A Look at a Scottish Dialect

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DYtz7Mon3c&feature=related


The point of this lesson is to instruct the students on one specific dialect of English, Scottish. There are various reasons to study dialects such as: actors training, learning about culural diversity, learning about how the english language differs geographically, and of course writing fiction or drama. We are going to take a look at a Scottish dialect from Aberdeen, Scotland. Listen to the sound file and see if you can understand what he says.

Link- http://web.ku.edu/idea/europe/scotland/scotland.htm (Scotland Fourteen)

Did you understand him clearly? Did you recognize any specific pronunciation differences? Here is an explanation of some of the different pronunciations that the speaker uses.

Scotland Fourteen - Text

"The area the subject comes from retains its rich, strong dialect of North-east Scots and the speaker can switch fluently between Standard Scots and his own dialect. Comma Gets a Cure is read in a more standard way, but the unscripted speech is in Scots; hence the pronunciation of Aberdeen, from, toon, over, called, do, outside; and the use of ken and wee for know and little. The vowel of man is very back; a'body means everybody, and the sound in her is very openly realized. With this speaker the initial /th/ is sometimes dropped, so that becomes 'at. One key substitution in the dialect is the traditional /f/ for word-initial /wh/, so when become fin, what becomes fit and so on. The glottal stop, as with many young Scots, is ubiquitous; and consonants, especially the /r/ sound, very muscular."

Recorded by Ros Steen, 2005; and edited June 4, 2005 by Paul Meier. Running time: 00:04:33.

Examples of Scottish words and pronunciation used throughout the sound clip:

Scottish English Pronunciation of Scottish Words

Fur for likin'- final 'g' is often omitted

Yer you/your sufferin'

Sae so struttin'

Wirsh washed strokin'

Wus was relaxin'

Lik like surprisin'

Ken know le-er (letter)- glottal stop, t is not pronounced

Wee little mirror- r is pronounced with a rolling of the tongue

Fin when hurry

U's and O's are strongly pronounced as in:

U- duke and huge

O- foot and soon

You can use this link http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/general/scots.html to browse through various Scottish words and how they pronounce various English words.

Task For Children

Have children listen to sound clip to see if they can pick up on any additional Scottish words and/or pronunciation using 'Scots Tongue'.

Link- http://www.cs.stir.ac.uk/~kjt/general/scots.html

Assessment

Class Discussion. Participation points awarded to entire class.