Scottish

INTRODUCTION

My breakdowns are structured around accent features and influences described by Knight-Thompson Speechwork, a 21st-century, skills-based approach to speech and accents that celebrates language diversity. KT Speechwork offers the “4 Ps” below as a framework for exploring many different facets of an accent:

    • PEOPLE. Who speaks with this accent? Where does this accent come from, historically? What common cultural elements might influence people’s manner of speaking?
    • POSTURE. What is the habitual shape of the vocal tract for speakers of the accent? We all have a habitual way of resting our mouths that allows us to move it into the speech actions of our accent as economically as possible. The posture of this accent might be different from your habitual one.
    • PRONUNCIATION. What are the sounds of this accent? I’ll be using both recordings and the International Phonetic Alphabet to describe speech actions and the sounds they produce. As you listen and read, listen with your mouth–can you make the shapes the speaker is making as you listen?
    • PROSODY. What are the musicality and rhythm of the accent like? What are the intonation, stress, and pitch patterns that speakers might use? This is the soul of the accent. We could nail the pronunciation, but it’s not a manner of speaking until we find how it flows.

 

PEOPLE

This breakdown is for the character of Williamina Fleming in the play Silent Sky by Lauren Gunderson. Based on a historical person, Williamina is “smart as a whip and fun, Scottish.” We learn in the play, which takes place in the early 20th century, that she was born in Dundee, Scotland, and emigrated when she was 21 to Boston. She took housekeeping work with a Harvard astronomer, and because her intelligence was evident, he hired her to work in his lab, where she distinguished herself with groundbreaking research despite the limitations placed on her gender.

In collaboration with Silent Sky‘s director Peter Wray, I’ve decided not to create a truly historical Dundee-Boston hybrid accent. The historical speech features would be surprising to the audience’s ear and wouldn’t match Gunderson’s contemporary dialogue style and the “So-Called General American” accents of the other characters. Instead, we will focus on a relatively contemporary Dundee accent, with some American features to reflect that at the time of the play, Williamina has been in Boston for three decades.

First, a bit about the Scottish manner of speaking in general. Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom, or Britain, a sovereign nation that includes England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. It’s important to understand that although Scottish people (Scots) are British, they are not English, and the relationship between these two countries–and their languages–is historically complex and sometimes contentious. Over the course of the last two millennia, many different groups of people have inhabited and conquered the territory that today comprises Scotland, and their linguistic thumbprint remains today.

Scotland appears in dark green; the rest of the UK appears in light green.

In the early Middle Ages, a number of groups converged in Scotland: the Jutes, Angles, and Saxons, who invaded Scotland from areas of what is now England and brought with them their Germanic language; Vikings, who brought an early form of Norwegian; and Irish settlers, who brought Gaelic and Celtic language and culture with them. Today in Scotland, three languages are recognized: English, Scots (which is a Germanic language that, like Modern English, also evolved from Early Middle English), and Scottish Gaelic (a Goidelic, or Celtic language, that evolved from Old Irish). When we investigate a Scottish accent of English, we get to play with sounds and rhythms influenced not only by British English, but also by the Scots and Scottish Gaelic languages.

A “Scottish accent of English” is a very broad idea. As is true of most countries, there is a dictionary-described accent called Scottish Standard English. There are also all kinds of different regional, class, racial, and social variations of accents that all fall under the broad label “Scottish.” A Glasgow accent is indeed distinctly different to a Scot’s ear than an Edinburgh accent.

    • For a sense of the variety of sounds heard in Scotland, take a tour with the dialect coach of Outlander, Carol Ann Crawford.

We will not be investigating the standardized variation of Scottish, instead, we’ll look at an accent typically heard in Dundee, where the character Williamina was born and raised. As an accent model, I’ve chosen the following sample:

This accent donor, recorded when she was a university student in the US, was born in Dundee, and the Scottish features she uses will reflect this region to our audience’s ear. Dundee is in northwest Scotland, north of Edinburgh but not in the Highlands, where the very stereotyped idea of a Scottish accent comes from. In this sense, a Dundee accent might sound “subtler” to our audience’s ear.

Importantly, this accent donor completed her studies in Kansas, where she acquired some “So-Called General American” features that will help us tell the story that Williamina has lived and worked in America most of her life. She still retains, however, some features of Scottish prosody that lend themselves to Williamina’s wit and humor.

 

POSTURE

General vocal tract posture: Sometimes filler or hesitation sounds like uh and um are useful for finding an accent’s “home base.” Here are some of the speaker in IDEA sample Scotland-1’s filler sounds, first at normal speed, then slowed down 50%:

Try “listening with your mouth.” Speak the sounds along with the recording, seeing if you can approximate some of the shapes she’s making:

    • jaw: released. Allow resonance to find space in the back of the oral cavity.
    • tongue root: retracted. Imagine that the tip of your tongue rests further back from your front teeth than it might in your American accent.
    • lip corners: very nimble. There is a lot of lip rounding in this accent, as in many British accents.
    • If IPA is useful to you, these filler sounds are open and fronted, somewhere in the territory of [a̽].
    • Imagine a gum-ball cupped at the front of your tongue. Then roll the gum-ball to the back of your tongue and imagine holding it there without letting it dissolve. You’re on your way to the Scottish vocal tract posture. From this “home base,” try this tongue twister as a warm-up (aim for detail, not speed):

The loud crowd ran all ’round down town.

 

PRONUNCIATION

As you play the example recordings below, listen with your mouth. Try the speech gestures physically. Take them slowly at first, then build up to fluency.

CONSONANTS

/ɹ/ → trilled [r], tapped [ɾ], or retroflex [ɻ]

The sound(s) spelled with the letter R in many Scottish accents is either an alveolar tap or even a full alveolar trill. Scottish is a rhotic accent, which means that Scots pronounce the R after a vowel. Probably they do not always take the time in connected and fluent speech to fully trill a post-vocalic /ɹ/, so it may be a tap, or even a retroflex approximant. Because of this Dundee speaker’s American influence, she often uses a retroflex approximant [ɻ], especially in the post-vocalic position. Let’s default to that as often as possible for Williamina, with just a smattering of [ɾ], reserved for the initial position (the starts of words). In all the example clips below, you’ll hear the speaker at normal speed, and then slowed down 50%.

Example retroflex approximant [ɻ] words: strikes, apparently, born, roughly.

Example tapped [ɾ] words: rainbow, regular, friends, very rarely.

 

/l/ → [ɫ]

This Dundee speaker uses a velarized lateral approximant, even in the initial position–at the beginnings of words. Try the word little in your own accent in slow motion. Notice the difference in the tension in the front of the body of the tongue on the first /l/ and the second /l/. For the Dundee accent, find this level of cupping in the body of the tongue, even as the tongue tip meets the alveolar ridge, on all /l/’s. There may also be some tongue root retraction and velar engagement at the same time.

Example words: light, legend, Leicester, mainly, population.

 

/t/ → [ʔ] or [tʰ]

Sometimes, Scots drop a medial /t/ (a /t/ between vowels) or a post-vocalic /t/ (a /t/ after a vowel). This is a feature that some Americans pepper in as well. We can use this variably for Williamina. This is a feature that can get tricky to hear on stage–when we move into the performance space, I’ll listen for moments when we might need to use a plosive [tʰ], even if it’s not 100% accurate for the accent, so that the audience can hear it.

Example words: Scottish accent, variety, city, lot more, where it is.

 

/w/ → [ʍ]

In words spelled WH–, this speaker very occasionally uses a voiceless labial velar approximant [ʍ]. She more often voices the sound [w], especially on common words like where and when, and in any case, devoicing would never happen on words spelled only with a W-, like winter or wonderful.

Example words: devoiced WH– in white light, voiced WH– in where that.

 

VOWELS

To organize the vowel sounds I’m introducing, I’ll be using a linguistics tool called “lexical sets.” These sets, created by J.C. Wells, are lists of words that tend to share a vowel sound. For a full linguistic discussion of lexical sets, see Accents of English I: An Introduction by J.C. Wells (Cambridge University Press 1982). Or, for something geared specifically toward actors, check out Eric Armstrong’s (new!) open-source book, Lexical Sets for Actors. Or just google it! Believe it or not, the Wikipedia article on lexical sets will give you a decent introduction.

 

KIT → [ɪ] or [ɘ]

In some parts of Scotland, this vowel is lowered to [ɛˑ], but this speaker often uses a more typically American close vowel, like [ɪ], sometimes mid-centralized to [ɘ]. Let’s adopt this feature, which I think tells the story that Williamina has had the influence of American English for a long time.

Example [ɪ] words: England, influenced, difference:

Example [ɘ] words: it and is.

Practice words:

ship his kid symbol business

 

TRAP/BATH/PALM → [a] or [æ]

These three sets are merged in many Scottish accents, and usually pronounced with an unrounded open front vowel [a]. This speaker variably uses the less open front vowel [æ] in these sets, perhaps due to her American influence. Let’s follow this pattern of using both [a] and [æ] for Williamina as well.

Example [a] words: path, man, Kansas, family, class:

Example [æ] words: dad, at all (the A in at, not the A in all), accent, class (compare to class with [a] above).

Practice words:

staff laugh gasp France ask half grass

 

LOT/CLOTH → [ɒ̹]

This back vowel is very lip-rounded, and perhaps slightly raised from where you might place it for some other British accents, like RP.

Example words: pot, Scotland, lot (she says lot twice):

 Practice words:

stop       odd       dog       God       cough       often

 

FOOT → [ʉ]

This speaker uses a lip-rounded close central vowel. You might hear this vowel in Baltimore in words like two and you.

Example word: look.

put look would good bush

 

GOOSE → [y]

This may not be a vowel you use in your own American accent. Find the unrounded close front vowel [i] that you might use in the FLEECE set. With your tongue in that position, round your lips a lot.

Example words: beautiful and too.

 Practice words:

shoot two boob music beauty feud

 

FACE → [e:]

Probably a diphthong close to [eɪ̯] in your American accent,  this vowel is realized with a long monophthong in Dundee.

Example words: take the shape, rainbow, mainly, same.

Practice words:

cake lady wait nail bouquet maintain

 

GOAT → [o:]

Similarly to the FACE set, the GOAT set is realized with a long monophthong.

Example words: rainbow, most, going, so, coast.

Practice words:

boat explosion gauche old bowl although

 

MOUTH → [ɛʊ̆]

Let’s try using a front onset for this diphthong

Example words: round, town, thousand.

Practice words:

round council house cow powder loud

 

HAPPY → [e]

In Dundee, this unstressed vowel may be slightly less close than in American accents or even RP. Sometimes the speaker uses [e], and sometimes she uses something a bit more typically American, closer to [i].

Example [i] word: seventy. Example [e] words: apparently, twenty.

Practice words:

city       busy       tetchy       lovely       silly       twenty

 

BITS’N’BOBS

There’s a pretty active community of linguists on Wikipedia, so I find that the articles on language variety tend to be a pretty good place to start (watch out! not always so with Wikipedia). They’ve created a list of Scotticisms — expressions, grammatical constructions, and vocabulary that may have arrived in Scottish English via Scots and Scottish Gaelic. Lauren Gunderson hasn’t given you too many of these Scotticisms, but for fun, I recommend checking out the list.

 

PROSODY

  • Relative to many American accents (though not all–New York is a notable exception), Scottish accents tend to have consonants with more aspiration or “vocal energy.” This lends the accent a kind of percussive or staccato feel, making the syllables feel like they have equal weight. You may feel like it simply takes you longer to get through a phrase, because you are using more consonant detail.