Aberdeen Scots

Aberdeen Scots

Spoken in the city itself and increasingly in surrounding areas.

Like all urban dialects Aberdeen suffers from a loss of much particularly Scots vocabulary. The pronunciation of Aberdeen Scots is essentially mid northern Scots.

Consonants usually have the same phonetic values (pronunciation) in as in English.

Words that traditionally have Medial and Final <ch> /x/ are increasingly taking the English pronunciation in words with English cognates i.e. bought (bocht), draught (draucht), enough (eneuch), laugh (lauch), night (nicht), right (richt), rough (roch), sight (sicht) and tight (ticht) etc. /x/ remains in words with no English cognates like loch but pronunciations with /k/ are spreading among the young.

Initial <wh> pronounced /f/ is still widespread but words like white, whin and whisky have /ʍ/. /w/ is spreading among the youngest speakers.

The initial <th> in words like thaim, that and this is often elided i.e. 'em, 'at and 'is.
The is often elided to 'ee' /i/.

Vowels and diphthongs are generally pronounced the same as mid northern Scots.

The <ui> generally takes the Mid Northern Scots pronunciation /i/ but /u/ is spreading in many common words with English cognates.

In words like dew, few, spew and new the pronunciation /ju/ has replaced the traditional /jʌu/.

Glottal stops for final /t/ and /k/ and medial /t/in words like bat, night, bottle, watter and back, are not widespread in Aberdeen Scots except among the young. The /t/ often simply being omitted.

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