Scottish Vowel Length Rule - Vowel Length

Vowel Length

The Scottish vowel length rule affects all vowels except 15 and 19, and in many Modern Scots varieties, vowels 8 and 12. The further north a Scots dialect is from central Scotland, the more it will contain specific words that do not adhere to the rule.

• /ə/, /ɪ/, /ɛ/, /ɑ, a/, /ɔ/ and /ʌ/ (15, 16, 17, 18 and 19) are usually short.
  • In some Modern Scots varieties vowel 17 (/ɑ/) may merge with vowel 12 (/ɑː/) in long environments. In Ulster Scots /ɛ/, /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ (16, 17 and 18) are usually always long and the /əʉ/ realisation of vowel 13 is short before a voiceless consonant, or before a sonorant followed by a voiceless consonant but long elsewhere.
• /i/, /e/, /o/, /u/, /ø/ and /ju/ (2, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 14) are usually long in the following environments, and short elsewhere:
  • In stressed syllables before voiced fricatives, namely /v/, /ð/, /z/, /ʒ/, and also before /r/. In some Modern Scots varieties before the monomorphemic end-stresses syllables /rd/, /r/ + any voiced consonant, /ɡ/ and /dʒ/. In Shetland Scots the /d/ realisation of underlying /ð/, usual in other Scots varieties, remains a long environment.
  • Before another vowel and
  • Before a morpheme boundary, so, for example, "stayed" is pronounced with a longer vowel than "staid".
• The long /ɑː/, /ɒː/ or /ɔː/ realisations of vowel 12 usually occur in all environments in final stressed syllables.
• /iː/ and /eː/ (11 and 8) are usually long.
• The diphthong /əi/ (1s & 10)usually occurs in short environments, vowel 8a, which occurs stem final, is always short, and /aɪ/ (1l) occurs in the long environments described above.
• The diphthong /ʌu/ (13) is usually short.