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DIALECTSOFENGLISH DIALECTSOFENGLISH SeriesEditors: JoanBeal,PatrickHoneybone&AprilMcMahon Booksinthisnewseriesprovideconcise,up-to-datedocumentationforvarietiesofEnglish fromaroundtheworld.Writtenbyexpertswhohaveconductedfirst-handresearch,the volumesprovideastartingpointforanyonewishingtoknowmoreaboutaparticulardialect. Eachvolumefollowsacommonstructure,coveringthebackground,phoneticsandphonology, morphosyntax,lexisandhistoryofavarietyofEnglish,andconcludeswithanannotated NORTHERNANDINSULARSCOTS bibliographyandsomesampletexts. DIALECTSOFENGLISH NORTHERNANDINSULARSCOTS NORTHERNANDINSULARSCOTS RobertMcCollMillar TheScotsdialectsofnorthernScotland,OrkneyandShetlandareamong themosttraditionalvarietiesof‘English’,exhibitingfeaturesnotcurrent elsewhereforcenturies.Untilrecently,theywerespokenincommunities whosetraditionaloccupationshaveencouragedtheequationofspeechwith localidentity.TheyhaveallalsobeenaffectedbycontactwithGaelic,or Norse,orboth.Inrecentyears,however,thedeclineoftraditionalindustries hasbeenmatchedbythediscoveryofoilofftheircoasts,encouragingin- migrationofspeakersofmanyvarietiesofEnglishandotherlanguages.How wellhavethesevarietiesmaintainedtheirtraditionalnaturesatthestartof thetwenty-firstcentury? NorthernandInsularScotsprovides: •anapproachabledescriptionofthephonological,structuralandlexical naturesofthesevarieties •ahistoryofthevarietiesinrelationtotheareasinwhichtheyarespoken •examplesofthelanguageofnativespeakers ROBERTM •anannotatedbibliographywhichpointsthereadertowardsmore specialisedworks. RobertMcCollMillarlecturesinlinguisticsattheUniversityofAberdeen. C COLLMILLAR Hehaspublishedwidelyontopicsrelatingtothelanguageuseofnorthern Scotland,aswellasonlanguagechangeandthesociologyoflanguage. ISBN9780748623174 EdinburghUniversityPress 22GeorgeSquare ROBERTMCCOLLMILLAR Edinburgh Edinburgh EH89LF www.eup.ed.ac.uk Coverphoto©SandraWeyland CoverdesignBarrieTullett Northern and Insular Scots Dialects of English Series Editors Joan Beal (University of Sheffield) Patrick Honeybone (University of Edinburgh) April McMahon (University of Edinburgh) Advisory Board Laurie Bauer (Victoria University of Wellington) Jenny Cheshire (Queen Mary, University of London) Karen Corrigan (University of Newcastle upon Tyne) Heinz Giegerich (University of Edinburgh) Peter L. Patrick (University of Essex) Peter Trudgill (University of Fribourg, University of East Anglia, Agder University College, La Trobe University) Walt Wolfram (North Carolina State University) Northern and Insular Scots Robert McColl Millar Edinburgh University Press © Robert McColl Millar, 2007 Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh Typeset in 10.5/12 Janson by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester, and printed and bound in Great Britain by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge, Wilts A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978 0 7486 2316 7 (hardback) ISBN 978 0 7486 2317 4 (paperback) The right of Robert McColl Millar to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. Contents Acknowledgements vii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Northern and Insular Scots 1 1.2 The linguistic ecologies of the regions 5 1.3 Geography and culture: an introduction 6 1.4 A note on terminology: ‘Scots’ versus ‘English’ 14 1.5 Conclusion 15 2 Phonetics and phonology 16 2.1 Introduction 16 2.2 The vowel systems 20 2.3 Consonant phonology 61 2.4 Prosody 64 2.5 Conclusion 64 3 Morphosyntax 65 3.1 Introduction 65 3.2 The nouns 66 3.3 Pronouns 67 3.4 The definite article 71 3.5 Adjectives 72 3.6 Verbs 72 3.7 Conclusion 78 4Lexis 79 4.1 Introduction 79 4.2 Scholarly resources: national 79 4.3 Locally focused resources 83 4.4 Dialect vocabulary and heritage 92 4.5 Discussion 94 vi NORTHERN AND INSULAR SCOTS 4.6 Lexical borrowing 95 4.7 Conclusion 102 5 History, including changes in progress 103 5.1 Introduction: language contact and language shift 103 5.2 Northern Scotland 106 5.3 The Northern Isles 123 5.4 Conclusion 135 6 Survey of previous works and annotated bibliography 136 6.1 General histories, grammars, studies of phonology and dictionaries of Scots 136 6.2 Local history and geography 137 6.3 Studies of specific dialects 138 6.4 Theoretical views discussed in this book 139 6.5 Suggestions for future research 140 6.6 Works cited in this chapter and the book as a whole 142 7Texts 149 7.1 Shetland 149 7.2 Orkney 162 7.3 Caithness 163 7.4 Black Isle 166 7.5 Mid-Northern B 167 7.6 Mid-Northern A 168 7.7 South Northern 171 Index 173 For recordings of the transcriptions in this book go to www.lel.ed.ac.uk/dialects Acknowledgements In the first place, I want to thank everyone who spoke to us while we were carrying out fieldwork for this book; especially those who agreed to be recorded. In particular, I would like to thank those who were recorded in Orkney and Lossiemouth but whose conversations have not been transcribed due to a faulty Minidisc recorder. Although your speech is not represented here, the ideas and pointers you gave us have been invaluable. Second, I am especially grateful to those who helped us set up inter- views: John Burke, Peter Fraser, Madelaine and Rachel King, Ali Lumsden, Jack and Vanda Moodie, John Tallach and Nicola Thomson. I also want to thank my colleagues here in Aberdeen: Barbara Fennell, Carmen Llamas, Derrick McClure and, in particular, Dom Watt, who has given me a great deal of help and encouragement with transcrip- tions. I would also like to mention two former colleagues, Thor-Sigurd Nilsen and Caroline Macafee, whose ideas and views helped shaped my approach to this book. My students, Barbara Loester and Sandra McRae, have taught me a great deal. The research for this book would have been much more difficult without a grant for travel to Shetland from the British Association for Applied Linguistics. Sarah Edwards has been a very patient and helpful editor. April McMahon’s and Patrick Honeybone’s comments on an earlier draft of this book were both generous and insightful. Many thanks also to Alison Sandison for her excellent maps. Finally, my debt to Sandra Weyland is immense. Throughout the writing of this book, she has worked as (unpaid) research assistant while holding down a very demanding job. It is unlikely that I would have made half of the contacts across the Northern Isles and northern Scotland which she made. This book is dedicated to her. vii 1 Introduction 1.1 Northern and Insular Scots This book is concerned with the Scots dialects of northern Scotland and the Northern Isles of Orkney and Shetland; dialects spoken by a wide variety of people living very different lives in divergent natural environ- ments. Many speakers of the varieties concerned would be surprised to have their dialect included with some considered here, since many speakers see their dialects as being unique, even at a very local level. Yet all of these dialects are inter-related historically and culturally, even if particular dialects might be more closely connected to some members of the set than are others. They also share two further features. They are the most conservative dialects of Scots, being, at least until recently, vibrant features of the language use of almost all members of their communities. Dialect use has rarely been associated with a particular social class as is regularly the case elsewhere in the English-speaking world. Second, these dialects have all been affected by long-term contact with at least one other language. These dialects, spoken in the North-East, the Black Isle, Caithness, Orkney and Shetland are relatives of, but not derived from, Standard English (although most inhabitants can also speak and write Scottish Standard English [SSE]). In their ‘broadest’ forms, these varieties are not intelligible to monodialectal speakers of any English variety spoken outside Scotland and Ulster. In the rest of northern Scotland, most in- habitants speak Highland English, essentially Standard English spoken with a Scottish accent, with some small-scale influence from Scots on lexis and structure, as well as phonological influence from Gaelic. Some still speak Gaelic as well. Within the Scots-speaking regions, a number of different dialect areas are recognised by scholars. I have generally followed the classification of Johnson (1997) except when geographical terms are more transparent. 1 2 NORTHERN AND INSULAR SCOTS Map 1 Northern and Insular Scots SHETLAND ORKNEY North Northern B North Northern A Mid-Northern B Mid- Northern A South Northern 0 50 100 km INTRODUCTION 3 1.1.1 Northern Scots As shown in the map above, the dialects of Northern Scots can be separated into three basic units: North Northern Scots, Mid-Northern Scots and a transitional area between Mid-Scots and Northern Scots termed South Northern. With the exception of South Northern Scots, all of these dialects are bounded on at least one side by the sea, and on another by areas where the local population spoke Gaelic until recently and where, in general, Highland English is now spoken. The boundary between Scots and Highland English is highly permeable. 1.1.1.1 Mid-Northern and South Northern Scots (North-East Scots) Mid-Northern A is centred around the city of Aberdeen, although regional centres are also influential on their hinterlands. It comprises Aberdeenshire, as well as the part of Banffshire beside the sea and Kincardineshire (/knkardənʃr/) north of the Highland boundary fault, along with Stonehaven which, although in the Lowlands, is lin- guistically part of this unit.