Читайте также:
|
Scottish English is a stress-accent language. It uses duration, spectral characteristics and loudness to a greater extent than pitch to encode the differences between stressed and unstressed syllables. Pitch conveys intonation, and intonation is generally aligned with stressed syllables. The intonation system of Scottish English shows important regional variability. Most notable is that in Glasgow and western Scotland statements are pronounced as rises or rise-falls in the final nuclear accent.
Scottish English has inherited a number of lexical items from Scots, which are quite rare in other forms of Standard English. Those items are wee, which is a Scots word for small child, bonnie for pretty, attractive, good looking, braw for fine, muckle for big, pinkie for little finger and other words from different parts of speech. The diminutive ending ‘ ie ’ is added to nouns to indicate smallness,
e.g. laddie and lassie for a young boy and young girl.
Other examples are peirie, sweetie, etc. this ending can be added to many words willy-nilly, for example a small shop can be wee shoppie.
The other item is the use of how meaning why, it is distinctive of Scottish, Northern English and Northern Irish English. So, How no? is used instead of Why not? and it has the same meaning.
Often, lexical differences between Scottish English and Southern Standard English are just differences in the distribution of shared lexis, for instance the use of stay instead of live:
e.g. Where do you stay?
Scottish English has distinctive vocabulary. This distinction has its factors, one of which is the Church of Scotland, local government, education and legal system. In written language a special terminology exists, especially concerning terms of law and education. The reason therefore is, that Scotland could keep a certain autonomy on these fields.
solicitor – ‘law agent’
barrister – ‘advocate’
There are a lot of loanwords of French, Gaelic, or Old Norse origin, like ben – mountain peak, loch – lake, feu – loan, kirk – church, burach - mess, cailleach – old woman but most of SSE (Standard Scottish English) vocabularies are of English origin. However these vocabularies often alternate in meanings. New words and idioms are created, e.g. the suffix – ie (y) is added. This suffix expresses that the speaker is closely related to the subject of his speech. As for Old Norse the above mentioned examples are wee - small child, bonnie - handsome, braw - fine and so on.
Along with Standard Scottish English, Scots, a dialect inherited from Old English and closely related to Northumbrian dialects, has kept its influence especially in rural communities. There have been heated debates among linguists for many years about the question whether Scots is a dialect or a distinct language in its own right. And it has recently been classified as a ‘traditional language’ by the Scottish Executive and recognized by the European Charter for Regional or Minority languages, but even in Scotland experts remain divided over the issue. But whatever its status is (language or dialect) the large number of speakers claim to speak Scots, not English. Scots has a sort of great value and literary tradition, as it dates back long before Robert Burns in the 18th century and shows the contemporary authors. The traditional distinctiveness of the English language in Scotland is for many people identified with the writing of Robert Burns, the country’s national poet.
As mentioned above, the language that we now call Scottish English comes from the time of Old English, it developed, involved during the centuries (Middle English) due to many historical factors, surely it met obstacles, but the fact is, it still exists and continues its progress as a separate language. People learn Scottish English, they use it and as long as they do so, it will evolve and in the way of mixing with other dialects will have even more to offer us.
Дата добавления: 2015-09-11; просмотров: 120 | Поможем написать вашу работу | Нарушение авторских прав |