The inner circle

SCOTLAND

Scotland is the northernmost part of the UK, comprising about a third of its area but

not even a tenth of its population. Main distinctive areas:

the Highlands in the north and north-west; the more populous Lowlands in the south

with the capital Edinburgh; the Western Isles (Outer and Inner Hebrides); the Northern

Isles (Orkney and Shetland).

The founder population of Scotland: Celts from Ireland, representing the Goidelic

(Gaelic) language group;

Anglo-Saxons, in particular the ‘tribe’ known as Angles; Scandinavian (especially

Norwegian) Vikings;

Anglo-Normans from England.

Linguistic area of Scotland is varied, three main varieties can be recognised, each of

which in turn includes a number of dialects: (Scottish) Gaelic, Scots, Scottish Standard

English (SSE).

Scottish Gaelic, the Celtic language of Scotland (Gaelic) belongs to the q-Celtic branch.

In the eighteenth, the decline of Gaelic was precipitated by a number of acts of the

Scottish and British Parliaments, aimed at promoting English-language education.

Nancy Dorian found that Gaelic was used in high domains, (the Church), whereas it

was undergoing rapid and conscious loss in the important home domain.

Diglossic situation

Dorian, during her studies (1981): “They wanted to speak Gaelic so that we couldn’t

understand them”. Virtually all Gaelic speakers are today functionally bilingual.

Many linguists think that Scots is a language in its own right. Even if its status is that

of a language, it is closely related to English and it is descended from Old English. Its

impact on SSE is undisputed; in fact, it can be argued that Scots–SSE constitutes a

linguistic continuum (Aitken, 1984). Scots as a spoken language was used by the rural

population and the working classes. Written Scots was revived and promoted in the so-

called ‘Scottish Renaissance’ in the twentieth century.

Some reasons why Scots is a language in its own right: historically based, highly

distinctive sound system, grammar and vocabulary; varied and unbroken orthographic

and literary tradition; it has dialects of its own.

Scottish Standard English (SSE) can simply be defined as Standard English

pronounced with a Scottish accent and with a few Scotticisms in grammar and

vocabulary (e.g. wee for ‘little’). It can be claimed that Scotland has its own RP in the

so-called Edinburgh ‘Morningside’ accent.

Scots salient features: the retention of the voiceless velar fricative /x/ in words spelt

with or (loch, bright, dreich); dark /l/ in all positions, which in Scots has resulted in L

vocalisation (fu=‘full’, ca=‘call’, saut=‘salt’);

a characteristic distribution of vowel length as compared to RP, ‘short’ vowels sounds

quite long and ‘long’ vowels rather shorter; the firm rhoticity which explains the

nonexistence of centralised diphthongs (cheers and care pronounced with

monophthongs).

Scottish English has a long tradition as a separate written and spoken variety.

Pronunciation, grammar and lexis differ from other varieties of English existing on the

territory of the British Isles. It can be explained by its historical development. The

identity of Scottish English reflects an institutionalized social structure, as it is most

noticeable in the realm of law, local government, religion, and education. Scots

spelling is highly variable: for example breid, brede, bread, braid for ‘bread’. The Scots

vowel system is regionally variable, but has at least eight phonemes. The number of

distinctive vowels could vary between eight and twelve, to which should be added two

or three diphthongs.

Prosody: SSE differs from RP in the stress pattern of certain words, notably verbs

ending in -ize, which tend to be stressed on the last syllable.

Morphology features:

The voiceless ending is a historically based Scots feature: sellt ‘sold’ and killt ‘killed’

Some irregular form: ken ‘know’ with kent as past tense and past participle: gie ‘give’

with gied as past tense and gien as past participle

Plural forms of nouns such as wife, leaf, loaf keep the voiceless consonant: wifes, leafs,

loafs

In Orkney and Shetland, two forms of address: informal du vs formal (singular) you

Some Syntax features:

Unmarked plurality in measure phrases, as exemplified in 50 year

In Scots, negation is expressed by no or not (She’s no leaving) or by the forms nae and

n’t, which are always attached to other words (She isnae leaving)

In Scots, the definite article is used before nouns denoting institutions and certain

periods of time (the day ‘today’, the morn ‘tomorrow’, at the kirk ‘at church’)

Lexicon:

The distinctiveness of Scottish English derived from the influence of other languages,

especially Gaelic, Norwegian, and French. e.g., Gaelic borrowings include: cairn – ‘a

pile of stones that marks the top of a mountain or some other special place’; sporran –

‘a small furry bag that hangs in front of a man’s kilt as part of traditional Scottish

dress’

Early Scots shared a great deal of its vocabulary with Northern Middle English. Some

examples of words used in Modern Scots: gate ‘road’, kirk ‘church’, big ‘build’, lass

‘girl’, lowse ‘loose’ In Orkney and Shetland the Scandinavian-based has tended to

remain in the following areas: words clearly relating to traditional life, flora and fauna,

weather terminology and specific tools; adjectives, mostly negative, describing

people’s character and behaviour. Sir Walter Scott introduced recent borrowings: clan,

galore ‘in abundance’, gillie, ‘a sportsman’s attendant’ There are many borrowings

from French: leal for ‘loyal’, ‘honest’, ashet ‘serving plate’, aumry ‘pantry’.

IRELAND

Ireland is divided into four provinces, formerly independent kingdoms: Connacht,

Munster, Leinster, Ulster

The Old Irish name of Ireland was Ériu, and the Romans, who never invaded the island,

referred to it as Hibernia. There are early records of Celts’ language in a special.

There are substantial records of Ireland’s history from about the VI century, written in

both Latin and Irish. The first speakers of English who settled in Ireland were hardly

conquerors but appear to have come mostly for religious reasons. From the very

beginning, English law was introduced with the purpose of protecting the colonists and

disadvantaging the Irish. Earliest colonists appear to have amalgamated with the

population in much the same way as the Vikings and there is evidence from the mid

XIV century that they had adopted the manners as well as the language of the Irish.

During the Tudor and Stuart periods, English control was forcefully reasserted and it

was ruled that the English language should be used throughout Ireland. At the time of

the Act of Union, English was the first language of half the population of Ireland.

During the following century, Irish suffered massive abandonment. The Republic of

Ireland has two official languages: Irish Gaelic, usually referred to as Irish, and English.

Article 8 in the constitution of Éire states that “Irish is the national language is the first

official language and that English is recognized as a second official language”.

The revival and maintenance of the Irish language was part and parcel of the

independence movement. Eamon De Valera: ‘Ireland with its language and without

freedom is preferable to Ireland with freedom and without its language’. Despite all

efforts, the number of native Irish speakers has continued to decline. By the end of the

last millennium there were only a few thousand people left in isolated pockets of

Western Ireland, especially in the area known as the Gaeltacht ‘Irish-speaking district’.

There are no longer any people who speak only Irish, it belongs to the q-Celtic group of

Celtic languages and is thus closely related to Scottish Gaelic.

The history of English in Ireland is characterised by a high degree of discontinuity and

regional variability. This has resulted in a rich and somewhat confusing terminology

denoting minor and major varieties of Irish English (IrE).

Irish English (IrE) subsumes all the Englishes of the Ireland. The two main politico-

linguistic divisions are Southern and Northern, within and across which further

varieties are:

Anglo-Irish, Hiberno-English, Ulster Scots, the usage of the two capitals, Dublin and

Belfast.

Lexicon

The rich vocabulary of IrE stems from three sources: English, Scots, Irish

Irish words are found particularly in the areas of: culture (banshee - ‘fairy woman’ and

cairn - ‘sacred stone mound’), rural life (creel - ‘basket’, biddable - ‘obedient’, feasant -

‘affable’).

Several words that look like ordinary General English words have different meanings

(backward - ‘shy’, thick-witted - ‘stubborn’, doubt - ‘believe strongly’, bold - ‘naughty’).

The Gaelic influence on meanings of some words (to destroy and drenched). These

words have the semantic ranges of their Gaelic equivalents: (mill - ‘to injure, spoil’ and

báite - ‘drenched, drowned, very wet’). The presence of words typical only of Irish

English (the so-called Irishisms): (begorrah - ‘by God’). The layer of words shared with

Scottish English: (ava - ‘at all’, greet - ‘cry, weep’, brae - ‘hill, steep slope’).

USA

The USA occupies a special position among the inner-circle countries in that it has by

far the greatest number of first-language users of English. About 80% of the US

population live in metropolitan areas. In AmE, the linguistic heritage of the indigenous

population is reflected in masses of place names, for example: Kalamazoo ‘boiling

pot’, Mississippi ‘the father of the waters’, Tennessee ‘winding river’.

The English came to North America in the late XVI century. The first permanent

settlement was in Virginia, which became a colony in 1609. There were also people

who spoke Dutch, French, German, Spanish, Swedish, and Finnish languages. During

the following century, 13 British colonies were founded, all along the East Coast.

Before the Boston Tea Party leading to the War of Independence, the colonies did not

form a union but in 1776, they met in Philadelphia for the Declaration of

Independence. From the 1830s, massive immigration from Europe took place,

beginning with Irish, Scots and German settlers, but later including virtually all nations.

Since the 1970s, the majority of immigrants have come from Asia and from South and

Central America.

In the USA, as in Canada, it is in the East that we find the richest regional diversity in

language (the first colonies were all