Talk:Scottish English

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment
This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Shreyamurali.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 03:23, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Confusion with Scots
At top of the page, it says 'not to be confused for Scots'. I get the impression that there are examples of said confusion in the current article: In the vowel section: Munci (talk) 04:28, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
 * older, before /m/ or /n/ or word-finally: [eː]
 * (these do not exist in Scots)
 * Sorry, I'm unclear as to the part of the article you are referring to and what you are saying about it. Is the part of your post after the colon a quote from the article (I can't find it) or a suggested addition? Mutt Lunker (talk) 07:50, 3 March 2016 (UTC)
 * My first bullet point is hidden, I concede. It is found in the table 'Scottish English vowels' at the phoneme /o/. I am saying that the appearance of /e/ in these words is actually a feature of Scots, not Scottish English so should not be mentioned here. It does not even have that distribution either, but is instead dependent on historcial vowels in Old English (or other source languages such as Old Norse and Old French and Old Irish). Munci (talk) 20:14, 3 March 2016 (UTC)

Convention traces the influence of the English of England upon Scots to the 16th-century????
I wonder by whose convention 'Convention traces the influence of the English of England upon Scots to the 16th-century'. The historical facts are that the Scottish Lowlands were settled by Angles in the 7th century, and were later joined by English settlers of Saxon descent. Thus Lowland 'Scot-land' has actually been an Anglo-Saxon English-speaking land for 1500 years. Only by accident of history did it come to be ruled by the King of the Scots rather than being a permanent part of the Angle-lands or England. Outside of Scotland works such as the 14th century 'The Brus' are quite correctly categorised as written in Middle English. Cassandra.


 * In modern linguistics, English and Scots are considered two distinct Anglic languages. There was Anglo-Saxon influence on Scotland as early as the 7th century, but the Anglo-Saxons did not speak English in the modern sense. By the 14th century, Early Scots was already on its way to become a distinct literary language, and after more than 1000 years of divergence, involving separate development from Early Modern English (the Middle Scots used around 1500 is treated as separate from Early Modern English), it is considered to be a distinct language now. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 16:51, 29 December 2023 (UTC)

Change to Grammar section
The 'Grammar' section say:

"Note that in Scottish English, the first person declarative 'I amn't invited' and interrogative 'Amn't I invited?' are both possible. Contrast English language in England, which has 'Aren't I?' but no contracted declarative form. (All varieties have I'm not invited.)"

There seems to be an error here. English language in England has 'I ain't invited' as a first person declarative. 'Ain't' is generally taken to be grammatically correct vernacular, but not a form used by upper-class speakers. See aint

Accordingly, I am deleting the second sentence referring to 'English in England'. This also aids the article to have a greater focus on Scottish English.

New 'Grammar section:

"Note that in Scottish English, the first person declarative 'I amn't invited' and interrogative 'Amn't I invited?' are both possible." RedTomato (talk) 15:09, 12 January 2018 (UTC)


 * I agree with your reasoning, and the deletion of the second sentence because it is false for some dialects of northern English (though it's true for formal standard English).  Dbfirs  16:18, 12 January 2018 (UTC)

Final devoicing or not?
Is there final devoicing in Scottish English? (if yes, would be worth mentioning as a difference to Standard E). I am asking because I found that in the German Wikipedia, the pronunciation of the whisky distillery “Ardbeg” is given as [ardbek]. Ist this correct? Of course it could be a mistake which is due to final devoicing in German :) --Alazon (talk) 13:51, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * That would be the correct Gaelic pronunciation, I'd have thought, and it's a Gaelic name. I think I've only heard a -g pronunciation used in English but not by anyone definitive and being commonplace doesn't make that pronunciation correct. It's certainly not a pattern for words ending in -g in Scottish English to be pronounced -k. Mutt Lunker (talk) 22:09, 10 February 2018 (UTC)


 * Thank you. -- I see, it doesn't say whether it's intended as a Gaelic or an English pnonunciation (but that should always be added)... --Alazon (talk) 01:27, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

New section
Hey, I wasn't sure where to put this. So hey you might see me occasionally editing adding a sentence or two. I'm a college student taking a linguistics class and have to edit a Wikipedia page and I chose this one. I was thinking to either have a background or history sections because I feel they are both repetitive. Something I want to add is to make a consonants and vowels section just to make it look cleaner and organized. Let me know what you guys think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Shreyamurali (talk • contribs) 03:57, 16 April 2018 (UTC)


 * This is the correct place to put comments, though remember to put them in a separate section if it is a new thread, to avoid potential confusion. Also, thanks for posting your ideas here first rather than just going ahead. The background and history sections deal with different matters and I see no repetition between them. Any other changes, please make sure that above all they are genuinely to the benefit of the article and not just made because you have been tasked with editing an article for your assignment. There are certainly things that could be improved in the article but be careful to avoid editing where specialist knowledge is required as, from your previous edits, you are not particularly familiar with the subject. Mutt Lunker (talk) 13:12, 16 April 2018 (UTC)

Like, Eh and Know what I mean
Not sure if it's the correct place to add it, but I was looking at another article which links to Eh (.eh is the dormant domain name for Western Sahara and Canadian sites have been acquiring it for homorous use). That article only mentions "eh" in a Scottish context as being used on Tayside instead of "aye", when anyone living here knows it is liberally suffixed to most sentences in all East Coast dialects. "Like" is similarly common but not mentioned on that article at all. In Glasgow, the equivalent for any slightly ambiguous or contentious statement is "Knowwhatahmean". Assuming I can find a decent source for this (haven't looked yet) would here be the correct place to add it? It certainly isn't Scots, but is a noticeable feature of Scottish English. Then I could add comments to Like and Eh to improve awareness of the use of the terms in this part of the world, and either link or ref back to here. Crowsus (talk) 00:11, 19 June 2018 (UTC)

Uncited material/ to "stay"
If material is uncited in an article, that doesn't justify the addition of further uncited material and sarcastic edit comments are not going to encourage other editors to give you slack. If you haven't put the effort in to find a citation, don't complain that somebody else hasn't cleared up after you. By all means, remove uncited material that you believe to be questionable. That the word "stay" may be used similarly in other dialects (add also Indian English) is only likely to be of pertinence to this particular article if a source actively links this to Scottish usage. If you find such links, great. Interesting as it may be, I'm not convinced that https://www.gumbopages.com/neworleans.html is a WP:RS, unless you can provide evidence. Mutt Lunker (talk) 00:04, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

weak reference
These two references are the same piece of work - the former pre-print should be deleted. I think there is a lack of relevance in any case - the latter is primarily about child speech acquisition, and does not belong in this section, in my view, but the page editors might disagree.

Scobbie, James M.; Gordeeva, Olga B.; Matthews, Benjamin (2006). "Acquisition of Scottish English Phonology: an overview". Edinburgh: QMU Speech Science Research Centre Working Papers.

Scobbie, James M., Olga B. Gordeeva, and Benjamin Matthews (2007). "Scottish English Speech Acquisition.". In Sharynne McLeod (ed.). The International Guide to Speech Acquisition. Clifton Park, NY: Thomson Delmar Learning. pp. 221–240. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.237.157.80 (talk) 09:55, 25 August 2020 (UTC)


 * They are given in the article citing discusssion of the "Scots vowel length rule" and "Monophthongs of Scottish English". Do they not cover these? Mutt Lunker (talk) 10:54, 25 August 2020 (UTC)