Scotland 2

Listen to Scotland 2, a man in his late 40s from Orkney Islands, Scotland. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource;  please consider supporting us.

Please note: This subject does not read a scripted passage (Comma Gets a Cure or The Rainbow Passage).

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: late 40s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): early 1950s

PLACE OF BIRTH: Orkney Islands (north coast of Scotland)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Scottish (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: college instructor, farmer

EDUCATION: university education

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was born and raised on Orkney and lived there his entire life with the exception of his college years spent in Aberdeen.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Although he is also a farmer, the subject’s main profession is education. As a college instructor, he likely has been exposed to accent/dialect influences others might not have been.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born and brought up in the Orkney Islands here, just off the north coast of Scotland some, almost fifty years ago, I suppose, and I was born into a farming family and I went off to college in Aberdeen and I studied agriculture and I was lucky enough to come back and get a job here in what is now the local college. And I work for Orkney College, and we’ve diversified into more than just agriculture. I’m now into computers and tourism. It’s quite a big college now; I’ve been working for them for about 22 years, and ya ken [know] we’re quite a big further education and higher education college, Orkney. But apart from that, I still live on a farm and still sort of farm part time [unintelligible]. Orkney’s just a collection of about 70 islands and about 16 or 17 are inhabited, but most of the folk live on what we call the mainland [unintelligible]; we talk about the mainland, the mainland of Orkney, not the mainland of Scotland. We would term the mainland of Scotland or anything in that connection or direction is termed the sooth [south]. Agriculture still plays a big … an important part in the economy but so does the oil; we’ve an oil terminal on the islands which takes in a lot of money. And also, like tourism and [inintelligible] manufacture, and there are a couple of distilleries and a brewery. It’s quite a busy place, Orkney, and the economy is really quite good. Population in total is about 20,000, between seven and eight thousand of that in the main town of Kirkwall and there’s another sort of smaller town called Stromness, which is a couple of thousand folk, and the rest of the population is sort of spread through the country areas and the smaller islands. I suppose me dialect would be … I would like to call it … to say it was average, but I suppose the younger generation would say that I spoke in a slightly broader from of dialect than most of the younger population do nowadays. As compared with the, erm, dialect of a hundred year ago, mine would not be that desperately different I suppose other than there would have been at that time a sort of universal use o’ “thee” and “thoo” [thou] instead o’ you’in dialect; there is that, eh, but, eh, a hundred year ago it would have been sort of universal.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject says that most islanders would call his dialect broad. You can hear the rolled “r,” the glottal placement in “agriculture,” the class elision of the “f” in “of”; and the pronunciation of “now,” “south,” “thou,” and “round” as “noo,” “sooth,” “thoo,” and “roond.”

If you are a dialect researcher, or an actor using this sample to develop your skill in the accent, please see my instruction manual at www.paulmeier.com. As the speaker in this sample is a unique individual, it is highly unlikely that he will conform to my analysis in every detail. But you will find it interesting and instructive to notice which of my “signature sounds” and “additional features” (always suggested only as commonly heard features of the accent) are widely used by most speakers of the dialect, and which are subject to variation from individual to individual.

And for greater perspective on the dialects, accents, and languages of Scotland, I recommend this podcast with IDEA Associate Editor Ros Steen.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/2000 (amended 13/11/2016)

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.