Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It is not the same as Scottish Gaelic, which is a Celtic language. The main, formal variety is called Scottish Standard English or Standard Scottish English may be defined as “the characteristic speech of the professional class [in Scotland] and the accepted norm in schools.”

In addition to distinct pronunciation, grammar and expressions, Scottish English has distinctive vocabulary, particularly pertaining to Scottish institutions such as the Church of Scotland, local government and the education and legal systems.

The variety of English which established itself at the early stage later on developed into what is called Lallands (< ‘lowlands’) and has kept its identity as a distinct variety – Scots – even to the present-day. The speakers of English in this initial period were very often English settlers who had been invited by the Scottish king to settle and render arable the plains of the Lowlands.

Through mixed marriages and gradual assimilation of the Gaelic speaking community in the lowland area, Gaelic became weaker and weaker. By the Early Modern English period (in the Elizabethan era) Gaelic was only spoken by monolinguals in the Highlands and Islands (i.e. on the large islands on the west coast of Scotland). A further language, Norn, which was a remnant of Old Norse spoken on the Orkney and Shetland islands, disappeared finally in the 18th century.

For the 20th century one must distinguish at least four distinct varieties of Scottish English: 1) Lallands, the most original of all varieties of Scottish English,

2) Contact English which is that spoken by speakers of both Scottish Gaelic and English and

3) Standard Scottish English which is a locally flavoured version of mainland British English (derived ultimately from Received Pronunciation),

4) more recently developed urban varieties spoken chiefly in Edinburgh and Glasgow. In addition there are affected accents close to Received Pronunciation which are known by the middle-class suburbs of the two main cities in Scotland where they occur profusely, Morningside and Kelvinside (in Edinburgh and Glasgow respectively).

In the area of phonology the indigenous Scottish varieties show strong deviations from Southern British English. Syntactic peculiarities are to be found above all in the contact varieties of English where the syntax of Gaelic has led to a variety of constructions which have no similarities in Southern British English.

The type of English spoken in Scotland is more difficult to define than elsewhere in the UK. From the time of the Union of Parliaments in 1707, the official written language of Scotland became aligned with that of England. As such, Standard English has been used as the language of religion, education and government and so it became the socially prestigious form adopted by the aspiring middle classes. Unlike in England, however, Standard English continued to be spoken with a variety of local accents.

Received Pronunciation — the regionally non-specific accent of the upper middle classes in England — has an irrelevant presence in Scotland (unlike Wales, for example, where it retains a certain degree of prestige in some areas). This means that even the most socially prestigious forms of English spoken in Scotland contain elements that are characteristically Scottish. The variety of speech we might recognise as educated Scottish English contains the occasional word — outwith for ‘outside’ — or grammatical structure — I’ve not heard for ‘I haven’t heard’ — that is distinctively Scottish.

Above all, though, Scottish English is recognisable by its pronunciation: speakers do not make the same distinctions in vowel length made by speakers with other English accents and the vast majority of speakers in Scotland are rhotic — that is, they pronounce the <r> sound after a vowel in words like farm, first and better.

A little bit about phonology

Vowels:

• Scottish English lacks about 5 English vowels.

• Scottish speakers don’t use a “schwa” sound: the sound in “the” is the same as the sound in “bit”.

• “bird” and “heard” are not homophones – the vowel in “heard” od the same as the vowel in “bet”, and the vowel in “bird” can be the same as the vowel in “but” or “bit” depending on the accent and gender of the speaker.

Consonants:

• Scottish English is a rhotic accent, meaning /r/ is pronounced

• There is a distinction between /w/ and /hw/ in word pairs such as witch and which

• <ch> pronounced /x/ only occurs in a few specifically Scots words like loch and dreich.

• /p/, /t/ and /k/ are not aspirated in SSE.

• Glottal stopping of the letter t when in between vowels (similar to Cockney and related accents).

• Monopthongal pronounciations of the /ei/ and /ou/ dipthongs, so that that face becomes IPA fe:s and goat becomes IPA go:t.

Some words have a distinctive SSE pronunciation:

	SSE	RP
December	[dɛzɛmbər]	[dɪsɛmbə]
length	[lɛnθ]	[lɛŋθ]
strength	[strɛnθ]	[strɛŋθ]
luxury	[lʌgʒəri]	[lʌkʃərɪ]
raspberry	[rasbɛrɪ]	[rɑ:zbrɪ]
realise	[ri:ʌlaɪ:z]	[rɪəlaiz]
though	[θo:]	[ðou]
tortoise	[tɔ:rtoiz]	[tɔ:təs]
wednesday	[wɛdnzde]	[wɛnzdɪ]
with	[wɪθ]	[wɪð]

Stress

Scottish English is a stress – accent language. It uses duration, spectral characteristics and loudness to a greater extent than pitch to encode the differences between stressed and unstressed syllables. Pitch conveys intonational meaning, and intonational events are generally aligned with stressed syllables.

Scottish is famous for having a series of falling tones on accented syllables, even in question phrases. It is also very common in Scottish sentences for the speaker to use falling tones before rising back up in pitch half-way, only to fall once again to finish the sentence.

This dipping/rising intonation is sometimes described as “sing-song” intonation.

Many words have different stress than in RP. Porpoise /ˈpɔː.pəs/ and tortoise /ˈtɔː.təs/ have equal stress on each syllable. In words such as advertise /ˈæd.və.taɪz/, baptize /bæpˈtaɪz/, realize /ˈrɪə.laɪz/, recognize /ˈrek.əɡ.naɪz/ the main stress in on the final syllable. Lamentable /ləˈmen.tə.bl̩/ and preferably /ˈpref.ər.ə.bli/ have the main stress on the second syllable.

Scottish words”

• Aboot – about

• Ah – I

• Awa – away

• bonnie, bonny – beautiful

• braw – fine

• dae – do

• dug – dog

• ken – know

• guid – good

• kirk – church

• laddie – boy

• loch – lake

• ma – my

• wee – small

• greet – cry