Transcribing your accent

[Garry Oak]

About twenty-five years ago, at a Highland festival in Colorado, I was shown a book about the Scots language. I've no idea where it came from or the scope of its authority, if any. The example that I recall had to do with the word, "raither," with an "i" in the middle of it.

In English, it's "I would rather do this than that."

In Scots, the parallel given was "I had raither do this as that."

I can't and won't claim that I'm right about this. I don't even know if anyone in Scotland ever says this in this way. I merely mention it to show that it's been treated as a worthy topic by academics for a while now. The point that I took from the person who showed the book to me was that the Scots language has its own grammatical rules, and that these do not always happen to be the same as the rules of the English language.

Anecdotal bit of information: there are places on the prairies of the United States in which "I had rather do this than that" is the most common way of expressing the thought. I'm inclined to guess that they're partially following their ancestors' usage rather than having made up the construction out of whole cloth.

[Stratherrick]

It's interesting for me to live in the English borders which has many Scotticisms in the local language, a sort of halfway house language-wise.

My understanding has always been that Scots was a fully recognised language, as different from English as it was from Scots Gaelic at times. Most Northern English would have little difficulty in picking up on the intonation, if not all the vocabulary, but the farther south you go, the more likely they'd get lost with it all.

Slainte

Bruce

[highlander_Daz]

Its kind of an ongoing debate, there simply is NO "scots" Accent or way of speaking the accent and use of words varies across the country, Burns is representitive of of lowland Scots folk used language in his day, most people associate Glasgow as being THE Scottish accent as its the most used on TV etc. If you read the otherwise excelent series of "outlander" novels the leading man "jamie Mckenzie"i s a kind of " Aye ma bonnie wee Lassie Dinne worry" "Dinne" "Wouldnae" "Canne" are words normally associated with lowland acents, rather than Inverness where Jamie is purported to be from. Imagine an episode of "Dallas" with the cast having California accents. etc. If you explore the differences in Scottish accents they can be startling, sing song accents in some parts of the Highlands, to as near as Dammit posh English in other parts of the Highlands, with Rab C Nesbitt as you get further south, Billy Connolly has slowed down and lengthened the vowels in his Glasgow accent (presumably for overseas popularity) as has Craig fergusson. there was a guy on youtube who did some excelent "snippets" of regional accents, the late great Peter Sellers could imitate virtually every accent across the uK including specific parts of Scotland.