The British Isles 2

Lectures
LECTURE 4
The British Isles 2
Linguistic conservatism in the Celtic countries
‫المحافظة اللغوية في البلدان السلتية‬
 In Scotland there is a threefold linguistic situation, that is, three major speech
communities exist side by side.
1. Scottish Gaelic
 First, there are a number of speakers of Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language related to both
Welsh and Irish Gaelic. Nowadays it is only spoken by a minority of the population of
Scotland, mostly in the Hebrides.
2. Scots
 Second, there is an English-based variety ‫ مجموعة متنوعة تعتمد على اللغة اإلنجليزية‬called
Scots.
 Scots is in fact the collective name of the traditional rural dialects and their urban
variations, and there is no general agreement as to whether it is a dialect of English or a
separate language.
3. Scottish English
 Third, quite a lot of people speak Scottish English, that is, Standard English with a
Scottish accent.
 These three speech communities overlap ‫ تتداخل‬to a great extent: monolingual ‫احادي اللغة‬
speakers of (Scottish) English do not abound ‫ غير موجودين بكثرة‬, as a large portion of the
population is bilingual- both the speakers of Gaelic and those of Scots also speak (Scottish)
English.
 Therefore, in the Scots-Scottish English relation the distinction between accent and
dialect is of utmost importance ‫ اهمية قصوي‬: while Scots qualifies as a dialect of English
since it has its own characteristic pronunciation, grammatical and lexical features,
Scottish English is an accent of English, being a pronunciation variety only. ‫تنوع في اللفظ فقط‬
What are the Hebrides?
 The Hebrides is an archipelago ‫ مجموعة من الجزر‬comprising ‫ تتكون من‬hundreds of
islands off the northwest coast of Scotland. Divided into the Inner and Outer Hebrides
groups, they are home to rugged landscapes‫ منظر طبيعي قاسي‬, fishing villages and remote
Gaelic-speaking communities. The Isle of Skye, connected to the mainland by a bridge, has
a colourful harbor at Portree and jagged 3,000-ft. peaks in the Cuillin mountain range.
SCOTS
 SCOTS has four main regional divisions. The largest and most important is Central Scots,
spoken in an area stretching from West Angus and northeas Perthshire to Galloway and the
River Tweed.
Islands of Traditional Ireland
 The 32 countries of the island of traditional Ireland are divided into the six countries of
Northern Ireland (which roughly corresponds ‫ تطابق‬to a former province called Ulser, and
which is part of the United Kingdom) and the twenty–six of the Republic of Ireland (also
called Eire).
 The linguistic situation here is similar to the one in Scotland: on the one hand, it is also a
threefold situation with a Celtic language, Scots and English; on the other hand, during their
histories, several waves of population migration have taken place between the two countries
in both directions, as a consequence of which their languages and dialects have had
profound influence on each other.
Languages Spoken in Ireland
 The three languages spoken in Ireland are:
1 Mr. Hani 3rd Year Dialectology W.A.V.E TEAM 01061932878

2023
Lectures
1) Anglo-Irish (English originating from (the west of) England and having its own
characteristic pronunciation, grammatical and lexical features.
 This is the variety which is meant by the term Irish English and it is sometimes also
called Hiberno- English)
2) Ulster Scots (or Scotch-Irish, a variety of Scots “imported” from Scotland),
3) Irish Gaelic (or ERSE – a Celtic language closely related to Scottish Gaelic).
The Celtic Countries
Historical Background
1) The career of English in Scotland goes back to the 6th-7th centuries, the settlement of the
first Anglo-Saxon tribes.
 SCOTS is a descendant of the Northumbarian an Norman French elements. It was first
known as Inglis; then, by the 15th century it had become the official language of the
Kingdom of Scotland, renamed Scottis or Scots, and it was the language of court and
government under the Stewart monarchy.
 Since the 16th century Scots has been losing prestige, with English taking over, and the
process was further accelerated by the publication in 1611 of the King James' Bible, in
English; this is how the lack of a Scots translation contributed to the spread of English
influence into Scotland.
2) The spread of English was completed in the 1740's, during the Highland Clearances, when
after the failure of the second Jacobite rebellion, English was imposed‫ مفروضة‬in much of
the Highlands, too.
3) Nowadays virtually everyone in Scotland speaks (Scottish) English, and although the political
independence of the country is much larger, both the Gaelic language and Scots play a
secondary role, especially in urban life ‫ الحياة المدنية‬.
4) In Ireland, English has been spoken since the 1200s but it has had a firm status only since the
17th century. During the so-called Plantation of Ulster started in 1609, English and Scottish
planters arrived in the north of the island.
 It is important to note that the settlements brought to Ireland speakers of two kinds of
English, Scots from Scotland and English from the north and west midlands, therefore the
present-day linguistic situation in the country is the result of a long history of English and
Scots upon a Gaelic background.
5) At least two further historical events contributed to the strengthening of the English-Irish
bond:
 The Cromwellian settlements of 1650 on the one hand, and the Act of Union of 1800
uniting Great Britain with Ireland.
 The Great Famine‫ مجاعة‬of 1845-9 had at least two very important side effects: not only
did it trigger‫ اثارت‬a considerable wave of immigration from Ireland into North America
and other parts of the globe, but it also contributed to the political division ‫االنقسام‬
‫ السياسي‬of Ireland into two nations.
6) Today, Irish is the Republic’s official language ‫ اللغة الرسمية للجمهورية‬although only cca. 2% of
the population speak it (the second official language is, of course, English).
The Great Vowel Shift
 The Great Vowel Shift was a series of changes in the pronunciation of the English language
that took place primarily between 1400 and 1700, beginning in southern England and today
having influenced effectively all dialects of English.
The NURSE Merger
 Nearly all dialects in the British Isles have undergone the nurse merger (Wells 1982:407)., a
process which merged the Middle English vowels / ɪ ɛ ʊ/ before syllable coda /r/ into the shwa
vowel /ə/, which was later lengthened to / ɜː/.
P.37/38
2023
Lectures
 In present-day standard accents words like heard=herd=stirred=bird=word all
rhyme, and have the same vowel as words like nurse. Originally, as suggested by
spelling, all of them contained different vowels, which merged into the same
sound, [ɜ]. That is why such a change is called a merger
WH-reduction
 The pronunciation of the digraph (wh) in English has changed over time, and still varies today
between different regions and accents.
 A digraph is two letters that combine to correspond to
one sound (phoneme).
 Examples of consonant digraphs are sh, ch, wh, and th.
 It is now most commonly pronounced /w/, the same as a plain initial (w), although some
dialects, particularly those of Scotland, Ireland, and the Southern United States, retain‫تحافظ‬
‫ علي‬the traditional pronunciation /hw/, generally realized as (M), a voiceless “w” sound.
 The process by which the historical /hw/ has become /w/ in most modern varieties of English
is called the wine-whine merger. It is also referred to as a glide cluster reduction.
(CHECK your college book pages 32,33,34,35,36,37,38).

2023

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Lectures

1 Mr. Hani 3rd Year Dialectology W.A.V.E TEAM 01061932878

(CHECK your college book pages 32,33,34,35,36,37,38).

3 Mr. Hani 3rd Year Dialectology W.A.V.E TEAM 01061932878

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