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Jamie Reilly
Born: 24 April 1986
Lives: Rosneath, Argyll and Bute
Time lived in area: 5 to 10 years
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Jamie discusses different codes of behaviour and language in various parts of Scotland. In Rosneath, young people are expected to look a certain way, he says.
Language of interview: Scots
Duration: 0:25 (mins/secs)
The participants were asked to describe how they spoke in their own words.
How do you describe your accent: "Glaswegian."
Have there been other influences on the way you speak: "I spent six months in Larkhall in Glasgow. I spent five-six years in Central Scotland Stirling and Banockburn."
Do you have skills in languages other than English?: No
Other languages: None
JAMIE: Ye've gaw'a have a swear wurd a' least three times in their sentences when ye live here, or ye just don't fit in, didne when a lived in central Scotland, but when a moved oot here it was pretty hard te survive, laugh, ye've gaw'a wear the right kinna clays ina', enhin' brand named, if ye've got enhin' mair in three stripes ye get booed, 'n' ye've gaw'a wear big jackets inat, try in hide stuff in em, like yer baw'les a Buck ken, baw'les a Buckfast.
Jonnie Robinson, Curator, English accents and dialects, British Library Sound Archive, writes
It's interesting to hear Jamie's speech peppered with examples of T-glottaling - that is, he substitutes a glottal stop for a <t> sound at the end of a syllable or between vowels. Listen to the way he says got to, sentences, fit in, Scotland, out here, pretty hard and bottles. In England this is a feature that's age-specific, rather than characteristic of a particular accent and it can be heard among younger speakers the length and breadth of the country, although it has been a feature of popular London speech and that of a number of urban centres in the north for some considerable time. In Scotland, however, it has a long-established presence in a number of accents. Intriguingly it seems to arouse widespread disapproval in some circles, and is stigmatised both in England and Scotland, and yet if it is indeed spreading to cover the whole of Great Britain, then it represents a distinctively British innovation - it's not, for instance, a feature of any US accent and thus one of many examples that British English and American English, in terms of pronunciation at least, are diverging rather than converging.
Jamie also uses a number of more specifically Scottish dialectal pronunciations, such as the way he pronounces the words clothes and more in the statements the right kind of clothes and anything more than three stripes. His pronunciation of the former reflects the Germanic origins of the word and shows very clearly the links to modern German Kleid. In fact clathes was the favoured regional alternative in much of the northern half of Great Britain until relatively recently, although it's now arguably restricted to broad dialect use in Scotland alone. In the case of more an alternative interpretation would be to identify this with the Scots dialect word mair, rather than simply a matter of pronunciation. The Scots word sair, pronounced to rhyme with mair and equivalent to Standard English sore, falls into the same category and demonstrates how difficult it is to decide whether a certain form is illustrative of variety in terms of dialect vocabulary or pronunciation.
Finally, listen also to the pronunciation of <th> in anything: Jamie's use of a sound here is a striking feature of many speakers with a Scottish and indeed Irish accent.
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