Highland English

Not to be confused with Scottish Gaelic or Scots language.

Highland English is the variety of Scottish English spoken by many in the Scottish Highlands. It is more strongly influenced by Gaelic than other forms of Scottish English.[1][2] Island English is the variety spoken as a second language by native Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides. The varieties of English spoken in the Highlands can be divided into five categories:

  1. Older native speakers of Gaelic, who have acquired local varieties of English as a second language.
  2. Native Gaelic speakers who have spent extended periods outside the Highlands and acquired some other variety of English.
  3. Speakers whose first language is English rather than Gaelic, and who have acquired a more-or-less distinctive variety of Highland English from their parents or peers.
  4. Speakers of Lowland Scots or Scottish English.
  5. Speakers of English language in England or non-Scottish varieties.

Highland English excludes the last two categories. Not surprisingly there are substantial differences between the dialect of speakers in the first three categories.

Contents

Phonology

The more distinctive varieties of Highland English shows the influence of Gaelic most clearly in pronunciation, but also in grammar. For example, voiceless stops /p/ /t/ /k/ are realised with preaspiration, that is as [hp], [ht] and [hk] or [xk], whereas voiced consonants tend to be de-voiced. Examples; that "whatever" becomes pronounced as "whateffer" and the English "j" as in "just" sound is often turned into a "tch" sound e.g. "chust". English /z/ may be realised as [s], giving "chisas" ("Jesus"). Some speakers insert a "sh" sound in English "rst" clusters, so that Eng. "first" gives "firsht". Lack of tolerance of English [w] may mean its realisation as [u], as in [suansi] ("Swansea"). Similarly, the svarabhakti ("helping vowel") that is used in some consonant combinations in Gaelic is used, so that "film" is pronounced "fillum".

Many older speakers employ a very distinctive affirmative or backchannel item taken from Gaelic which involves an ingress of breath[3] with clearly audible friction and whose function to indicate agreement with what a speaker has just said or is saying or to indicate continuing agreement or comprehension. This phenomenon has been termed by some "the Gaelic Gasp".[4] (This linguistic feature is also found in the Faroese, Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish and Swedish languages, where it too indicates affirmation.)

The phonology of Highland English also has conservative features. For example, the wine–whine merger is generally absent.

Grammar

The grammatical influence of Gaelic syntax is most apparent with verbal constructions, as Scottish Gaelic uses the verb to be with the active participle of the verb to indicate a continuous action as in English, but also uses this construction for iterative meanings; therefore "I go to Stornoway on Mondays" becomes "I am going to Stornoway on Mondays". Occasionally older speakers use -ing constructions where Standard English would use a simple verb form, example "I'm seeing you!" [older native Gaelic speaker speaking to baby] meaning "I can see you!". The past tense in Highland English may use the verb to be followed by "after" followed by the participle: "I am after buying a newspaper" to mean "I have [just] bought a newspaper", although this construction is more common in Irish English. Some speakers use the simple past in situations where standard English would require "have" plus verb constructions, for example "France? I was never there" rather than "I have never been there".

The diminutive -ag is sometimes added to words and names, and is a direct lift from Gaelic, e.g. Johnag, Jeanag. It is still used in Caithness as well. A great variety of distinctive female names are formed using the amazingly productive -ina suffix appended to male names, examples: Murdina ( < Murdo), Dolina, Calumina, Angusina, and Neilina.

Relationship to other languages

Areas in the east of the Highlands often have substantial influence from Lowland Scots.

Discourse markers taken directly from Gaelic are used habitually by some speakers in English, such as ending a narrative with "S(h)in a(g)ad-s' e" or "Sin agad e" (trans. "there you have it" = Std Eng. "So there you are/so that's it", or ending a conversation with "Right, ma-thà" or "Okay ma-thà" /ma ha:/ meaning "then."

Speakers of Highland English, particularly those from areas which remain strongly Gaelic or have a more recent Gaelic speaking history, are often mistaken as being Irish by non-Highland Britons; presumably as a result of the shared Gaelic influence upon the English of both areas. Highland English and Hiberno-English share a similar accent which is quite different from that of the English spoken in Glasgow and other Lowland areas of Scotland.

Vocabulary

A list of words that appear in Highland English, although these are sometimes shared with Scottish English in general, as well as Lowland Scots, and to other areas where Highlanders have emigrated in large numbers.

See also

Other English dialects heavily influenced by Celtic languages

Notes and References

  1. ^ Jones, Charles (1997). The Edinburgh History of the Scots Language. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 566–567. ISBN 978-0748607549. 
  2. ^ McMahon, April M. S. (2000). Lexical Phonology and the History of English. Cambridge University Press. p. 142. ISBN 978-0521472807. 
  3. ^ Robert Eklund (2008): Pulmonic ingressive phonation: Diachronic and synchronic characteristics, distribution and function in animal and human sound production and in human speech, Journal of the International Phonetic Association, vol. 38, no. 3, pp. 235–324.
  4. ^ The Gaelic Gasp* and its North Atlantic Cousins, Eleanor Josette Thom, A study of Ingressive Pulmonic Speech in Scotland. A dissertation submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MA in Linguistics, University College London. September 2005
  5. ^ Watson (2003) p. 11.
  6. ^ Jedrej and Nuttal (1996) p. 16–17.
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