Wir Ain Leid

Dundee Scots

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Dundee Scots

Like other urban dialects Dundonian also suffers from a loss of much traditional agricultural and countryside vocabulary. Dundee lies just inside the south northern dialect 'border' subsequently the pronunciation of Dundee Scots shares some features with north east central Scots.

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

Words that traditionally have Medial and Final <ch> /x/ now generally take 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.

Initial <wh> is pronounced /ʍ/ in common with north east central Scots.

The initial <th> in words like thing, naething and think is often pronounced /h/.

<h> 'dropping' is seldom but is possible in rapid speech in unstressed pronouns like he, her and him etc. His is often rendered [(h)i:z].

Vowels and diphthongs are usually similar to those of the surrounding dialects but note the following:

A final glide /-(j)əl/ or epenthetic vowel may occur in words like spyle, byle, birl and [e:m] airm etc.

<a>, <au> and <aw> have the northern pronunciation /a/ e.g.
aff, alang, crabbit, drap, shak, tak, tap, twa, awa, wha, faw, awbody, baw, waw, awfu, blaw, braw and chaw etc.

<ai> and <a(consonant)e> are usually pronounced /e/ but /ɛ/ may occur before/r/ and in some words like gaither, jaiket, maiter and skail.

<ea> is usually /e/ in words like beast, cheap, cheat, fear, leave, neat and seat etc.

<ei> is usually /e/ in words like deif, heid, leid (metal), reid etc.

<ie> is usually /i/ in words like gie, piece, sieven etc.

<i> is usually /ɪ/ but /ʌ/ also occurs i.e. brither, cliver, finger, girn, git, hing, iver, wir, wis and yit etc. with /ɪ/ but birl, fit, lift, lip, whit and will etc. with /ʌ/.

The well-known Dundee marker is the pronunciation /ɛ/ in words like by, buy, ay, forby, fry, cry, pie, sky, drive, five, size and diary etc. This also occurs where English cognates have replaced the Scots words i.e. eye (ee), I (A), lie (lee) and my (ma) etc.

The <ui> generally takes the pronunciation /e/ but is often /u/ before <v>, <th> and <z> in words like buith (booth), muive (move), suithe (sooth), ruise, and in many common words with English cognates.
Note dinna, didna, juist and tae (to) with /ɪ/

In words with English cognates the <eu> is usually pronounced /u/ i.e. beuk (book), heuk (hook), leuk (look) and teuk (took) etc. in particularly Scots words e.g. speugie /ju/ may also occur.

Glottal stops are often seen as the hallmark of urban Scots dialects especially for final /t/ and /k/ and medial /t/ in words like bat, night, bottle, watter and back.

Adverbial and adjectival <(l)y> varies between /e/ and /i/. Similarly with final <-(a)e> in words like borrae, nairae, orra, swallae and windae etc. <-fu> is /fi/ e.g. awfu.

The negative <-na> is /na/ e.g. canna, dinna, didna, isna, needna and winna etc.

The past tense <-it> is usually /ɪt/ e.g. barkit, crabbit, dytit, glaikit, hackit, hallockit, nakit, pentit and sleekit etc. but final <-t> e.g. clypt etc. may also be /d/ e.g. couart and drount etc.

Literature:

McCluskey, Mick (1990) Dundonian for Beginners, Edinburgh: Mainstream.

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