@@tpower1912 I think that is generally the case for languages, for instance Indo European diverged more at the center, but it also depends highly on the speed of the expanse and social contacts along the way
@@necroseus It's sound nothing like what I hear in Edinburgh. Miss Jean Brodie, although a caricature, is similar to how people in Edinburgh speak who think of themselves as better educated. I do hear "hoose" and "Mair" as in more money.
@@nigelsouthworth5577 Thank you for the reply! I figured it didn't sound quite the same, but because I'm not from the isles I wasn't able to gauge the intensity of the difference
Key sounds better when pronounced k + long i sound as it normally is - but I almost never hear anyone pronouncing words like food and good with a normal u sound (fud / gud) and instead everyone tends to pronounce them with a schwa sound nowadays, like fuhd / guhd, where uh represents the schwa sound, which is the first vowel sound in words like alone and again, so I use this pronunciation with the schwa sound as well! Also, the word put, they all say that the u is pronounced as a normal u sound like the oo in Moon, but it is actually pronounced with a schwa sound, which I can clearly hear when most speakers say it nowadays, yet on the Net they say it is an u sound, which is totally not, so I don’t think everyone can tell the difference between some of the vowel sounds sometimes, and I noticed it’s like that in Icelandic as well, so natives aren’t always aware of the sounds they really pronounce in certain words, and tend to think that they are saying another sound! This is also true for words like roses and bird etc, most say it is pronounced with that vowel used in Norse between the last two consonants that isn’t used in spelling and that is only used in pronunciation in words like vindr and garðr etc which was replaced by u (yu sound aka ü like in English and French and German) in Icelandic, for example, vindur and garður etc, but, I almost never hear anyone pronouncing roses and bird with that vowel (maybe some may be pronouncing it that way in certain regions and possibly in Canada too, I don’t know) and I usually hear roses pronounced with an i sound (rouzis) and bird pronounced with a schwa sound (buhrd) which are also the pronunciations that I use!
By the way, does anyone know how the LL sound in Welsh really is made? Because to me it sounds like it is an H sound with a strong S sound to it and sometimes with a soft L ending when at the end of the word, but no one teaching Welsh seems to be able to explain this sound properly and clearly, and all say that it is made by blowing air while trying to say an L, but when I try it that way, it doesn’t work and it’s extremely complicated and tiring, but when I try to do the H sound with a hissing sound, it comes way closer to how it sounds when they say it, and it feels like it’s a stronger version of the HL in Icelandic, and it also feels like it’s related to the SKJ sound used in the standard Swedish accent which is also an H sound basically with some type of SH sound to it, so it’s like an even stronger version of the Welsh LL!
10 years ago in rural Northumberland a bloke on a quad bike stopped and chatted away. I'm a northerner and I didn't understand a single word. It was fascinating. Fortunately our neighbours were easier to understand.
i was thinking that, it struck me how similar this is to some northern english accents, which of course share a common origin with scots if you go back far enough!
@@barnsleyman32it makes sense given the tribe and trade around the road network left by the Romans. But I believe the word Scottish/Scots comes from a word to describe a tribe who relocated from Ulster in the 5th century
Fascinating! I'm no linguist but Scots is my 'mither tung' and after an almost lifetime of speaking 'proper English' I'm reverting to how I spoke 70 years ago and enjoying every minute. I'm involved with a small group researching the place-names of Carrick (southern part of Ayrshire) which has a real mixter-maxter of Gaelic, Scots, Northumbrian, Brittonic and even hints of Norse influence. I wonder if your Hume was an ancestor of David Hume, the Enlightenment figure , who was 'embarrassed' by his Scots speech and even listed many words as 'Scotticisms' and not 'proper English'! A true giant of the Scottish cringe.
I've from upper clydesdale and have Lallans as my mother tong. I had to literally learn how to speak english when I went to uni because non-scots couldn't understand me. I've been living in western Norway for 6 years now and the similarities in both the spoken language and some place names in clydesdale/tweedsdale is fascinating. I'd say about 20% of the words I use on a daily basis are the same as they are in Scots so it ony took me a few months to be fluent in Norwegian. I think the placename similarities come from both old scots and the danish influence from northern english. It's fascinating how much people appreiciate dialects here in Norway, although they have two written langauges and the one that is 98% similar to danish is by far and away the most popular while Nynorsk (based on the norwegian dialects) receives a lot of hate and bigotry.
Isn't Hume a Border name? Could Alexander Hume have retained his parents' speech a bit? I was born and raised in a town with a very distinctive dialect, but as neither of my parents was from there, my own speech is a bit of a blend.
@@MrResearcher122 Wrong. He's not talking about David Hume, the 18th century philosopher, but about another Hume who was writing in the early 1600s and was not from Edinburgh, but from Dunbar.
It is always fascinating to hear and consider the various dialects of north Britain, and try to pick out the bits that we still have in American upland Southern, which is sort of a hodge-podge of those accents in origin.
Striking how familiar the opening speech sounds to my ears. Parts of it sound like an elderly speaker, parts of it sound like my own speech. I'm East Lothian, but bordering Edinburgh. 23:28, The first and third 'good' are commonly heard around Edinburgh, and I personally use both of them, though the third is more common
I’ve been watching your videos for a while and I’m absolutely amazed at how you break apart language and its sonic structure into component parts that are historically traceable. Thank you!
It’s lots of fun when words are pronounced like how I would, myself being from Northern Ireland. Especially some words are pronounced how my grandparents would have
I recognise that Limmy's Show bit! I wonder if you caught my analysis of the linguistics of Limmy's Show from a couple of years back? That same sketch features in it.
that's such a good video i have rewatched many times, awesome to see you in these comments. as a fellow italian learner great job on the sopranos video.
As someone from Dundee (a little further up the East Coast of Scotland) that 'eh' sound heard at: 5:58 is very familiar to our local dialect, I swear that some round these parts can complete an entire line of dialogue on that one sound alone! 🙂My own way of pronouncing goose is like the stereotypical Scots 'Hoose', whereas good is more like 'Ged or Geud'.
To my ears the English accent changed more than the Scottish, but that might just be because I'm English. It's fascinating how language changes over time, across the generations. Of course it's always fun to try to compare the relationships between generations - my grandparents are to me what people born in the 1860s were to them. Growing up, they would have been able to converse fairly naturally with those people, and now they're able to converse with me, also naturally. But if I met somebody born in the mid-19th-century, while we might be able to understand each other, I think we'd each find the way the other spoke rather strange and just a little bit alien. Meeting somebody from another two generations back, born in, say, the late 18th century, would be just completely weird. I'm excited to be so young at this point in time because I'll hopefully be able to see what life and language is like in the 2070s, 80s, 90s, I even have a 33% chance of making it into the 22nd century according to one study. And I'll be able to speak and interact with these people - who'll be to Jane Austen what SHE was to Geoffery Chaucer...
Oh my goodness! This is exactly a video of the type I was going to ask for once you felt ready enough to come back! A love the scots leid, an A'm noo verra happy tae see ye daein a video oan it! This may be a bit of an ask, but I would love to see a video on the history of scots and english dialect orthography, and how they have changed and evolved with the dialects and language themselves!
It would be a blissful thing to suddenly have your linguistic capacities for a week. I'd talk and talk and talk all day long. Some of the middle English or early modern accents of the British Isles really have this powerful emotional resonance that feels distantly familiar, and there's a weird sense of longing when I hear it. It reminds me of fishermen, old women with white flannels or whatever they are called on their head and those dresses with petticoats, wisdom of elders, homeliness, family or ancestry, and roaring fires, and night time. The only comparable experience I've had is when I've been on my own in the country side somewhere historic, like Arundel or Steyning, and suddenly get the sensation that there is no time and I feel like can almost remember how it felt to be alive in medieval times, with this vast quietness and space compared to our fussy, busy existences eviscerated by time and thought. I feel like I could almost remember taking journeys from one place to another, being easily startled by noises or seeing movement far off, a real sense that the unknown was around. I'm going into it now remembering it! There is a different sense of space, of geography - not the geographical spread of the Earth, not the feeling that we are on the Earth, bur rather always in the centre of a circle of land surrounded by the grey fog of the unknown, do you now what I mean? A sense of boundaries imposed by the unknown, so no sense of being on a vast Earth or land like we have. We can imagine the English channel and France etc. That was absent. And the sensitivity to every sound and shade and colour was beyond comparison to our sense of half reality and relative half blindness. Breathing felt nourishing in a way I've not experienced; it nourished the heart with each breath, and this is something I'm 'remembering' or 'imagining' for the first time - feeling, sensing. I can actually remember the sensation. There was the habit of falling silent rather then into thought. Always there was listening, listening. Listening was constant and uninterrupted like an involuntary hum, a bit like the nervous animal surveying for danger. We hadn't not yet lost the listening. But one of the most striking thing is a sense of vast space and silence, even though it trails off into the unknown. I mean that there is a silence with the trees and in the seeing, over the land, everywhere, and the gentle noise is part of that silence. This may only be imagination but it is a weird feeling like I can imagine everything about the sense of reality of the period when there's a certain trigger or stimuli. I don't believe in reincarnation but I do believe that awareness is only one. If you examine awareness itself and see what it is, if you examine your awareness - not what you are aware of but awareness itself - it has no qualities at all, but simply 'illuminates' sound, colour, smell etc. Can your awareness be any different in character to another persons awareness? Obviously not, if you meditate on your awareness and see what it is, because it has no qualities at all. If you try and pin it down, isolate it, it is nowhere to be found. But in every perception there is irrevocable intrinsic proof that awareness IS. So it is nowhere to be found but everywhere to be seen. It has no qualities and in that sense is absolutely nothing at all. Yet it contains all things. Now when you start noticing all this about awareness, you see that the description of awareness is hauntingly similar to the Eastern notions nirvana, God, the divine and so forth - a nothingness that contains all things etc. I'd encourage you one day to attempt to write down a verbal description of awareness, what it is, as if you were trying to explain what it is to someone who has not encountered it. You will find it is one of the most perplexing intellectual tasks there is, and if you manage to describe awareness, your description will sound paradoxical and perplexing, just like the words of the Eastern mystics. If awareness really is the same featureless thing in all of us, then it is far more reasonable to say awareness is one, and we are all that one, just as they do in the East. And if you take magic mushrooms as well, you can confirm that really the mysteries of consciousness are bottomless. That's a long way of saying perhaps one can tap into ancestral streams within ones own consciousness.
As always, this is far more fascinating than I ever would have imagined. You have the ability to take something very academic and make it accessible to those of us with very little education in linguistics. It’s also so very nice that there are people like you on video platforms who are making the world more educated…as opposed to the 99.999% of content creators who seem to have the ability to only make the world a less-intelligent place…
Edinburgh. Our posh people have always sounded more English so as a highly educated man in the 16th/17th centuries, I wouldn't be surprised if Hume's accent did lean more Cumbrian.
I notice that every time I finish one of Simon’s videos, I find myself exclaiming, “He’s so awesome.” It’s even more impressive when we see how humble he remains.
I think he does well to remain humble. He doesn't know enough about how accents in Scotland developed. There was a massive influx of Flemish traders in the 11th and 12th centuries who influence the northern type of English spoken in Scotland at that time. Gaelic also played a huge role in shaping the pronunciation. It is on record that in 1560 an English herald sent to parley with Marie de Guise the then Regent of Scotland, during the seige of Leith (the port of Edinburgh) found he could not understand her and her courtiers who were speaking Scots and they could not understand him, so they had to switch to French.
Very nice presentation. It triggers my memory of the sounds of words spoken by my Great Grandfather who was from the Borders. “Being. ‘Oot and aboot’ for the afternoon”❣️ Lynn in Naples FL
Great video, as usual very engaging and informative whilst delivered informally. As an Edinburgh person (not sure of the correct denonym!) my recollection of the English spoken up the south east coast of Scotland up to Edinburgh is more historically tied with old English (Anglo Saxon). Over on the west of Scotland, there are stonger celtic ties, Gaelic. Perhaps Hume being from Edinburgh predisposes hime to sounding more English (what would become Geordie) due to early Scottish English originating from Northumbria and migrating north. If Hume originally came from Glasgow, I wonder how this video would have sounded. Just a thought! 🤔
Fascinating, great examples. Excellent system of communication. And it just occurred to me how well suited longer you tube videos are for communicating this material. Had a graduate historical linguistics course only 55 years ago. Even now I cry out for IPA transcription (standardized phonetic “alphabet” transcription system) tho I can no longer read/listen to it intuitively. Native parental “tongue” was a western (Kansas) version of Western Reserve English (northeastern Ohio settled predominantly by persons from Connecticut around 1800. A generation or more ago this was considered radio announcer (US) English and was the speech form sensed as most “neutral” but the most US residents. This sense may be fading. But I learned to speak in the Arkansas Ozarks (a mountain sort of Appalachian dialect, somewhat isolated, perhaps influenced by west country immigrants 18 century?) and perhaps poorer Scots/Irish (some clearances?). Moved around a lot asa kid and have lived my whole adult life in the linguistic melange of New York City. What sounds most “natural” is probably Western Reserve, but I’ve noticed that old school sort of modernized Brooklyn, Eastern Long Island (think Bernie Sanders) sounds very familiar and comfortable if not exactly me. I’ve noticed my unconscious speech patterns have switched around over the years, first adapted to certain upper middle class New York mannerisms (New “Yowk” for about 20 years, and when that pattern decayed socially I sometime unconsciously reverted to regular New York. Minor example. Just shows how linguistically plastic we can be while retaining old forms. Thank you again.
Oh yes! I haven't even watched it and I can't wait. Was wondering this just the other day. What did Scots sound like 400 years ago? In Antrim you can hear a dialect heavily influenced by 17th-18th century Scots and it can sound very Scottish, but it's not Scottish. If that makes sense. Right, gonna make a cuppa and watch.....
The same thing happens across the water in the west of Galloway. Not so common nowadays but 50 + years ago we (I’m from Ayrshire, just north) called it “Galloway Irish”. So you have a Scottish accent that sounds “Irishy” to Scottish people and an NI accent that sounds “Scottishy” to Irish people. That they are barely 20 miles apart across the water from one another is probably not a coincidence!
Yes I know what you mean. The County Antrim accent is reminiscent of older generation Scots from West Central Scotland. It sometimes sounds to my ears that Ulster-Scots speakers, when given the opportunity to let us know how it sounds "on air", are prone to exaggerate the Scottish pronunciation, but I may be wrong of course. The big County Antrim identifier to we Scots is when they say "beg" for "bag". Modern Scots with more refined accents tend to do the same, whilst in many parts of Scotland the humble "bag", becomes a "bog" to local speakers. My wife is from the Borders, and when she still smoked I used to tease her by asking her if she had remembered to put her "fogs in her handbog". Nearly all of my ancestors were from Ulster, and there is no doubt that Scots settlers there had a strong influence on the speech in the province. My mother's family were Irish from west County Tyrone and east Donegal, and my father's family were Ulster-Scots from the Ballymena area of County Antrim, but had returned to Scotland about 1850. One or two of my mother's older relatives had Tyrone and Donegal accents. They spoke about "weans", used "wan" for one, and "pit" coal on the fire, the same as we west coast Scots did, but they were late arrivals to Scotland (1900-1920). My father's lot had been in Scotland for too long and the County Antrim accents had well and truly gone. Shame the author doesn't reply to comments, but I suppose it could turn into a full time job if he did.
@@johnwalker3252 Your account of intertwined Scottish and Irish ancestry is an interesting example of just how close the two are. My mother’s maiden name was quite common in NI but 50 years ago everyone in the old Glasgow and West of Scotland phone books of that name was a relative - the belief was that they had been “plantation” Scots who had spelled the name differently (there are a number of variations) some of whom had returned a century later with their unusual, Irish, spelling. On the same subject, there was an Oxford university study into the genetic origins of the British population which concluded (as a footnote) that it wasn’t possible to distinguish “meaningfully” between the populations of NI and the West of Scotland - two way migration over 2,000 years is the likely cause.
It's difficult to know precisely how or when my Walker family moved to Ireland, or from where. We are related to a family named Richmond, and their take on it is that they probably fled to Ireland from Ayrshire during the Killing Time round about 1685. I was in touch with a Paul Richmond in Ballymena and he was able to tell me that by the mid 19th century both the Walkers and Richmonds were weavers and itinerant labourers who drifted around Ulster taking whatever work they could find. I wouldn't totally discount the fact that they may have gone there just before the official Plantation, as County Antrim wasn't involved in that, but the fact they were more or less destitute by the first half of the 19th century may tend to suggest they were later arrivals than the original settlers. The biggest complication was that when the Walkers came "back" to Scotland they married into native Irish families in Scotland, except for a single generation, and my mother is Irish. The Richmonds appear to have upheld strict Presbyterian ethics and began to marry into Scottish families after they returned. I therefore have considerable native Irish ancestry on both sides of my family, and you are right about distinguishing between the Irish and west of Scotland populations. My first DNA test was 84% Ireland and Scotland, 16% England and North West Europe, but Ancestry DNA has consistently watered down my Irish ethnicity prediction to 38% compared to the 58% Scotland I now have. No other DNA company has followed their example and all of the others immediately show me as being of predominantly Irish origin. To further complicate matters a branch of my Walker family in Antrim married into a family named Esler, who were originally from Germany. They rented property and grazing land along the drove roads between Islandmagee and Portglenone, and on some of their death certificates their father's occupation is given as "cow dealer". They would have habitually crossed back and forth from Ulster to Scotland for many years. It looks as though some of that branch of the family remained in Ireland and there is no paper trail to them. The ones connected to the cattle dealers that came to Scotland became coal miners in Lanarkshire alongside my own family, and were from County Derry/Londonderry. Unfortunately lack of Irish records prevented much research. @@davidpaterson2309
Back in the mid-70`s when Dylan`s epic film came out " Rolling Thunder Review " there was a scene at a picnic area where two members of the public were interviewed and they had accents that sounded like a Scottish tongue from the time of Robert Louis Stevenson , this mind you was in Canada might even have been on an Indian reservation . In many ways it summed up the weird and wonderful experience , we came to the conclusion it was a remote Scottish community from the clearances , and kept their auld native accent Sad to see Bob`s put his little But n Ben up for sale
Another fascinating video. Thank you Simon. It would be interesting to hear your analysis of some of the accents of Britain’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. I was raised in Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean, the oldest English surviving colony that was settled starting in 1609, initially by colonists from Lyme Regis in Dorset. Bermuda is isolated, with the closest neighbour being the USA (North Carolina) 600 miles to the East. The next nearest is Canada (Nova Scotia) 720 miles to the North. The nearest point in the Caribbean is over 1000 miles to the South. The Bermuda accent is mostly used by older islanders and is rapidly dying out as a result of Americanizing linguistic influences (tourism, mass media (television, film and music and the US military presence from 1940 to 1945), immigration (especially Caribbean immigrants from the late 19th Century throughout the 20th Century, as well as Portuguese immigrants and expatriate workers in the financial services and tourism industries). There has been continuous immigration from Britain through out Bermuda’s history and many islanders have at least on parent or grandparent born in England, Scotland or Wales. I am in my fifties but when I was a student there were only three or four local teachers in my primary and high schools, with the rest all being expats from Britain or Ireland. The same was true of our police force, and there were large British Army detachments until the 1950s to defend the Royal Naval dockyards and RAF base. The Royal Navy closed their last base HMS Malabar in 1995. In my youth, locals were vastly outnumbered every year my tourists, American and Canadian military personnel and tourists. I have read that the Bermuda accent is most similar to those of Lyme Regis and also the Outer Banks of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina (the nearest neighbour 600 miles to the West), as well as having some similarities to Eastern Canada especially Newfoundland. Historically, after the rebellion of the American continental colonies that became the USA, Bermuda was administered as part of British North America (along with Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and PEI) and had close economic and trading connections. When I was in university most of our students were studying in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so there must also have been significant Canadianizing influences. Although the total landmass is only 22 square kilometres, there are a multitude of distinct accents spoken by locals (Bermudian, a mish-mash of Caribbean accents spoken in the North of Pembroke Parish and the West end, Portuguese influences accents and many individuals speaking with their own unique accents resulting from their own background.
Ah! Ran into a chap visiting from the Outer Banks while I was in Scotland! Fascinating conversation was had about this same topic. I wonder whether your accent sounds much like my old college friends from the Falkland Islands - another small community and colony formed originally from rural British expats. It is almost impossible to describe and yet I know exactly what you mean!
@@beccastell6439 Not mine, my accent is peculiar to myself and only one of my 5 brothers. I have lived in Bermuda, Canada, Korea, Spain, the USA and the British Isles, so I have my own way of speaking and my accents shifts unconsciously depending upon who I am talking to. I have had many people tell me I sound similar to someone from Birmingham or the West Country, but I have had Welsh, Scottish and Irish influences also. My family is like the United Nations; British, French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Austrians, Germans, Koreans, Russians, Canadians, Americans, etc. I even have an uncle in Vietnam. Most members of my family has lived in at least several countries, but not necessarily the same combination (which is why my brothers and I have different accents due to differences in age, schooling and the countries we have resided in).
Scots pronunciations are wildly varied. This is a good history and breakdown of the south eastern accents. In the south west you'll hear quite different pronunciations. 'Food', for example, is pronounced 'Fid', 'Put' as 'Pit'.
It might be worth considering that, because of the often strained relationship between England and Scotland, there might have been periods where there was conscious effort by speakers of Scots and Scottish English to avoid "sounding English". This might well have caused a move towards older or subjectively "more Scottish sounding" variants of sounds, and might explain some of the anomalies in relation to northern English dialects at those times.
I don't think this is the case at all. Scots had been evolving in a different direction to English for 500 years and more. It was its own thing with influence from Gaelic, Strathclyde Brittonic, Fleming and Norse. What happened from 1603 on was that the court moved south with James VI and sycophantic Edinburghers wanted to start sounding more English-like when they spoke English.
I suspect you're on to something when you say Hume's accent was a precursor to modern Geordie and Cumbrian. There have always been cross border links, but there was also quite a lot of migration from lowland Scotland to North East England in particular during the industrial revolution. Or perhaps they're all just relics of Northumbrian English - Northumbria having covered parts of lowland Scotland.
It's a heck of a lot like Georgie with a bit of Norse mixed in. So I understand all that's being said, it just sound a bit different on words like which.
In Scots as spoken in modern Caithness (where I'm from) the vowel in "ta" is the same as in "cat" still; although it is often lengthened; and corresponds exactly with the "hot" like vowel used in these words further south.
Simon have you seen the story of english episode called the guid scots tongue? It's on youtube. It features some old Ulster Scots speakers from antrim who sound very, very Scottish. It's interesting because their accent isnt the same as a modern scottish accent from Scotland. Anyone who knew would place it in Northern Ireland although they might describe it as 'Northern Irish which sounds weirdly Scottish". Alot of their Scottish sound relates to idiom and especially meter which is distinctly lowland Scottish.
Another typically fascinating, erudite, and humble exploration of a cranny of the English language. Thanks, Simon, from a son of William Wallace, grandson of Athol Wallace, who's never been to Scotland, much to my chagrin. Lunch is on me if you're ever in town. Cheers from rainy Vienna, Scott
In Elizabeth I's time, sometimes there was English satire of the Scottish accent. In Shakespeare's Henry V, Captain Jamy, a Scottish soldier, is given a distinct accent, although the Irish accent of MacMorris and the Welsh of Fluellen are more prominent. There was for a time a vogue for depicting Catholic priests as having Scots accents, perhaps because the Reformation came to Scotland slightly later than in England.
In Dutch and Scots you get words spelled with "ui". It can be misleading. Scots words can mean the same but sound differently. Huis = Hoo-is, Schuil = Sk'il, Guid = G'idde, Muis = Moo=is. In some Scots dialects they say the sound as w-i. Gweed and Skweel to my hearing.
I love your videos. I'm from Aberdeen and believe it or not, the accent changes through one small forest: City accent in garthdee and country accent on the other side in Banchory devenick. Most fascinating. Also, younger Scots especially in the north we use more of a uvular r and the older Scots will use a more rolled rhotic r
This is probably a bit cheeky, but would you ever do a video on some East Midlands dialects and their history, I’ve always wondered about my local accents history, but I can’t find much detail on it or specific words. Most people just link to Birmingham or Yorkshire. Hopefully I’m not being bad in asking
I read the book Trainspotting a long time ago. I had seen the movie so I had an idea on what was supposed to be happening compared to what i was reading . what i was reading was at first gibberish to me. and i don't mean like it was a difficult read or it was not English. at the start I was hoping it stops the indecipherable scottish dialogue after the intro. by the time It made perfect sense to me the book was over. thanks for the channel.
We often forget that the Scottish nation has essentially Anglo-Saxon origins and not Celtic as often thought -by "Scotland" I mean the area that has Edinburgh as its capital.
Sounds more Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon? As born and bred Edinburgh in the 50’s when having a Scots accent was discouraged and now having lived half my life in England, this is very refreshing. Thank you for this video.
My Dad traded a book for a stamp he had of some value. The Book was printed in 1750 with etched illustrations of animals Drawings from Africa I remember. Rhynoserous blinded by imagination through description it offered an impression. The book was The Gentleman's journalism in Londonderry
This is interesting as a Dundonian because while most of us pronounce assume as “assyoom”, there are some who pronounce it “assoom”. Peprhaps there was more than one Scottish pronunciation of “muse”? There are certainly enough different Scottish accents.
In most areas of Scotland, within the more likely ‘oary’ (common) communities, the ‘a’ vowel has not been raised most notably in the words ‘make’ and ‘take’, ‘mak’ and ‘tak’ respectively.
Fascinating. One thing that is seldom mentioned is the tendency for Scots speakers to use different sounds for the same word. I'm not an English scholar so I'll describe it as best I can. One example I can think of is the word "lot". A Glaswegian will either pronounce that word as "loat", or if he/she is trying to sound more "correct" it will come out as "law-it". Both "t"s will feature the glottal stop, but the dialect from the most densely populated part of Scotland will tie two vowel sounds together. However if we take the word "not" that same speaker will treat it as "no" (not "noat"), but once again we'll hear "naw-it". The change from one vowel to the other is very rapid, but it's there just the same. If you go 10 miles east of Glasgow to Coatbridge, "not" becomes "nut" and "naw-it", with the Irish influence apparently being the cause. Another common Scottish trait throughout Scotland in most dialects is to pronounce words like "pay", "way", and even "hay" as (approximately) "pigh", "wigh", and "high", and that pronunciation is usually written as "pey" "wey", and "hey" in older text. In all the articles I've read on the Scots variants of English I have never come across the two anomalies that I have mentioned. I lived in Scotland for 60 years and still have a recognisable Glasgow type accent. However I know live in the West Midlands and most people think I'm from Northern Ireland!
I heard Scots speaker seem to pronounce double vowel sounds. When they say Ten it sounds like Te-in, Well sounds like We-il, Milk = Mu-ilk. In the case of Ten I thought it might be something older. The PIE word being something like dekem - then teken then tegin then teghin finally teyen. Then you get something like Dutch Tien. In German Zeyn. The central consonant disappearing over time but keeping the T and final N/M with the middle lost consonant causing a separation into two vowels instead of one.
Two examples of the Scots gentry attitude to the Scots and English languages: 'In a letter from John Hareson to Mr Patrick Craw of Heughead, Berwickshire, in 1698: “I speak all english having been at newcastle this week.” The desire of some Scots to be more palatable to English tastes appears in Lord Kilkerran’s plan in 1743 for his son, John, to be educated in England and to ask his teacher to find a local servant for the boy: I hope for a great improvement in his language, which in this country is wretchedly bad, I am affraid [sic] a Scotch servant might do him harm that way.'' From 'Galloway: the Lost Province of Gaelic Scotland' (2022)
It's interesting that he highlighted the difference after having been in Newcastle. Given the geographic proximity of Newcastle to Scotland, and the many similarities with accent and dialect between Geordie and some parts of Scotland you'd imagine they'd be relatively similar. It'd be interesting to hear what a Geordie accent was like in those days.
You refer to “modern Scots”… but I wonder where Doric fits into this? Doric Scots was my first language, growing up in Aberdeenshire in the early seventies, but what I hear as Scots in this video doesn’t really seem quite congruent with that. What a complex subject! Thanks for offering this video - it is so interesting. Language is so plastic.
There are definitely dialects that in addition to splitting cut from bull and put, split bull and put: such as mine, of General American. It may well be because of the L, the vowel backs and raises, and rounds slightly, and the tongue curls a bit in preparation for the dark L.
You should listen to the North east England dialects, the similarities are uncanny. The pronunciation of half a dozen words in every sentence you uttered were so familiar.
The phenomenon of similarity between Lothians East Borders and NorthEast England may well be influenced by much further back when the Northumbrians came and went from St Cuthbert's time. I used to go racing at Kelso and would be struck by the overall similarities in facial, physical, linguistic , cultural likenesses - most of the punters were from around Edinburgh to around Morpeth.
Simon, I am writing a book of historical fiction set 12000 years ago as Natufian hunter-gatherers left the "camping" life for permanent structures. I'd would love to bounce ideas off of you.
Trying to put these sounds to my own dialect as in NZ we do have some older English sounds and of course the further South you travel the Scottish inhabited the Otago/Southland area and their English is more varied again. We tend to be very lazy in pronunciation and I have had so many people question my vowel sounds abroad.
i wonder if there were any Scots influences on Southern dialects because of infusion of Scots into the English Court with James becoming king of England as well as Scotland
I noted with interest that the Scot pronunciation of the English word, “name” was “nama”, which is identical to the corresponding Sanskrit word and pronunciation, as it is in many Sanskrit derived Indian languages.
I'm given to understand that a Highlander would have sounded markedly different - is there any chance that you'll explore the key differences in the accents...?
Amazing how similar it is to contemporary Scottish accent. Compared to the changes in pronunciation of for example London English
What boggles my mind is that, eyes closed, I largely understood what he was saying. Wasn't till he got to the word "key" that I was confused.
There are many different Scottish accents. Simon's attempt didn't sound anything like any Scottish accent I've ever heard.
Immigration changed the London accent, and still does to this day.
Same with Irish accents to my understanding. South East English is the most evolving dialect and the peripheries of the Empire evolved slower
@@tpower1912 I think that is generally the case for languages, for instance Indo European diverged more at the center, but it also depends highly on the speed of the expanse and social contacts along the way
As an Edinburgher this feels like finding the Lost Ark.
The tower of Babbel 😅
Here, he's no fae Yoker!
I'm curious as to how familar it sounds to your ears? :)
@@necroseus It's sound nothing like what I hear in Edinburgh. Miss Jean Brodie, although a caricature, is similar to how people in Edinburgh speak who think of themselves as better educated. I do hear "hoose" and "Mair" as in more money.
@@nigelsouthworth5577 Thank you for the reply! I figured it didn't sound quite the same, but because I'm not from the isles I wasn't able to gauge the intensity of the difference
It's very pleasing to hear "key" pronounced with a diphthong. Feels right.
most dialects of english still pronounce it as a diphthong?; [kʰij] (not in scotland though :(, so I get your point)
Not the diphthong I expected, though. I had assumed it would rhyme with "pay", not "pie".
kay
Key sounds better when pronounced k + long i sound as it normally is - but I almost never hear anyone pronouncing words like food and good with a normal u sound (fud / gud) and instead everyone tends to pronounce them with a schwa sound nowadays, like fuhd / guhd, where uh represents the schwa sound, which is the first vowel sound in words like alone and again, so I use this pronunciation with the schwa sound as well!
Also, the word put, they all say that the u is pronounced as a normal u sound like the oo in Moon, but it is actually pronounced with a schwa sound, which I can clearly hear when most speakers say it nowadays, yet on the Net they say it is an u sound, which is totally not, so I don’t think everyone can tell the difference between some of the vowel sounds sometimes, and I noticed it’s like that in Icelandic as well, so natives aren’t always aware of the sounds they really pronounce in certain words, and tend to think that they are saying another sound!
This is also true for words like roses and bird etc, most say it is pronounced with that vowel used in Norse between the last two consonants that isn’t used in spelling and that is only used in pronunciation in words like vindr and garðr etc which was replaced by u (yu sound aka ü like in English and French and German) in Icelandic, for example, vindur and garður etc, but, I almost never hear anyone pronouncing roses and bird with that vowel (maybe some may be pronouncing it that way in certain regions and possibly in Canada too, I don’t know) and I usually hear roses pronounced with an i sound (rouzis) and bird pronounced with a schwa sound (buhrd) which are also the pronunciations that I use!
By the way, does anyone know how the LL sound in Welsh really is made? Because to me it sounds like it is an H sound with a strong S sound to it and sometimes with a soft L ending when at the end of the word, but no one teaching Welsh seems to be able to explain this sound properly and clearly, and all say that it is made by blowing air while trying to say an L, but when I try it that way, it doesn’t work and it’s extremely complicated and tiring, but when I try to do the H sound with a hissing sound, it comes way closer to how it sounds when they say it, and it feels like it’s a stronger version of the HL in Icelandic, and it also feels like it’s related to the SKJ sound used in the standard Swedish accent which is also an H sound basically with some type of SH sound to it, so it’s like an even stronger version of the Welsh LL!
I've met farmers from Northumberland who'd be well past their 90s now who sounded quite a lot like this.
Well past their NINETIES?!!
@@thomashernandez8700 most likely deceased by now. About 20 years since I used to speak to them and they were old then!
10 years ago in rural Northumberland a bloke on a quad bike stopped and chatted away. I'm a northerner and I didn't understand a single word. It was fascinating. Fortunately our neighbours were easier to understand.
i was thinking that, it struck me how similar this is to some northern english accents, which of course share a common origin with scots if you go back far enough!
@@barnsleyman32it makes sense given the tribe and trade around the road network left by the Romans. But I believe the word Scottish/Scots comes from a word to describe a tribe who relocated from Ulster in the 5th century
Fascinating! I'm no linguist but Scots is my 'mither tung' and after an almost lifetime of speaking 'proper English' I'm reverting to how I spoke 70 years ago and enjoying every minute. I'm involved with a small group researching the place-names of Carrick (southern part of Ayrshire) which has a real mixter-maxter of Gaelic, Scots, Northumbrian, Brittonic and even hints of Norse influence. I wonder if your Hume was an ancestor of David Hume, the Enlightenment figure , who was 'embarrassed' by his Scots speech and even listed many words as 'Scotticisms' and not 'proper English'! A true giant of the Scottish cringe.
Lol man this is narcissistic as shit
I wonder how Robert Burns felt about David Hume.
this is the most narcissistic thing ever lol
I've from upper clydesdale and have Lallans as my mother tong. I had to literally learn how to speak english when I went to uni because non-scots couldn't understand me. I've been living in western Norway for 6 years now and the similarities in both the spoken language and some place names in clydesdale/tweedsdale is fascinating. I'd say about 20% of the words I use on a daily basis are the same as they are in Scots so it ony took me a few months to be fluent in Norwegian. I think the placename similarities come from both old scots and the danish influence from northern english. It's fascinating how much people appreiciate dialects here in Norway, although they have two written langauges and the one that is 98% similar to danish is by far and away the most popular while Nynorsk (based on the norwegian dialects) receives a lot of hate and bigotry.
@@JustDinosaurBones???
Edinburgh born Borderer here. Faaaaaascinating! One of my favourite channels.
Isn't Hume a Border name? Could Alexander Hume have retained his parents' speech a bit? I was born and raised in a town with a very distinctive dialect, but as neither of my parents was from there, my own speech is a bit of a blend.
@@dorteweber3682Yeah Hume is a Border name. The village of Hume (with Hume Castle) is about 15 miles from me.
@@MarkSiosalEdinburgh born Borderer here too. Living in Hawick. 🏴
@@TheBorderRyker Jethart bud. God's toon.😁 You Teris are a'right I guess.😉😄
@@MarkSiosal Aye. We’re no bad. 😂
This is why I love UA-cam! How did it know I would be utterly fascinated by this subject. Thank you, Simon!
As a Norwegian speaker, I really liked this pronunciation of English. It feels more right 😊
It's not Scots, though. He gets a lot wrong.
No discussion of Gaelic. @@alicemilne1444
@@alicemilne1444 He's talking about a Philosopher's view of 18th century Scotland. Doubt if old Hume could speak like a Scot of his time.
@@MrResearcher122 Wrong. He's not talking about David Hume, the 18th century philosopher, but about another Hume who was writing in the early 1600s and was not from Edinburgh, but from Dunbar.
Honestly I think you’d like the Doric dialect. Has a mix of old Norse and old Scots
It is always fascinating to hear and consider the various dialects of north Britain, and try to pick out the bits that we still have in American upland Southern, which is sort of a hodge-podge of those accents in origin.
Striking how familiar the opening speech sounds to my ears. Parts of it sound like an elderly speaker, parts of it sound like my own speech. I'm East Lothian, but bordering Edinburgh.
23:28, The first and third 'good' are commonly heard around Edinburgh, and I personally use both of them, though the third is more common
I’ve been watching your videos for a while and I’m absolutely amazed at how you break apart language and its sonic structure into component parts that are historically traceable. Thank you!
It’s lots of fun when words are pronounced like how I would, myself being from Northern Ireland. Especially some words are pronounced how my grandparents would have
This is a beautiful accent! Just a pleasure to listen to!
I recognise that Limmy's Show bit!
I wonder if you caught my analysis of the linguistics of Limmy's Show from a couple of years back? That same sketch features in it.
that's such a good video i have rewatched many times, awesome to see you in these comments. as a fellow italian learner great job on the sopranos video.
That sounds rather interesting.
Sounds interesting- I’ve added to my playlist to watch after work!
Gaun yersel, Simon!
As someone from Dundee (a little further up the East Coast of Scotland) that 'eh' sound heard at: 5:58 is very familiar to our local dialect, I swear that some round these parts can complete an entire line of dialogue on that one sound alone! 🙂My own way of pronouncing goose is like the stereotypical Scots 'Hoose', whereas good is more like 'Ged or Geud'.
I love your European goldfinches! Mine haven't come back yet. Thanks!
Extraordinary! Amazing work
Haven’t checked into your channel for a while but great to see you still going strong! Going to be catching up on all the videos now
Many of those words sound so much more like Swedish when pronounced the old way! Damn, English used to be beautiful :')
To my ears the English accent changed more than the Scottish, but that might just be because I'm English. It's fascinating how language changes over time, across the generations. Of course it's always fun to try to compare the relationships between generations - my grandparents are to me what people born in the 1860s were to them. Growing up, they would have been able to converse fairly naturally with those people, and now they're able to converse with me, also naturally. But if I met somebody born in the mid-19th-century, while we might be able to understand each other, I think we'd each find the way the other spoke rather strange and just a little bit alien. Meeting somebody from another two generations back, born in, say, the late 18th century, would be just completely weird. I'm excited to be so young at this point in time because I'll hopefully be able to see what life and language is like in the 2070s, 80s, 90s, I even have a 33% chance of making it into the 22nd century according to one study. And I'll be able to speak and interact with these people - who'll be to Jane Austen what SHE was to Geoffery Chaucer...
Oh my goodness! This is exactly a video of the type I was going to ask for once you felt ready enough to come back!
A love the scots leid, an A'm noo verra happy tae see ye daein a video oan it!
This may be a bit of an ask, but I would love to see a video on the history of scots and english dialect orthography, and how they have changed and evolved with the dialects and language themselves!
It would be a blissful thing to suddenly have your linguistic capacities for a week. I'd talk and talk and talk all day long. Some of the middle English or early modern accents of the British Isles really have this powerful emotional resonance that feels distantly familiar, and there's a weird sense of longing when I hear it. It reminds me of fishermen, old women with white flannels or whatever they are called on their head and those dresses with petticoats, wisdom of elders, homeliness, family or ancestry, and roaring fires, and night time. The only comparable experience I've had is when I've been on my own in the country side somewhere historic, like Arundel or Steyning, and suddenly get the sensation that there is no time and I feel like can almost remember how it felt to be alive in medieval times, with this vast quietness and space compared to our fussy, busy existences eviscerated by time and thought. I feel like I could almost remember taking journeys from one place to another, being easily startled by noises or seeing movement far off, a real sense that the unknown was around. I'm going into it now remembering it! There is a different sense of space, of geography - not the geographical spread of the Earth, not the feeling that we are on the Earth, bur rather always in the centre of a circle of land surrounded by the grey fog of the unknown, do you now what I mean? A sense of boundaries imposed by the unknown, so no sense of being on a vast Earth or land like we have. We can imagine the English channel and France etc. That was absent.
And the sensitivity to every sound and shade and colour was beyond comparison to our sense of half reality and relative half blindness. Breathing felt nourishing in a way I've not experienced; it nourished the heart with each breath, and this is something I'm 'remembering' or 'imagining' for the first time - feeling, sensing. I can actually remember the sensation. There was the habit of falling silent rather then into thought. Always there was listening, listening. Listening was constant and uninterrupted like an involuntary hum, a bit like the nervous animal surveying for danger. We hadn't not yet lost the listening. But one of the most striking thing is a sense of vast space and silence, even though it trails off into the unknown. I mean that there is a silence with the trees and in the seeing, over the land, everywhere, and the gentle noise is part of that silence. This may only be imagination but it is a weird feeling like I can imagine everything about the sense of reality of the period when there's a certain trigger or stimuli. I don't believe in reincarnation but I do believe that awareness is only one. If you examine awareness itself and see what it is, if you examine your awareness - not what you are aware of but awareness itself - it has no qualities at all, but simply 'illuminates' sound, colour, smell etc. Can your awareness be any different in character to another persons awareness? Obviously not, if you meditate on your awareness and see what it is, because it has no qualities at all. If you try and pin it down, isolate it, it is nowhere to be found. But in every perception there is irrevocable intrinsic proof that awareness IS. So it is nowhere to be found but everywhere to be seen. It has no qualities and in that sense is absolutely nothing at all. Yet it contains all things. Now when you start noticing all this about awareness, you see that the description of awareness is hauntingly similar to the Eastern notions nirvana, God, the divine and so forth - a nothingness that contains all things etc. I'd encourage you one day to attempt to write down a verbal description of awareness, what it is, as if you were trying to explain what it is to someone who has not encountered it. You will find it is one of the most perplexing intellectual tasks there is, and if you manage to describe awareness, your description will sound paradoxical and perplexing, just like the words of the Eastern mystics. If awareness really is the same featureless thing in all of us, then it is far more reasonable to say awareness is one, and we are all that one, just as they do in the East. And if you take magic mushrooms as well, you can confirm that really the mysteries of consciousness are bottomless. That's a long way of saying perhaps one can tap into ancestral streams within ones own consciousness.
Limmy mentioned ⚠️🚨
the bipolar manchild alarm
As always, this is far more fascinating than I ever would have imagined. You have the ability to take something very academic and make it accessible to those of us with very little education in linguistics.
It’s also so very nice that there are people like you on video platforms who are making the world more educated…as opposed to the 99.999% of content creators who seem to have the ability to only make the world a less-intelligent place…
Your content is awesome. Thank you!
Edinburgh. Our posh people have always sounded more English so as a highly educated man in the 16th/17th centuries, I wouldn't be surprised if Hume's accent did lean more Cumbrian.
Yes but they would’ve been influenced by the prestige English dialect not neighbouring English dialects
I love these videos, I can't explain why.
You do such great and interesting work here. Always fascinating.
I notice that every time I finish one of Simon’s videos, I find myself exclaiming, “He’s so awesome.” It’s even more impressive when we see how humble he remains.
Yes, I get super enthusiastic...makes my day!
I think he does well to remain humble. He doesn't know enough about how accents in Scotland developed. There was a massive influx of Flemish traders in the 11th and 12th centuries who influence the northern type of English spoken in Scotland at that time. Gaelic also played a huge role in shaping the pronunciation.
It is on record that in 1560 an English herald sent to parley with Marie de Guise the then Regent of Scotland, during the seige of Leith (the port of Edinburgh) found he could not understand her and her courtiers who were speaking Scots and they could not understand him, so they had to switch to French.
@@alicemilne1444Like TV....there's an 'off' switch.....Some of US enjoying this....
@@michaelfoy Nothing to prevent you learning a little more, is there?
Amazing video I'd love it if you could do a Welsh one from the 1500s or 1600s
Very nice presentation. It triggers my memory of the sounds of words spoken by my Great Grandfather who was from the Borders.
“Being. ‘Oot and aboot’ for the afternoon”❣️
Lynn in Naples FL
Great video, as usual very engaging and informative whilst delivered informally. As an Edinburgh person (not sure of the correct denonym!) my recollection of the English spoken up the south east coast of Scotland up to Edinburgh is more historically tied with old English (Anglo Saxon). Over on the west of Scotland, there are stonger celtic ties, Gaelic. Perhaps Hume being from Edinburgh predisposes hime to sounding more English (what would become Geordie) due to early Scottish English originating from Northumbria and migrating north. If Hume originally came from Glasgow, I wonder how this video would have sounded. Just a thought! 🤔
Well, that's the last place I expected Limmy to show up.
Fascinating, great examples. Excellent system of communication. And it just occurred to me how well suited longer you tube videos are for communicating this material.
Had a graduate historical linguistics course only 55 years ago. Even now I cry out for IPA transcription (standardized phonetic “alphabet” transcription system) tho I can no longer read/listen to it intuitively.
Native parental “tongue” was a western (Kansas) version of Western Reserve English (northeastern Ohio settled predominantly by persons from Connecticut around 1800. A generation or more ago this was considered radio announcer (US) English and was the speech form sensed as most “neutral” but the most US residents. This sense may be fading.
But I learned to speak in the Arkansas Ozarks (a mountain sort of Appalachian dialect, somewhat isolated, perhaps influenced by west country immigrants 18 century?) and perhaps poorer Scots/Irish (some clearances?). Moved around a lot asa kid and have lived my whole adult life in the linguistic melange of New York City.
What sounds most “natural” is probably Western Reserve, but I’ve noticed that old school sort of modernized Brooklyn, Eastern Long Island (think Bernie Sanders) sounds very familiar and comfortable if not exactly me. I’ve noticed my unconscious speech patterns have switched around over the years, first adapted to certain upper middle class New York mannerisms (New “Yowk” for about 20 years, and when that pattern decayed socially I sometime unconsciously reverted to regular New York.
Minor example. Just shows how linguistically plastic we can be while retaining old forms.
Thank you again.
Oh yes! I haven't even watched it and I can't wait. Was wondering this just the other day. What did Scots sound like 400 years ago? In Antrim you can hear a dialect heavily influenced by 17th-18th century Scots and it can sound very Scottish, but it's not Scottish. If that makes sense.
Right, gonna make a cuppa and watch.....
The same thing happens across the water in the west of Galloway. Not so common nowadays but 50 + years ago we (I’m from Ayrshire, just north) called it “Galloway Irish”. So you have a Scottish accent that sounds “Irishy” to Scottish people and an NI accent that sounds “Scottishy” to Irish people. That they are barely 20 miles apart across the water from one another is probably not a coincidence!
Yes I know what you mean. The County Antrim accent is reminiscent of older generation Scots from West Central Scotland. It sometimes sounds to my ears that Ulster-Scots speakers, when given the opportunity to let us know how it sounds "on air", are prone to exaggerate the Scottish pronunciation, but I may be wrong of course. The big County Antrim identifier to we Scots is when they say "beg" for "bag". Modern Scots with more refined accents tend to do the same, whilst in many parts of Scotland the humble "bag", becomes a "bog" to local speakers. My wife is from the Borders, and when she still smoked I used to tease her by asking her if she had remembered to put her "fogs in her handbog". Nearly all of my ancestors were from Ulster, and there is no doubt that Scots settlers there had a strong influence on the speech in the province. My mother's family were Irish from west County Tyrone and east Donegal, and my father's family were Ulster-Scots from the Ballymena area of County Antrim, but had returned to Scotland about 1850. One or two of my mother's older relatives had Tyrone and Donegal accents. They spoke about "weans", used "wan" for one, and "pit" coal on the fire, the same as we west coast Scots did, but they were late arrivals to Scotland (1900-1920). My father's lot had been in Scotland for too long and the County Antrim accents had well and truly gone. Shame the author doesn't reply to comments, but I suppose it could turn into a full time job if he did.
@@johnwalker3252 Your account of intertwined Scottish and Irish ancestry is an interesting example of just how close the two are. My mother’s maiden name was quite common in NI but 50 years ago everyone in the old Glasgow and West of Scotland phone books of that name was a relative - the belief was that they had been “plantation” Scots who had spelled the name differently (there are a number of variations) some of whom had returned a century later with their unusual, Irish, spelling. On the same subject, there was an Oxford university study into the genetic origins of the British population which concluded (as a footnote) that it wasn’t possible to distinguish “meaningfully” between the populations of NI and the West of Scotland - two way migration over 2,000 years is the likely cause.
It's difficult to know precisely how or when my Walker family moved to Ireland, or from where. We are related to a family named Richmond, and their take on it is that they probably fled to Ireland from Ayrshire during the Killing Time round about 1685. I was in touch with a Paul Richmond in Ballymena and he was able to tell me that by the mid 19th century both the Walkers and Richmonds were weavers and itinerant labourers who drifted around Ulster taking whatever work they could find. I wouldn't totally discount the fact that they may have gone there just before the official Plantation, as County Antrim wasn't involved in that, but the fact they were more or less destitute by the first half of the 19th century may tend to suggest they were later arrivals than the original settlers. The biggest complication was that when the Walkers came "back" to Scotland they married into native Irish families in Scotland, except for a single generation, and my mother is Irish. The Richmonds appear to have upheld strict Presbyterian ethics and began to marry into Scottish families after they returned. I therefore have considerable native Irish ancestry on both sides of my family, and you are right about distinguishing between the Irish and west of Scotland populations. My first DNA test was 84% Ireland and Scotland, 16% England and North West Europe, but Ancestry DNA has consistently watered down my Irish ethnicity prediction to 38% compared to the 58% Scotland I now have. No other DNA company has followed their example and all of the others immediately show me as being of predominantly Irish origin. To further complicate matters a branch of my Walker family in Antrim married into a family named Esler, who were originally from Germany. They rented property and grazing land along the drove roads between Islandmagee and Portglenone, and on some of their death certificates their father's occupation is given as "cow dealer". They would have habitually crossed back and forth from Ulster to Scotland for many years. It looks as though some of that branch of the family remained in Ireland and there is no paper trail to them. The ones connected to the cattle dealers that came to Scotland became coal miners in Lanarkshire alongside my own family, and were from County Derry/Londonderry. Unfortunately lack of Irish records prevented much research. @@davidpaterson2309
Fascinating to hear this. I'm currently doing a course on English phonology so this is really interesting.
Back in the mid-70`s when Dylan`s epic film came out " Rolling Thunder Review " there was a scene at a picnic area where two members of the public were interviewed and they had accents that sounded like a Scottish tongue from the time of Robert Louis Stevenson , this mind you was in Canada might even have been on an Indian reservation . In many ways it summed up the weird and wonderful experience , we came to the conclusion it was a remote Scottish community from the clearances , and kept their auld native accent Sad to see Bob`s put his little But n Ben up for sale
It’s great how much closer to the spelling the pronunciation is
Another fascinating video. Thank you Simon. It would be interesting to hear your analysis of some of the accents of Britain’s Overseas Territories and Crown Dependencies. I was raised in Bermuda in the North Atlantic Ocean, the oldest English surviving colony that was settled starting in 1609, initially by colonists from Lyme Regis in Dorset. Bermuda is isolated, with the closest neighbour being the USA (North Carolina) 600 miles to the East. The next nearest is Canada (Nova Scotia) 720 miles to the North. The nearest point in the Caribbean is over 1000 miles to the South.
The Bermuda accent is mostly used by older islanders and is rapidly dying out as a result of Americanizing linguistic influences (tourism, mass media (television, film and music and the US military presence from 1940 to 1945), immigration (especially Caribbean immigrants from the late 19th Century throughout the 20th Century, as well as Portuguese immigrants and expatriate workers in the financial services and tourism industries). There has been continuous immigration from Britain through out Bermuda’s history and many islanders have at least on parent or grandparent born in England, Scotland or Wales. I am in my fifties but when I was a student there were only three or four local teachers in my primary and high schools, with the rest all being expats from Britain or Ireland. The same was true of our police force, and there were large British Army detachments until the 1950s to defend the Royal Naval dockyards and RAF base. The Royal Navy closed their last base HMS Malabar in 1995. In my youth, locals were vastly outnumbered every year my tourists, American and Canadian military personnel and tourists.
I have read that the Bermuda accent is most similar to those of Lyme Regis and also the Outer Banks of Cape Hatteras in North Carolina (the nearest neighbour 600 miles to the West), as well as having some similarities to Eastern Canada especially Newfoundland. Historically, after the rebellion of the American continental colonies that became the USA, Bermuda was administered as part of British North America (along with Nova Scotia, Newfoundland and Labrador, New Brunswick and PEI) and had close economic and trading connections. When I was in university most of our students were studying in Halifax, Nova Scotia, so there must also have been significant Canadianizing influences. Although the total landmass is only 22 square kilometres, there are a multitude of distinct accents spoken by locals (Bermudian, a mish-mash of Caribbean accents spoken in the North of Pembroke Parish and the West end, Portuguese influences accents and many individuals speaking with their own unique accents resulting from their own background.
Ah! Ran into a chap visiting from the Outer Banks while I was in Scotland! Fascinating conversation was had about this same topic. I wonder whether your accent sounds much like my old college friends from the Falkland Islands - another small community and colony formed originally from rural British expats. It is almost impossible to describe and yet I know exactly what you mean!
@@beccastell6439 Not mine, my accent is peculiar to myself and only one of my 5 brothers. I have lived in Bermuda, Canada, Korea, Spain, the USA and the British Isles, so I have my own way of speaking and my accents shifts unconsciously depending upon who I am talking to. I have had many people tell me I sound similar to someone from Birmingham or the West Country, but I have had Welsh, Scottish and Irish influences also. My family is like the United Nations; British, French, Italians, Spanish, Portuguese, Austrians, Germans, Koreans, Russians, Canadians, Americans, etc. I even have an uncle in Vietnam. Most members of my family has lived in at least several countries, but not necessarily the same combination (which is why my brothers and I have different accents due to differences in age, schooling and the countries we have resided in).
Scots pronunciations are wildly varied. This is a good history and breakdown of the south eastern accents.
In the south west you'll hear quite different pronunciations. 'Food', for example, is pronounced 'Fid', 'Put' as 'Pit'.
"Ah've pit yer fid in the uhven fur ye."
@@Mincher Mi fether and mee maw said she's nice wee wain tai...pit dat pot dun Yer wee Bampot...
Pit for put and fid for food were common pronunciations in Edinburgh when. I grew up in the 60’s and 70”s
It might be worth considering that, because of the often strained relationship between England and Scotland, there might have been periods where there was conscious effort by speakers of Scots and Scottish English to avoid "sounding English". This might well have caused a move towards older or subjectively "more Scottish sounding" variants of sounds, and might explain some of the anomalies in relation to northern English dialects at those times.
I don't think this is the case at all. Scots had been evolving in a different direction to English for 500 years and more. It was its own thing with influence from Gaelic, Strathclyde Brittonic, Fleming and Norse. What happened from 1603 on was that the court moved south with James VI and sycophantic Edinburghers wanted to start sounding more English-like when they spoke English.
Do you mean that Scots were consciously trying to create a linguistic distinction between Scotland and England?
I suspect you're on to something when you say Hume's accent was a precursor to modern Geordie and Cumbrian. There have always been cross border links, but there was also quite a lot of migration from lowland Scotland to North East England in particular during the industrial revolution. Or perhaps they're all just relics of Northumbrian English - Northumbria having covered parts of lowland Scotland.
It's a heck of a lot like Georgie with a bit of Norse mixed in. So I understand all that's being said, it just sound a bit different on words like which.
In Scots as spoken in modern Caithness (where I'm from) the vowel in "ta" is the same as in "cat" still; although it is often lengthened; and corresponds exactly with the "hot" like vowel used in these words further south.
Simon have you seen the story of english episode called the guid scots tongue? It's on youtube.
It features some old Ulster Scots speakers from antrim who sound very, very Scottish. It's interesting because their accent isnt the same as a modern scottish accent from Scotland. Anyone who knew would place it in Northern Ireland although they might describe it as 'Northern Irish which sounds weirdly Scottish". Alot of their Scottish sound relates to idiom and especially meter which is distinctly lowland Scottish.
As a fifer this sound like the predecessor of my own dialect
Another typically fascinating, erudite, and humble exploration of a cranny of the English language. Thanks, Simon, from a son of William Wallace, grandson of Athol Wallace, who's never been to Scotland, much to my chagrin.
Lunch is on me if you're ever in town. Cheers from rainy Vienna, Scott
Great to see a Limmy appearance!
In Elizabeth I's time, sometimes there was English satire of the Scottish accent. In Shakespeare's Henry V, Captain Jamy, a Scottish soldier, is given a distinct accent, although the Irish accent of MacMorris and the Welsh of Fluellen are more prominent. There was for a time a vogue for depicting Catholic priests as having Scots accents, perhaps because the Reformation came to Scotland slightly later than in England.
It would be great if you could do a video covering the Geordie accent ?
i knew id see limmy in here somewhere
In Dutch and Scots you get words spelled with "ui". It can be misleading. Scots words can mean the same but sound differently. Huis = Hoo-is, Schuil = Sk'il, Guid = G'idde, Muis = Moo=is. In some Scots dialects they say the sound as w-i. Gweed and Skweel to my hearing.
I love your videos. I'm from Aberdeen and believe it or not, the accent changes through one small forest: City accent in garthdee and country accent on the other side in Banchory devenick. Most fascinating. Also, younger Scots especially in the north we use more of a uvular r and the older Scots will use a more rolled rhotic r
Interesting that the Swede Brilioth did a significant study of Cumbrian!
THank you.
Sounds more similar to a modern geordie or northumbria accent than modern Edinburgh
Imagine if we still spoke like this, then the world genuinely wouldn’t understand us instead of just pretending not to!
Marvellous 👏👏
In English presentations of Scots in the 17th century, the equivalent of "good" was often spelled "guid".
Instant like. Edinburgher here love this
I say #Edinbronian.
This is probably a bit cheeky, but would you ever do a video on some East Midlands dialects and their history, I’ve always wondered about my local accents history, but I can’t find much detail on it or specific words. Most people just link to Birmingham or Yorkshire. Hopefully I’m not being bad in asking
I have in BA in Speech Communications; rusty due to time but this is excellent!!
I read the book Trainspotting a long time ago. I had seen the movie so I had an idea on what was supposed to be happening compared to what i was reading . what i was reading was at first gibberish to me. and i don't mean like it was a difficult read or it was not English. at the start I was hoping it stops the indecipherable scottish dialogue after the intro. by the time It made perfect sense to me the book was over. thanks for the channel.
I see you're rocking the Chigurh. Very respectful.
That's pretty cool. Thank you.
We often forget that the Scottish nation has essentially Anglo-Saxon origins and not Celtic as often thought -by "Scotland" I mean the area that has Edinburgh as its capital.
this is the coolest!!
Sounds more Scandinavian or Anglo-Saxon? As born and bred Edinburgh in the 50’s when having a Scots accent was discouraged and now having lived half my life in England, this is very refreshing. Thank you for this video.
I want to give you an extra like for the Limmy clip 😉
This guy is brilliant. He should be given a TV series contract.
My Dad traded a book for a stamp he had of some value.
The Book was printed in 1750 with etched illustrations of animals
Drawings from Africa I remember.
Rhynoserous blinded by imagination through description it offered an impression.
The book was The Gentleman's journalism in Londonderry
As an American, it sounds about like we think Scottish sounds today. Lol. Purple Burglar Alarm !
"Purple Burglar Alarm" is easy to say for anyone outside suburb Glasgow, just saying.
This is interesting as a Dundonian because while most of us pronounce assume as “assyoom”, there are some who pronounce it “assoom”. Peprhaps there was more than one Scottish pronunciation of “muse”? There are certainly enough different Scottish accents.
Boat coat roar boar are all the same for me - East Coast Scot
Have a strong Somerset accent myself, and that is oddly way easier to understand than modern Scots accents (for me anyway)
Was not expecting the limmy clip haha
Surprisingly, some of the sounds and pronunciation in that intro sounded like South African English to my ears...
In most areas of Scotland, within the more likely ‘oary’ (common) communities, the ‘a’ vowel has not been raised most notably in the words ‘make’ and ‘take’, ‘mak’ and ‘tak’ respectively.
Fascinating. One thing that is seldom mentioned is the tendency for Scots speakers to use different sounds for the same word. I'm not an English scholar so I'll describe it as best I can. One example I can think of is the word "lot". A Glaswegian will either pronounce that word as "loat", or if he/she is trying to sound more "correct" it will come out as "law-it". Both "t"s will feature the glottal stop, but the dialect from the most densely populated part of Scotland will tie two vowel sounds together. However if we take the word "not" that same speaker will treat it as "no" (not "noat"), but once again we'll hear "naw-it". The change from one vowel to the other is very rapid, but it's there just the same. If you go 10 miles east of Glasgow to Coatbridge, "not" becomes "nut" and "naw-it", with the Irish influence apparently being the cause. Another common Scottish trait throughout Scotland in most dialects is to pronounce words like "pay", "way", and even "hay" as (approximately) "pigh", "wigh", and "high", and that pronunciation is usually written as "pey" "wey", and "hey" in older text. In all the articles I've read on the Scots variants of English I have never come across the two anomalies that I have mentioned. I lived in Scotland for 60 years and still have a recognisable Glasgow type accent. However I know live in the West Midlands and most people think I'm from Northern Ireland!
I heard Scots speaker seem to pronounce double vowel sounds. When they say Ten it sounds like Te-in, Well sounds like We-il, Milk = Mu-ilk. In the case of Ten I thought it might be something older. The PIE word being something like dekem - then teken then tegin then teghin finally teyen. Then you get something like Dutch Tien. In German Zeyn. The central consonant disappearing over time but keeping the T and final N/M with the middle lost consonant causing a separation into two vowels instead of one.
Yay Welsh mentioned again. I'd love ew to do a video on the Welsh dialects.
It's curious that the word 'tale' in southern English today sounds like 'tile' (or even ty-oo with the 'l' and 'e' dropped altogether)
Two examples of the Scots gentry attitude to the Scots and English languages: 'In a letter from John Hareson to Mr Patrick Craw of Heughead, Berwickshire, in 1698: “I speak all english having been at newcastle this week.” The desire of some Scots to be more palatable to English tastes appears in Lord Kilkerran’s plan in 1743 for his son, John, to be educated in England and to ask his teacher to find a local servant for the boy:
I hope for a great improvement in his language, which in this country is wretchedly bad, I am affraid [sic] a Scotch servant might do him harm that way.''
From 'Galloway: the Lost Province of Gaelic Scotland' (2022)
It's interesting that he highlighted the difference after having been in Newcastle. Given the geographic proximity of Newcastle to Scotland, and the many similarities with accent and dialect between Geordie and some parts of Scotland you'd imagine they'd be relatively similar. It'd be interesting to hear what a Geordie accent was like in those days.
So cool. I would fall asleep to this if it was slower.
You refer to “modern Scots”… but I wonder where Doric fits into this? Doric Scots was my first language, growing up in Aberdeenshire in the early seventies, but what I hear as Scots in this video doesn’t really seem quite congruent with that. What a complex subject! Thanks for offering this video - it is so interesting. Language is so plastic.
Fascinating...
There are definitely dialects that in addition to splitting cut from bull and put, split bull and put: such as mine, of General American.
It may well be because of the L, the vowel backs and raises, and rounds slightly, and the tongue curls a bit in preparation for the dark L.
Somehow reminds me of spoken Middle English.
You should listen to the North east England dialects, the similarities are uncanny. The pronunciation of half a dozen words in every sentence you uttered were so familiar.
The phenomenon of similarity between Lothians East Borders and NorthEast England may well be influenced by much further back when the Northumbrians came and went from St Cuthbert's time. I used to go racing at Kelso and would be struck by the overall similarities in facial, physical, linguistic , cultural likenesses - most of the punters were from around Edinburgh to around Morpeth.
@Simonroper9218
Hi could you do something similar for the same period for ulster scots and or ulster english dialects
Simon, I am writing a book of historical fiction set 12000 years ago as Natufian hunter-gatherers left the "camping" life for permanent structures. I'd would love to bounce ideas off of you.
Trying to put these sounds to my own dialect as in NZ we do have some older English sounds and of course the further South you travel the Scottish inhabited the Otago/Southland area and their English is more varied again. We tend to be very lazy in pronunciation and I have had so many people question my vowel sounds abroad.
i wonder if there were any Scots influences on Southern dialects because of infusion of Scots into the English Court with James becoming king of England as well as Scotland
As Grouchy Marx, remarked it's much better than it sounds. But one must remember Grouchy was the "workingman's version of the "Philosopher."
Wooow the range of sounds seems similar to a polish accent in english
I noted with interest that the Scot pronunciation of the English word, “name” was “nama”, which is identical to the corresponding Sanskrit word and pronunciation, as it is in many Sanskrit derived Indian languages.
I'm given to understand that a Highlander would have sounded markedly different - is there any chance that you'll explore the key differences in the accents...?
Can you make a video on what accent was used when the Tudors were in power? Was it closer to Anglo-Saxon or modern English?