How to use this Guide

SourceUlster-Scots Language Guides: Spelling and Pronunciation Guide
AuthorIvan Herbison, Philip Robinson and Anne Smyth (editors)
PublisherUllans Press
EditionFirst Edition
Date2013
DownloadsMOBI (Kindle) → EPUBPDF

Part 1 outlines the development of characteristic and traditional spellings, and provides a background to those spellings that are historical. Part 2 describes how different vowel sounds are now represented in modern Ulster-Scots, with Part 3 providing a systematic guide to these “rules”.

Part 4 provides the some account for consonants, with Part 5 dealing with the “yogh” [yih] sound and its representation. Finally, the spelling system of James Fenton’s The Hamely Tongue is provided in Part 6 as a further aid to accurate pronunciation.

For a more detailed explanation of the linguistic terms used in this booklet, see Philip Robinson’s Ulster-Scots: a Grammar of the Traditional Written and Spoken Language.

Note on diacritics (accents). Where accents appear on vowels in Ulster-Scots, they indicate features of pronunciation and can be omitted without any change to spelling. There are only three recommended for standard use:

a) ï (diaeresis over ‘i’)

This is to represent English short ‘i’ in words such as ‘pig’ and ‘pin’ when it is pronounced distinctively in an Ulster-Scots homonym

e.g. pïg/pig

b) ü (diseresis over ‘u’)

This is to represent English short ‘u’ in words such as ‘pull’, ‘bush’, ‘bull’ when it is pronounced distinctively in an Ulster-Scots homonym

e.g. büsh/bush [pronounced to rhyme with ‘hush’]

c) è (grave accent over ‘e’)

This is to represent an interdental pronunciation of the preceding consonant when followed by ‘-er’

e.g. eftèr/efter

NextOlder Scots spelling and its legacy in modern Ulster-Scots
PreviousIntroduction - Ulster-Scots Spelling and Pronunciation Guide
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