Varieties of English Around the World

Scotland

The continuum of dialects covering England and Scotland, which I mentioned on the page about English in England creates a border that divides the country into two parts. Only in the so called Lowlands, Germanic dialects have been the main communication means for about a thousand years, leaving room for the emergence of local dialects, which are summarized as Scots. The rest of the country used to be the area of a Celtic language, very akin to Irish, because it was brought by Irish settlers at the beginning of this millenium; this language is known as Gaelic. The above map (Bähr, 1974: 324) shows the position of this language frontier, the "Celtic Border". In both areas, English or English-related dialects are now the predominant language; yet the linguistic situation is very different, forcing me to explain either for itself.

The Lowlands

From literary "Inglis" to Braid Scots - The History of the Scottish tongue

The political border, though, caused "Inglis" to diverge from the Southern speech (Murison, 1979: 8). In addition, the settlers in Scotland came from the North of England, where the Northumbrian dialect was spoken, more based on the speech of the Angles than the South of England, e.g. the area around London, where the Saxon origin was more predominant. The influence of the Danish rule was greater in Northumbria, too. As for public life, the Continental legal system was adopted, causing the borrowing of a lot of different terms in the social and political area.

This is how Scotland built up a language of its own. It was not understandable to the people "south of the border". "Inglis"-speaking Scottish and English needed interpreters to communicate.

The resemblance of the two tongues was yet not forgotten, although the northern one eventually began to be called "Scottis" (1494; Murison, 1979: 8).
In 1606, the diverging development came to an end; the Scottish king James VI, who had written poems in Scots, became King James I of England. The two countries have been politically united ever since. James's court moved to London. Their poetic language moved, too. James began to use Southern English in his poems, and so started to do the Scottish noblemen soon after. He was the one who edited the famous King James Bible, written in English; there has never been a Scots version of the Holy Script. The former official language grew to be the summarizing notion for a number of different and only-spoken dialects.

What is Scots?

These dialects belong to the []-region of the English-Scottish dialects and are divided into three parts: The []-region, the bridge to the north of England, the []-area comprising the North-East of Scotland except the islands, and Insular Scots, spoken on the Orkney and Shetland Islands. The latter is significant by the fact that even Scots is a colonial language there. Up to the 18^th century a Norwegian dialect, known as Norn, was the vernacular language (Bähr, 1974: 135ff.). Today, there are few traces left of it (e.g. eld instead of fire); however, in recent years the inhabitants have begun to learn Norwegian as their first foreign language at school.
Some general features of Scots (Bähr, 1974: 132f.):

StE [] = Scots [e], stemming from OE (Old English) [] (ex.: go - gae, stone - stane),

StE [] = Scots [], OE [] + [w] (snow - snaw),

StE [] = Scots [u], OE [] (cow - coo, house - hoose),

StE [], [] = Scots [y, , ]

StE [] = Scots [a] (top - tap, drop - drap),

[r] is always kept and rolled, except in the group -rs, which becomes a retroflex s ([]; as in Swedish, Norwegian, and Gaelic),

StE [] = Scots [],

wh is voiceless or [f] in the North-East,

StE know = ken,

StE cough = hoast,

StE write = scrieve,

StE smoke = reek,

StE from = frae, fae.

The word list is only to be taken as an insight into how different the lexicon is in Scots. To mention is, too, the orthography used in the examples. There is, in fact, some kind of orthography, which is not too fixed (there are other concepts), but which is widely used and stems from the times when Scots was the standard language of the Kingdom of Scotland.

Scottish English

This made it necessary to preserve certain words for this system, too. So, the Scottish have their provost, but no mayor. A public prosecutor cannot charge for bancruptcy or manslaughter, but for sequestration or culpable homicide. You need not to worry whether you need a barrister or a sollicitor for helping you to get your right, because there is only an advocate [], who manages all legal trouble for you.

Apart from those terms, reminding of the independent history of the country, Scotland has kept some more traces of its freedom in its modern Standard English. A number of Scots words, e.g., have found their way into even the most standardish speak, which normally is referred to as Scottish English (analogous to American English, Australian English etc.). This is more amazing, as this speech cooccurs with very vigorous local dialects, which indeed keep serving a the common vernacular. Notice, too, that there are orthography standards for those "borrowings" from Scots. Some examples (Bähr, 1974: 138; Crystal, 1988: 219; Ohff, 1992: 152-155):

Special attention should be paid to the mentioned word loch. It is pronounced , thus with a sound that an Englishman thinks uneasy to pronounce. This sound occurs in words like technical, technique as well (Abercrombie, 1979: 71). There are other phonological habits particular to Scottish English, stemming from Scots. Scotsmen do not distinguish between and , they always say. The StE diphthongs are monophthongised, r tends to be kept in all places and rolled (maintaining vowel contrasts the r-coloured vowels of English have dropped; Aitken, 1979: 101), the sound of w is kept apart from that of wh, the latter being voiceless. There are distinctions in vowel length StE does not know: agreed [] is different from greed [], brewed with the long vowel from brood with a short one, tied [] distinguished from tide [] (Aitken, 1979: 101). Besides, a Scotsman can be recognized by his intonation pattern. In many situations, this intonation pattern will be the only reminder of the Scottish descendance of the speaker, e.g. in the media.

The Highlands

The Celtic language

Gaelic is the tongue Irish immigrants brought with them as they settled in Scotland about 1.500 years ago. That is the background how the lingua Scotica of the Middle Ages changed its name to Hibernica or Erse (in Scots) when "Inglis" began to be called Scottish (Murison, 1979: 8). It is still said to be understandable for speakers of Irish and vice versa.

More than in the Lowlands, the English government was regarded as an occupation. The Highland clans tried to expel the conquerers up to the 18^th century. As they finally failed at the famous battle of Culloden 1746 (Ohff, 1992: 102-111), the English vengeance was cruel. As a result, the once densely crowded Highlands have become deserted, sheep have replaced people, and has remained so until today. Lots of the Highlanders fled to Canada, Australia, and the United States. There is no town in the Highlands.

The remaining villagers kept their language, though they dropped a lot of their tradition (Ohff, 1992: 102-111).

As the English forced the children to go to school, they left no room for Gaelic. The only language used at school was English

Highland English after replacing Gaelic

Highlanders have problems to distinguish between voiced and voiceless consonants. [] are gladly replaced by [s, ts, t]. Macbeth will thus be pronounced [], anything as anytsin', this tis, the other day as tse usser day (Bähr, 1974: 160). In Gaelic, polysyllabic words are generally stressed on the first syllable; that is why in Highland English, you can hear cómprehensive, dírected, íncreased,, pólice. The retroflex s (-rs []) already known from Scots, occurs as well.

As far as grammar is concerned, the grammatical gender Gaelic possesses leads the Western Scotsman to account for designations of things according to their Gaelic gender (the house = she). In Gaelic, the definite article is more widely used, but there is no indefinite one. So expressions like in the Gaelic occur. The preposition on and the periphrastic tenses merit special attention. The former is intuitively combined with Gaelic ag, so we get sentences like The dog died on me (the dog dies in spite of all my efforts), put a question on me or he was working on me (he was nasty to me). The present perfect, is often replaced by a construction with after and the gerund, e.g. she is after saying = she has said.
It is proper Gaelic words tha influence the English very few. The diminutive suffix -ag will be put after a child's name, may it be Johnag, Tomag, Annag, Jeanag. A comprehensive list can be found in Bähr (1974: 169f.). Important words are the Sassenach, designating an Englishman or perhaps also a Lowlander, who are both welcomed with distrust; and slainte (mhath) [], a very common word in the land of the whisky, meaning "cheers".