West Central dialect

Studies of modern Scots speakers and writers from Burns Country suggest that this variety of Scots combines tradition and innovation. The Scottish National Dictionary supplements include some well established Scots terms alongside variations on old themes. For example coggle 'rock' has been around since the early 19th century, and survives in expressions such as He's cogglet ower aff the seat. By contrast the verb crunckle 'rustle or crackle' has been turned into a noun that refers to small pieces of coal that crackle when on the grate, as in a "shivelfu' o' crunklies" was waiting to join the cheery blaze, from the Irvine Valley News of September 1950. The familiar verb greet 'weep' has not only been turned into a noun, as in a wee greet, but also an adjective, greety.

Macaulay's exploration of Ayrshire speech in the 1970s and 1980s suggests that, amongst workers at least, there had been little change in pronunciation since the 1920s. If you keep your ears open you will hear pronunciations like aboot, hame, baith, aw, smaw, nicht and bricht, though some of these features are now characteristic of older speakers (e.g. the ch in nicht, bricht).

There is also tradition and innovation in grammar. Part of the old system of demonstratives survives, in expressions like thae men, yon/thon women, and working-class speakers retain the Scots negatives -nae and no, as in ye cannae come, ye'll no go? A notable innovation, probably introduced from Ireland, is the second person plural pronoun, youse, which has spread elsewhere in Scotland.

The Scots spoken in Glasgow is distinctive in a number of ways. Since cities are the meeting-grounds for people of different backgrounds, they provide many opportunities for language contact. Studies are also beginning to show the impact of the media on young people's speech. Cities are therefore the engines of language change. The expression, ken, still used widely in Ayrshire and elsewhere in Scotland in order to check comprehension, is seldom used in the city. Glasgow slang or 'patter' is however a source of colourful coinages, such as the buroo 'the Department of Health and Social Security' ie 'the Bureau', and the baw's on the slates, 'the situation is hopeless'.

John Corbett
Professor of Applied Language Studies
Department of English Language
University of Glasgow
References and Links
Macafee, C (1983) Glasgow John Benjamins
Macaulay, RKS (1991) Locating Dialect in Discourse OUP
www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/staff.htm#corbett
www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk
www.dsl.ac.uk/dsl/
www.arts.gla.ac.uk/SESLL/EngLang/accent.htm

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