Question about Scottish

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 10:03 AM 2/18/2004 -0500, you wrote:
>Bev writes:
>
>BTW, "schoolmarm" reminded me of the use of written 'r' (or even double
>'r') to represent r-less New England speech in the old days; it's in
>Marmie of _Little Women_ too, and in Whittier and others.  I suspect
>it's confused generations of readers, as it did me as a kid.
>
>         ---------
>
>"How to say the names in The Jungle Book", at the back of the edition I
>had (Kipling, of course), confused me mightily:
>
>         Balu     "BAR-loo"
>
>As did a bit of dialect transcription in, I think, one of Andrew Lang's
><Your Color's Name Here> Fairy Books. The story was a Jack tale, and the
>giant was Cornish iirc. In this one Jack does several (probably three)
>stunts, using trickery or legerdemain to seem to be doing something that
>he really can't do, but that the huge, strong (and stupid) giant can, or
>thinks he can. Each time he dares the giant to match his deed, and the
>giant says "Hur can do that!"  (In the last stunt Jack stabs himself in
>the stomach, where he has hidden something under his shirt to provide
>blood, and of course the giant follows suit and kills himself.)
>
>I thought "Hur? Her? Oh well, weird dialect item." But it's just (I now
>assume) r-less British English transcription for a schwa-like vowel.
>
>-- Mark A. Mandel
>    Linguistic Data Consortium, University of Pennsylvania

Interesting--kind of like Uh (= I) with prevocalic aspiration?  Like 'it'
--> 'hit' in earlier English (and still not uncommon in Appalachian English)?