In this video, I explore one particular Scots speaker's account of their own accent, written in 1617. Alex Foreman's channel: / @a.z.foreman74 ________ This channel's Patreon (thank you to anybody who donates): / simonroper
@@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!
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.
@@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
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.
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 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.
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'.
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…
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! 🤔
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’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
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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'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...?
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.
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.
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.
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.
My clueless takeaway, can hear a bit of Scottish and also Welsh in the accent. Wondering what the reason might be. Did many migrate from one to the other? Excuse my ignorance but always curious about how accents form just not the time to study it.
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.
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
In Scots traditionally and especially back then, no "gh" sounds were fully retained, though they may be dropped in a few words such as "throu/throwe" (through)
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.
Interesting hearing the idiom in that "ball park" in British usage. In America a ball park is where we play baseball and anything in that playing area is close enough. Not sure how that translates in the UK, or the origins of the phrase. Would like to learn.
Wow this is fascinating! As a native, I do find that your pronunciations sound much more north east English, than the way people pronounce words in Edinburgh today. Was the Edinburgh accent really that more northern English, in 1617? Im comparing it to the more working class accent Edinburgh accent of today, which I believe to be the more authentic Edinburgh Scottish accent. Obviously going way back, Edinburgh and the south east of Scotland originally got their language ( which became Scots ) from the Angles of the north east of England. So there definitely must be similarities and influences with Northumbria. However there has been a lot of other influences on southeast Scots, since then, up to 1617. Like Gaelic ,which reached it maximum expansion in about 12th century. It was probably only spoken by the elites in southeast Scotland then, but would have had influence on the language there. Though your average peasant would still have spoken a dialect of old English. Obviously all Scottish accents have probably changed a lot since 1617. Ive heard the Glaswegian accent is very different today than it was 120 years ago. If you are correct, then the Edinburgh accent has changed more towards a western or northern Scottish accent since 1617.
😂Jack House the late, great, Glasgow journalist and author, claimed to recognise more than a dozen different Glasgow accents. Would Edinburgh have been any different?
I think a lot of our preconceptions of where particular accent features come from and what they signify are heavily influenced by accents as they exist now, and beyond that accents that have existed since the advent of recorded sound. Simon's video "An Upper-Class Southern British Accent, 1673 - 2023" demonstrates quite nicely how much the way posh English people speak has changed within living memory, but because we've all been exposed to those accents (as well as some from the early 20th century) in their social context (old films, etc.), we feel quite comfortable categorizing them the same way. But as soon as you step outside of that era, things start sounding distinctly "regional" and not what we as modern listeners would consider upper-class. Of course, all accents are always in motion, but for each different features will move at different paces, leading to some historical accents seeming similar to unrelated modern accents, particularly if we (subconsciously) rely on specific features as key indicators for a particular accent. And what those features are will tend to depend to a certain extent on your own accent and others you're familiar with, which is why people can disagree on what an unfamiliar accent sounds like. I guess my rambly point is that what the signifiers for Scottish and English accents were would have been different at that time, so it's not necessarily the case that to a contemporary listener this Edinburgh accent would have sounded as close to an English one as it does to modern ears.
@esM Yes I generally agree with what you say. I was just saying how amazed I was, that if Simon's version of the Edinburgh accent is correctly pronounced, then the Edinburgh accent sounds very different to the modern Edinburgh accent. Well at least Alexander Hume's Edinburgh accent. His own accent, may have been different to people of other classes, in Edinburgh, at the time. Anyway it surprised me, particularly how its sounds, more like a Northumberland accent. I can not detect that same Northumberland intonation, in the Edinburgh accent today. But other influences may have changed it since 1617. So to me, the Edinburgh accent must have changed quite a lot.
@@forbesmeek6304 No doubt there would be variations in accents from Glasgow and Edinburgh, in 1617 and as present. I was generalising. I was just pointing out how Simon's Edinburgh accent of 1617, must have changed a lot since then. If Simons version of it is correct. There are no Edinburgh accents these days that sound so Northumbrian in their pronunciation. Though I reckon all accents, including Glaswegian and the Edinburgh accent, are probably becoming more homogeneous, due to the cultural effects of the media and the internet. I would great if Simon did a video on the Glasgow accent.
I noticed Paul McCartney pronounces "country" very unaspiratedly in Heart of the Country. Is this because of the songs subject matter? What is the heart of the country hes singing about? Also in some of Declan McKenna's songs he has very unaspirated plosives; is that a separate development or some sort of stylistic orientation? He otherwise doesnt sund very Northern to my non-native ear
Paul McCartney doesn’t really sing in his accent; it comes through here and there but he uses a lot of stylistic annunciations when singing. He’s not even consistent with it on Heart of the Country, sometimes “Where” is rhotic, sometimes not, it’s very Americanised. On something like Wonderful Christmastime for example, his accent is softened but it comes out a lot more, but none of the Beatles have particularly heavy “scouse” accents really. You can hear George’s come out when he sings words like “Care”, “There” or “Fair”, which in his dialect is more like “Cur”, “Thur” and “Fur”. You can hear that on Beware of Darkness and While My Guitar Gently Weeps I think
@@1685Violin Not exactly, it's not a sound that's in American English, or I think any English form other than Scouse, it would be easy to pronounce but I don't know how to explain it phonetically lol
@@1685Violin not quite, like the commenter below me says, it’s easier to say than pronounce, and I’m British so I’m not positive on an American counterpart. But I’d imagine it’s like the vowel sound in ‘were’ or ‘whir’. It more forward than the American ‘cut’ and it’s more elongated. Not sure if you’re familiar with the songs I mentioned, but you can hear it in the first line of While my guitar gently weeps’ - “I look at you all, see the love THERE that’s sleeping”. It’s less pronounced when George sings than when he speaks but it’s still audible whereas it’s not at all with Paul McCartney. George also has the Scouse feature of often pronouncing the G on the end of Ing words, like Sleeping, Thinking, etc. That’s another whereas it’s less prevalent when he sings but if you watch him speak these features are much clearer, and from what I can tell, they’re not very common in a lot of Scouse accents anymore. Hope this helps 👍
The Burk and hare accent I call it....it actually sounds pretty close to a hawick accent that is fifty miles away from Edinburgh in the Scottish borders
Ardderchog / excellent response but I should have been more specific and asked the legal status. Is Scottish Gaelic the official first language ?@@verraguid
Phonetic quality of consonant and vowel sounds might be close to what it might have sounded like but as you know, a lot of the character of different accents comes from the intonation. Your "melody" sounds very English rather than Scottish! I doubt it would have sounded much like that. It'd be interesting to get a modern Scot to do basically what you just did and then compare.
Another thought on your ideas about Edinburgh accents being in more of a continuum with Geordie etc. They still are today. The Berwick accent really is half and half. Alnwick is somewhere between the Berwick and Newcastle accents. People from up there didn't really move around much unless they were emigrating. I can trace agricultural labourers' movements in the Borders area in the 1600s and 1700s and they would move around the local area for work but never stray very far from the Tweed. So if you were from there you would stay in what became Berwickshire in Scotland and what became Berwick Borough in England (both now defunct). Any movement beyond that was pretty much restricted by physical barriers like the Lammermuir Hills to the north and the Cheviot Hills to the south. Sometimes families would move closer to the cities of Edinburgh or Newcastle in either direction but mostly they'd just stay in that border area. These physical barriers to movement have huge implications for accent change and the development of different identities that might be expressed through different ways of speaking.
As a Yorkshireman this doesn't sound great deal different to talking to a Glaswegian in 2024 in other words Ican't understand a word either of them says.
Wasn't there a debate about stopping pronouncing 'Holyrood' as 'Holly-rood' until a linguist pointed out that it is derived from 'Hally' which is how people in the Lothians would have said 'Holy' and is still found in names like Halliburton, Halliwell etc?
The speaker who made the video is clearly very knowledgeable, but the spoken passage at the beginning sounds very much like an earlier form of Scottish English rather than Scots.
Scots is very much like English though. The text he was reading was absolutely in Scots, tho some Scots texts can be harder to read for English speakers than other texts.
I use both Scottish English and Scots habitually. The former is what you'll hear if you listen to the news from BBC Scotland, and this is a good example of spoken Scots ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-PP9GPXwi4I0.htmlsi=ool1E37Akxo-RjVv I don't know how the initial spoken passage in the original video can be categorised as Scots. It doesn't seem much at all like the latter above, and much more like the former.
@@lcolinwilson8347 You'd expect the higher registers of scots and english to be more similar simply because both will borrow heavily from Latin, Greek, French etc in more academic settings like Hume was probably writing in.
they do not speak Scots in Edinburgh, Edinburgh has a distinct, but pretty much Middle-Northumbrian English derived accent... nothing like the dialects associated with and grouped together into the two dialects we call Scots (plus Scots-Gaelic)
Could the changes that make modern Scots different from Northumbrian English be due to highland clearances and the potato famine bringing migrants to the region rather than Northumbrian changing?
Whit dae ye mean 'The Edinburgh Accent? In yon days, awbody wid hae spiken the leid o the fowk ie. the vernacular o a parteecular airt, an Hume as weel. Hume wisnae aroon in 1617, sae whit wid he ken.
