Scottish English, broad

English in Scotland has two main sources: (1) a continuation of the north Anglian dialect of Old English and (2) a language-shift variety of English which stems from the Gaelic speakers who switched to English in the Highlands and Islands over the past few centuries. The former variety has a distinctive morphology and in pronunciation is quite unlike other varieties of British English. Vowel length is not distinctive and is determined by the phonological environment in which vowels occur. Like Ulster English, it has a high mid vowel in the GOOSE lexical set and a retroflex [ɻ]. The vowel of the TRAP lexical set is a long low vowel, i.e. trap is [tra:p].

   Sample sound file