Special Sub-Topic: Scottish English Click Here To Play: Scottish English

In all of these Scottish words you can replace the e by the same vowel and you obtain perfectly normal standard English words: gled; gless; seck; sterve. Which vowel must be inserted?

a. In Scottish want, warm, wash and water the a is retained in the spelling but in contrast to standard English after a w the same sound is used as in farm.

What is the pronunciation of Scottish words such as: faither; cairt; raither; yaird ?

Same sound as in gate. Scottish does not always signal the differences in pronunciation with Standard English. Broun, flouer, hous and mous are actually pronounced with the oo of soon , and not with the sound of loud as they are in English. Not the ou of soul either.

Mull, hull, whup and whustle would not have a u in English but an ___?

i. Other examples are wrunkle for wrinkle and whurl for whirl.

What is the consonant that is dropped from the English model in words such as: fummle; grummle; mummle and trummle ?

b. The dropping of B after m is much more frequent in Scottish than in English. English leaves the b unpronounced in lamb, dumb, comb, etc. but still writes it. Other consonants that create funny effects are: r that often changes position within the word: buRnt becomes bRunt and keRb becomes cRib.The other way round: scRatch becomes scaRt and and chRisten becomes kiRsen.

How do Scots pronounce the ei that occurs in eivil, seiven, streitch and weit?

sound as in feet. Other basic phonetic rules are that British English all mostly becomes aw, also spelled aa. Examples: baw, caw, faw and waw for ball, call, fall and wall.

Many songs about bonnie lasses in the Scottish musicial tradition. But what exactly is a 'bonnie lass'?

a pretty girl. It's a mistaken belief that all bonnies are 'over the Ocean' in America these days.

Haggis is eaten with neips (also spelled neeps) and tatties. Tatties are potatoes of course, but what are neips?

turnips. As should be clear from the name cock-a-leekie soup neips are not leeks. Cabbage is Scottish keil and comparable with English kale. In spite of all the horror stories about the haggis the dish can be neatly presented and charmingly arranged as a kind of yellow, brown, white national 'flag'. Probably Scottish nouvelle cuisine.

The wide-spread surname Halliday is of Scottish origin. What does it mean?

holiday. Possibly a foundling (abandoned orphan) found on a holiday.

What does a Scotsman mean when he calls the weather dreich?

dull and dreary. There is also a Scottish word draik that means 'wet weather'.

Baxter is another wide-spread surname of Scottish origin. What profession does it refer to?

baker.