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english_britain_ireland · United Kingdom

Scottish English

english_britain_irelandadvanced

United Kingdom · Central Belt Scotland

Rhotic, and with a vowel system organised on different principles from any English accent south of the border. It has no length contrast of its own: vowel length is predictable from what follows (the Scottish Vowel Length Rule), which is why nothing here is marked long. FOOT and GOOSE are the same vowel, so 'pull' and 'pool' are homophones. LOT and THOUGHT are the same vowel, so 'cot' and 'caught' are homophones -- Scotland has had the low back merger for far longer than the parts of North America now acquiring it. TRAP, BATH and PALM are all one vowel. FACE and GOAT are pure long monophthongs. The /r/ is usually a tap rather than the English approximant.

Rhotic, with a tapped /r/FOOT-GOOSE merged (pull = pool)Cot-caught mergedTRAP, BATH and PALM all one vowelNo phonemic vowel length

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Active features

Every phonetic parameter that deviates from this schema’s diffing anchor, with a plain-English gloss.

FeatureValueMeaningDrill
LanguagelanguageenDrill
Mixed Languagesmixed_languagesDrill
S Treatments_treatmentstandardDrill
D Intervocalicd_intervocalicstandardDrill
D Finald_finalstandardDrill
R Infinitiver_infinitivestandardDrill
N Final Velarizationn_final_velarizationNoDrill
Final Consonant Dropfinal_consonant_dropnoneDrill
Vowel Reductionvowel_reductioncrisp_openDrill
Syllable Timingsyllable_timingstress_timedDrill
T Glottalizationt_glottalizationgeneralDrill