed in the 1970's, Sheriffs-substitute became simply Sheriffs, and the appeal function went to the new Sheriff-Principal for each new Sheriffdom. I don't see that historically there was anything peculiarly Scottish about it: it merely designated the person who sat as substitute for the Sheriff.

There's a ton of legal stuff which could be added, but surely it's just examples of a technical vocabulary, in the same way that English and French both have technical legal vocabularies? Killiedaft 23:31, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

The diphthong /ai/ and it's short variant are usually lumped together with the rest of the vowels when talking of the SVLR, meaning that the long version should be found before syllable margins, voiced fricatives, or /r/. I beg to disagree with respect to the latter. 'fire', 'hire' and 'tyre' are short, and are actually usually triphthongs, with an additional schwa. 'hire' and 'higher' are distinct, with 'higher' having the long diphthong.

Awan Bile Yerheid

Is the diphthong actually long or does it only occur in what are descibed as long environments? Agreed in 'fire', 'hire' and 'tyre' /ai/ before /ər/ but wouldn't 'high' + 'er' give /hai/ + /ər/ as well or /hai:/ + /ər/?

No doubt there will be people who differentiate though.

Any references for descriptions of this?

Byltheid

Surely there should be a link to, and probably, for that matter, some mention of Doric[8] in this page. -- Anon user

There are a couple of links to Scots and you'll find a link to Doric from there. I don't think that there's a particular need for a Doric link directly from this article, although I wouldn't remove one if it already existed. -- Derek Ross | Talk 21:27, May 16, 2005 (UTC)

Since this article states "Here Lowland Scots is excluded and only what is known as Scottish Standard English considered" and Doric is a dialect of Scots a link to Doric would be more appropriate in the article Scots language where it is infact mentioned.

cliver Lounie

With the exception of "bonnie lass" & "hair needs washed", all of the examples in the section on Syntax are standard colloquial British English. It mentions the lack of should / ought without mentioning what replaces it, ie "will". How about a list of other vocabulary differences such as juice/pop, stay/live?

I removed the section about regional accents because it wasn't worthy of wiki. It was just a confused mixture of local accent and features from local Scots dialects etc. Which are covered better elsewhere and were already liked to in the existing page.

"Dinna ye ken? for Don't you know."

Other than Scotty in Star Trek, I don't know anybody that says "dinna", most would use "dinnae".

a) That shows your lack of experience of Scots accents around Scotland. Plenty folk would never use anything but "dinna", myself included.

b) The line as quoted is bad Scots grammar anyway. It should be "Dae ye nae ken" not "Dinnae ye ken". -- Derek Ross | Talk 18:49, 19 September 2005 (UTC)

All the na in dinna is, is the traditional way of writing the Scots negative particle. Its pronounciation varies from dialect to dialect.

The "needs washed" phenomenon is a standard example in US introductory linguistics textbooks of regional syntactic differences within that country, although I don't recall where it occurs. — Pekinensis 17:20, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

The following map has been applied to this page, and to English English:

It appears to have one major flaw, and several quibbles:

• Where on earth is the Scots language? Its ommission seems particularly inappropriate considering the debt owed to Scots by Scottish English. Somewhat bizarrely, only one dialect of Scots is included, and that is the tiny number of Ulster Scots speakers, only about 2% of all Scots-speakers! I know that the map is titled "Selected languages", but it is baffling why the only language the auther has "selected" not to include is Scots!
• Why on earth have two distinct languages, Scottish Gaelic language and Irish language, been shown as a homogenous blob?
• Highland English is missing: another rather stark absence on this Scottish English page.
• Why are several subdivisions of English English shown, but only two of Scottish English? The differences between the Fife dialect and Aberdonian are just as big, if not bigger, than the differences between Brummie and Yorkshire dialect.
• Where on earth did Shetland go? A stunning ommission, considering that it is one of the most distictive linguistic groups in the entire British Isles?

I find it very depressing to hear that a German textbook publisher wants to use it in textbooks for 600 schools. No wonder many people grow up with a very strange perception of the language situation in the United Kingdom.--Mais oui! 10:01, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

I would say the purpose of the map is useful, ie to produce a map of the major languages and accents. However the presentation is very poor and amatuerish. And given it misses out too much information at the moment, it could probably be removed. Astrotrain 18:39, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

The map is just a scan with some dotted lines on it. Shetland has a different accent and language to that of the Orkney Islands - there aren't even on the map. A pattern followed through much of the regions of Scotland. Fife, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen and so on all sound very different as mentioned above. You can tell straight away a Dundonian due to their dialect and the native terms used in comparison to someone next door in Fife or Aberdeen. Really, there's no thing as a Scottish accent but according to this everyone speaks one Scottish accent bar the top left that is a gaelic language. It is 100% incorrect and needs removed.

From a non-Scottish perspective I can point out another major, major flaw. Whatever happened to Manx? Admittedly its hardly a thriving language, but it is definitely worth mentioning on a map of this type. And yes, Shetland and Sheltie are a grave omission. As someone brought up in the Cotswolds I can also add that that part of England has a very distinct dialect too (enough that some of the phrases and words I use confuse people here on the other side of the planet). Grutness...wha? 04:37, 9 November 2005 (UTC)

The map's title was selected languages and dialects of the British Isles. What ain't on it obviously ain't been selected.84.135.251.148 (talk · contribs)

Absolutely. However it does beg the question as to why Scots was the only one of the British Isles' indigenous languages which the author chose to omit? Bizarre.

Please sign your contributions. As you are new I have added your id for you.--Mais oui! 14:18, 12 November 2005 (UTC)

Here are some references for the discussion to add to Wells (1982). I'll try to select some good ones for the article - if "goodness" includes ease of accessibility.

Abercrombie, D. (1979). The accents of Standard English in Scotland. In Languages of Scotland, eds. Aitken A. J. & McArthur, T., pp. 65-84. Chambers, Edinburgh.

Foulkes, P. & Docherty, G. J. (Eds.) (1999) Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles. Arnold, London.

Hewlett, N., Matthews, B. M., & Scobbie, J. M. (1999). Vowel Duration in Scottish English Speaking Children. In Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, pp. 2157-2160. San Francisco.

Hughes, A., Trudgill, P. & Watt, D. (2005) English Accents and Dialects (4th Ed.) Arnold, London.

Johnston, P. (1997) Regional Variation. In The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language ed. C. Jones. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Jones, C. (1997) The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Lawson, E. & Stuart-Smith, J. (1999). A sociophonetic investigation of the “Scottish” consonants (/x/ and /hw/), in the speech of Glaswegian children. In Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, pp. 2541-2544. San Francisco.

Macafee,C. (1983). Varieties of English around the world: Glasgow. Amsterdam, Benjamins.

Macafee, C. (1994) Traditional dialect in the modern world: a Glasgow case study. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main.

Marshall, J. (2004). Language change and sociolinguistics: Rethinking social networks. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke.

Robinson, C. & Crawford, C. A. (2001). Scotspeak: a guide to the pronunciation of modern urban Scots. Scots Language Resource Centre, Perth.

Scobbie, J. M., Hewlett, N., & Turk, A. (1999a). Standard English in Edinburgh and Glasgow: the Scottish Vowel Length Rule revealed. In Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles, eds. P.Foulkes & G.Docherty, pp. 230-245. Arnold, London.

Stuart-Smith, J. (1999). Glasgow: accent and voice quality. In Urban Voices: Accent Studies in the British Isles, eds. P.Foulkes & G.Docherty, pp. 203-222. Arnold, London.

Stuart-Smith, J. (2003) The phonology of modern urban Scots. In eds. Corbett, J., McClure, J. D., & Stuart-Smith. pp. 110-137. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh.

Wiki Scot 23:14, 18 November 2005 (UTC)