28. Scottish English

Phonological characteristic of Scottish English:

- Scottish English is a rhotic accent, meaning /r/ is pronounced in the syllable coda. While other dialects have merged /ɛ/, /ɪ/, /ʌ/ before /r/, Scottish English makes a distinction between the vowels in herd, bird, and curd. Many varieties contrast /o/ and /ɔ/ before /r/ so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently. /or/ and /ur/ are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour and poor.

- There is a distinction between /w/ and /hw/ in word pairs such as witch and which.

- The phoneme /x/ is common in names and in SSE's many Gaelic and Scots borrowings, so much so that it is often taught to incomers, particularly for "ch" in loch. Some Scottish speakers use it in words of Greek origin as well, such as technical, patriarch, etc. The pronunciation of these words in the original Greek would support this.

- /l/ is usually velarized

- Vowel length is generally regarded as non-phonemic. Certain vowels (such as /i/, /u/, and /ж/ are generally long but are shortened before nasals and voiced plosives. However, this does not occur across morpheme boundaries so that crude contrasts with crewed, need with kneed and side with sighed.

- Scottish English has no /ʊ/, instead transferring Scots /u/. Thus pull and pool are homophones.

- Cot and caught are not differentiated in most Central Scottish varieties, as they are in some other varieties.

- In most varieties, there is no /ж/:/ɑː/ distinction; therefore, bath, trap, and palm have the same vowel.

- The happY vowel is most commonly /e/ (as in face), but may also be /ɪ/ (as in kit) or /i/ (as in fleece).

- /θs/ is often used in plural nouns where southern English has /рz/ (baths, youths, etc); with and booth are pronounced with θ.

29. Irish English

Hiberno-English – also known as Irish English

Hiberno-English retains many phonemic differentiations.

- With some local exceptions, /r/ occurs postvocally, making most Hiberno-English dialects rhotic

- /t/ is not usually pronounced as a plosive where it does not occur word-initially; instead, it is pronounced as a slit fricative

- The distinction between w /w/ and wh /hw/, as in wine vs. whine, is preserved.

-/ɒː/ and /o/ in horse and hoarse is preserved, though not usually in Dublin or Belfast.

- A distinction between [ɛɹ]-[ʌɹ]-[ʌɹ] in herd-bird-curd may be found.

- /l/ is never velarised

- The /aɪ/ in "night" may be pronounced in a wide variety of ways, e.g. [əɪ], [ɔɪ], [ʌɪ] and [ɑɪ], the latter two being the most common in middle class speech, the former two, in popular speech.

- The /ɔɪ/ in "boy" may be pronounced [ɑːɪ] (i.e. the vowel of thought plus a y) in conservative accents

- In some varieties, speakers make no distinction between the [ʌ] in putt and the [ʊ] in put, pronouncing both as the latter

- Any and many are pronounced to rhyme with nanny, Danny by very many speakers, i.e. with /a/

- /eɪ/ often becomes /ɛ/ in words such as gave and came (becoming "gev" and "kem")

- /dj/ becomes /dʒ/, e.g. dew/due, duke and duty sound like "Jew", "jook" and "jooty".

/tj/ becomes /tʃ/, e.g. tube is "choob", tune is "choon"

/nj/ becomes /n/, e.g. new becomes "noo"

The following show neither dropping nor coalescence:

+ /kj/; + /hj/; + /mj/ Dublin English

As with London and New York, Dublin has a number of dialects which differ significantly based on class and age group. These are roughly divided into three categories: "local Dublin", or the broad-working class dialect (sometimes referred to as the "working-class", "inner-Dublin" or "knacker" accent); "mainstream Dublin", the typical accent spoken by middle-class or suburban speakers; and "new Dublin", an accent among younger people (born after 1970).