LL-L "Orthography" 2002.01.24 (04) [E]

[Lowlands-L]

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 L O W L A N D S - L * 24.JAN.2002 (04) * ISSN 189-5582 * LCSN 96-4226
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 A=Afrikaans Ap=Appalachian D=Dutch E=English F=Frisian L=Limburgish
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From: Sandy Fleming [sandy at scotstext.org]
Subject: "Orthography"

> From: "Andy Eagle" <andy at scots-online.org>
> Subject: "Orthography" [E/S]
>
> The southern Scots 'yow and mye'  for 'you and me' is only
> (root)word final.

You're right, of course - I wasn't thinking!

> <au> is just a 'traditional' Scots graphemeic representation of the
> underlying phoneme pronounced variously
> from dialect to dialect.

The question is, though, is there a pattern in the variation
that would enable us to choose <au> as opposed to <a> in the
spellings of such words as "han(d)" and "car"?

I believe there are two low, back vowels involved here in most
dialects, but they're very similar in placement - the main
distinction is that one is rounded and the other isn't. The
phonetic symbols for these can be seen at the bottom right
of my vowel placement chart at
http://sandyfleemin.org/grammar/phonetics/vowels.asp (these
are basic vowels - the many dialectical variants aren't
included). While these are very close, the main difference is,
as I said, the rounding on the higher vowel.

While there are dialects (quite close to mine) where the
rounding is _always_ applied, there are others (such as my
own) where the choice of rounding seems to correspond quite
well with the general run of traditional spellings. The
unrounded form is apparent in our pronunciations of "car" and
"han(d)", but words like "cauld" and "auld" and "waa" are
consistently rounded. This suggests to me that spellings like
"caur" and "haun" actually derive from the differences between
the _English_ /a/ sound and the Scots equivalent - the Scots
equivalent being so much closer to the rounded /Q:/ that writers
write them in an attempt to show the difference between Scots
and English, rather than between Scots phonemes. If this is the
case, then the spellings "han(d)" and "car" could be said to be
better spellings.

It's a subtle distinction, but not necessarily unimportant. It's
clearly what Margaret was referring to when she says that "haun"
seems too "strong" a spelling. It's the fact that it's different
from the English /a:/ and yet not quite the Scots /Q:/.

I believe there are also dialects where the rounding isn't
applied even to words like "cauld" and "auld", though. Might
this be due to the influence of a relatively recent Gaelic
substrate? Dialects of Scots which have the much more front
or central /a/ such as you hear in English "father" are stated
in the SND to be due to direct Gaelic influence - presumably
of the Highland "Fat is tat you say?" variety of Scots (now
perhaps rarely heard, due to Highlanders changing over to
English?).

Sandy
http://scotstext.org
A dinna dout him, for he says that he
On nae accoont wad ever tell a lee.
                          - C.W.Wade,
                    'The Adventures o McNab'

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