Scottish English - Phonology

Phonology

The speech of the middle classes in Scotland tends to conform to the grammatical norms of the written standard, particularly in situations that are regarded as formal. Highland English is slightly different from the variety spoken in the Lowlands in that it is more phonologically, grammatically, and lexically influenced by a Gaelic substratum.

While pronunciation features vary among speakers (depending on region and social status), there are a number of phonological aspects characteristic of Scottish English:

• Scottish English is a rhotic accent, meaning /r/ is pronounced in the syllable coda. As with Received Pronunciation, /r/ may be an alveolar approximant, although it is also common that a speaker will use an alveolar tap . Less common is use of the alveolar trill (hereafter, will be used to denote any rhotic consonant).
  • While other dialects have merged /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ʌ/ before /r/, Scottish English makes a distinction between the vowels in herd, bird, and curd.
  • Many varieties contrast /o/ and /ɔ/ before /r/ so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently.
  • /or/ and /ur/ are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour and poor.
  • /r/ before /l/ is strong. An epenthetic vowel may occur between /r/ and /l/ so that girl and world are two-syllable words for some speakers. The same may occur between /r/ and /m/, between /r/ and /n/, and between /l/ and /m/.
• There is a distinction between /w/ and /hw/ in word pairs such as witch and which.
• The phoneme /x/ is common in names and in SSE's many Gaelic and Scots borrowings, so much so that it is often taught to incomers, particularly for "ch" in loch. Some Scottish speakers use it in words of Greek origin as well, such as technical, patriarch, etc. The pronunciation of these words in the original Greek would support this. (Wells 1982, 408).
• /l/ is usually velarized (see dark l) except in borrowings like "glen" (from Scottish Gaelic "gleann") which had unvelarized l in their original form. In areas where Scottish Gaelic was spoken until relatively recently (such as Dumfries and Galloway) and in areas where it is still spoken (such as the West Highlands), velarization of /l/ may be absent in many words in which it is present in other areas, but remains in borrowings that had velarized /l/ in Gaelic, such as "loch" (Gaelic "loch") and "clan" (Gaelic "clann").
• /p/, /t/ and /k/ are not aspirated.
• Vowel length is generally regarded as non-phonemic, although a distinctive part of Scottish English is the Scots vowel length rule (Scobbie et al. 1999). Certain vowels (such as /i/, /u/, and /æ/) are generally long but are shortened before nasals and voiced plosives. However, this does not occur across morpheme boundaries so that crude contrasts with crewed, need with kneed and side with sighed.
• Scottish English has no /ʊ/, instead transferring Scots /u/. Phonetically, this vowel may be pronounced or even . Thus pull and pool are homophones.
• Cot and caught are not differentiated in most Central Scottish varieties, as they are in some other varieties.
• In most varieties, there is no /æ/-/ɑː/ distinction; therefore, bath, trap, and palm have the same vowel.
• The happY vowel is most commonly /e/ (as in face), but may also be /ɪ/ (as in kit) or /i/ (as in fleece).
• /θs/ is often used in plural nouns where southern English has /ðz/ (baths, youths, etc.); with and booth are pronounced with /θ/. (See Pronunciation of English th.)
• In colloquial speech, the glottal stop may be an allophone of /t/ after a vowel, as in . These same speakers may "drop the g" in the suffix -ing and debuccalize /θ/ to in certain contexts.
• /ɪ/ may be more open for certain speakers in some regions, so that it sounds more like (although /ɪ/ and /ɛ/ do not merge). Other speakers may pronounce it as, just like in many other accents, or with a schwa-like quality. Others may pronounce it almost as in certain environments, particularly after /w/ and /hw/.

Correspondence between the IPA help key and Scottish English vowels (many individual words do not correspond)

Pure vowels
Help key	Scottish	Examples
/ɪ/	/ɪ/	bid, pit
/iː/	/i/	bead, peat
/ɛ/	/ɛ/	bed, pet
/eɪ/	/e/	bay, hey, fate
/æ/	/a/	bad, pat
/ɑː/		balm, father, pa
/ɒ/	/ɔ/	bod, pot, cot
/ɔː/		bawd, paw, caught
/oʊ/	/o/	beau, hoe, poke
/ʊ/	/ʉ/	good, foot, put
/uː/		booed, food
/ʌ/	/ʌ/	bud, putt
Diphthongs
/aɪ/	/ae/ ~ /əi/	buy, ride, write
/aʊ/	/ʌu/	how, pout
/ɔɪ/	/oi/	boy, hoy
/juː/	/jʉ/	hue, pew, new
R-colored vowels (these do not exist in Scots)
/ɪr/	/ɪr/	mirror (also in fir)
/ɪər/	/ir/	beer, mere
/ɛr/	/ɛr/	berry, merry (also in her)
/ɛər/	/er/	bear, mare, Mary
/ær/	/ar/	barrow, marry
/ɑr/		bar, mar
/ɒr/	/ɔr/	moral, forage
/ɔr/		born, for
/ɔər/	/or/	boar, four, more
/ʊər/	/ur/	boor, moor
/ʌr/	/ʌr/	hurry, Murray (also in fur)
/ɜr/ (ɝ)	/ɪr/, /ɛr/, /ʌr/	bird, herd, furry
Reduced vowels
/ɨ/		roses, business
/ə/	/ə/	Rosa’s, cuppa
/ər/ (ɚ)	/ər/	runner, mercer