Vowels

Lexical sets

Variation in quantity is not indicated in the following table.

Further comments relating to the lexical sets

KIT

This vowel is always short, but displays considerable qualitative variation, most of which is not exclusive to Insular Scots. The last allophone in the Shetland column is, however. It is found before labials and velars. A piece of evidence of its use before the velar nasal is the following cross-dialectal miscomprehension as experienced in a Shetland knitting course by the present writer: The local teacher asked one of the participants, a lady from Lancashire working on a pair of gloves, whether she had trouble with her fingers, which was perceived as fungus.

DRESS

is usually half-long and often fully-long. Before /d/ and /n/ which are dental in Shetland, it is commonly realized as an upgliding vowel  . This is probably what some lay observers have in mind when they talk about “palatalized” consonants.

TRAP

There are raised variants in Fair Isle and some Orcadian accents. Before certain consonants, on the other hand, notably the cluster /nd/, the realization is generally [a:], so-called HAND darkening (Johnston 1997: 485).

STRUT

tends to be rounded, especially in Shetland.

NURSE

As in Scots generally, there is no NURSE merger.

PALM AND START

vary regionally. The use of a back vowel may signal locality as well as influence from Standard varieties.

GOOSE

In traditional Shetland dialect, a great number of words in this set have an [ø] vowel. It is popularly believed to be a preserved Norn feature, and is indeed typically found in Scandinavian-based vocabulary, such as tröni ‘pig’s snout’, and löf ‘palm of the hand’, but also in more modern words, such as curious, poor (with a lowered variant [œ] before the /r/).

The use of these vowels is recessive.

PRICE

varies according to phonetic environment in quality (cf. the table) as well as quantity.

MOUTH

varies along the dialect continuum, i.e. the monophthong is a regular feature of the traditional dialects.

SQUARE

is very distinctive in Fair Isle and Whalsay, realized as .

NORTH AND FORCE

are clearly distinctive in the speech of many Shetlanders and Orcadians.