Last stages of the older literary language of Scotland: a study of the surviving Scottish elements in Scottish prose, 1700-1750, especially of the records, national and local

Abstract

On the whole, it seems likely that writers who talk of "Scots" being spoken in the middle of the eighteenth century are referring to pronunciation rather than to vocabulary, idiom and grammar. We have seen that, although traces of Scots idiom and grammar remained in our written material at the end of our period, alone with a good number of Scots words, there was not a sufficient proportion of those for us to describe the written language as "Scots". On the other hand, we have seen that Scots pronunciations could lie behind English written forms, and that the difference in pronunciation between Scots and English struck strangers an being more marked than the difference in vocabulary.

This difference in pronunciation during moot of our period almost certainly included the /i/ vowel in words like Suppleecation, and possibly included variations in the use of /I/ and /ɛ/ a vowel different from the English in words like guid, variation in /ɔ/ and /o/, the absence in some words of the /ai/ and /au/ diphthongs; and it may have included a number of other differences in individual words, all of which would give the language a markedly different sound from that of English. The main differences in consonants were probably the dropping of the final t, the variation in the use of /n/ and /₎/, and possibly the use of the l mouilló in words like bailze.

The anglicization which took place during the late seventeenth century in the speech of the upper classes and some of the clergy probably included the superseding of Old English (or Old Norse) /a/ and its derivative /e/ by English /o/ in words like enough, the pronouncing of l after back vowels (e.g. call) and possibly the discarding of a good deal of Scots vocabulary and grammar. All this, of course, must have happened within a limited social circle. Allan Ramsay makes it clear that the language he spoke was different from that commonly spoken by the "gentlemen" of his time.

In Rramsay's day there must have been at least three speech-groups among educated Scots; there were those who, like Allan Ramsay, preferred Scots dialect, but could probably anglicize a good deal when they chose (e. g. in writing, or in speaking to English visitors); others must have spoken a language like that of the records - English with a sprinkling of Scotticisms, spoken with the Scots pronunciations described above, and those speakers could use dialect as Ramsay said "for a change"; the third group, whom the Earl of Cromarty called many and whom Allan Ramsay called few, appeared to despise dialect Scots, but there is no evidence that their speech wan more anglicized than that of the second group. There is, however, every likelihood that the first group were being influenced by the second throughout our period, so that by the middle of the century educated men who habitually used dialect were becoming unusual.

The desire to avoid Scots, as we saw in Chapter 7, was noticeable by 1740, and speakers who wished to be fashionable attempted to level out all the differences in vocabulary, idiom and pronunciation, between Scots and English. This movement did not, however, involve all the gentry and professional classes, and in the second half of the century people like Lady Strathnaver, Lord Kames and Mrs. Mure of Caldwell probably retained the older pronunciations (ha, etc.) satirized by Macklin, along with some words and phrases which had gone out of fashion.

On the whole, however, the speech of educated and upper classes in the late eighteenth century would be similar to that suggested by Sir Walter Scott who indicates the speech of The Antiquary by turns of phrase or local idiotic, and allows the Duke of Argyll consciously to use an occasional Scotticism in addressing a countrywoman, but generally uses the marks of broad Scots pronunciation only for dialect speakers like Baillie Nicol Jarvie and Jeanie Deans.