Shetland dialect

Dialect of Scots

Shetland dialect (also variously known as Shetlandic; broad or auld Shetland or Shaetlan; and referred to as Modern Shetlandic Scots (MSS) by some linguists) is a dialect of Insular Scots spoken in Shetland, an archipelago to the north of mainland Scotland. It is derived from the Scots dialects brought to Shetland from the end of the fifteenth century by Lowland Scots, mainly from Fife and Lothian, with a degree of Norse influence from the Norn language, which is an extinct North Germanic language spoken on the islands until the late 18th century. Consequently, Shetland dialect contains many words of Norn origin. Many of them, if they are not place names, refer to e. g. seasons, weather, plants, animals, places, food, materials, tools, colours, parts of boats. Like Doric in North East Scotland, Shetland dialect retains a high degree of autonomy due to geography and isolation from southern dialects. It has a large amount of unique vocabulary but as there are no standard criteria for distinguishing languages from dialects, whether or not Shetland dialect is a separate language from Scots is much debated.

"Shetland dialect speakers generally have a rather slow delivery, pitched low and with a somewhat level intonation".

By and large, consonants are pronounced much as in other Modern Scots varieties. Exceptions are:
The dental fricatives and may be realised as alveolar plosives and respectively, for example and rather than , or debuccalised and , (thing) and mither (mother) as in Central Scots. The qu in quick, queen and queer may be realised rather than , initial ch may be realised and the initial cluster wr may be realised or .

To some extent a bewildering variety of spellings have been used to represent the varied pronunciation of the Shetland dialect varieties. Latterly the use of the apologetic apostrophe to represent 'missing' English letters has been avoided. On the whole the literary conventions of Modern Scots are applied, if not consistently, the main differences being:

The and realisation of what is usually and in other Scots dialects are often written d and t rather than th; "thing" and "there" written "ting" and "dere". The realisation of the qu in quick, queen and queer is often written wh; "queer" is written "wheer". The realisation of initial ch, usually in other Scots dialects, is often written sh; "chair" is written "shair". The letters j and k are used rather than y and c, influenced by Norse spelling. The letter j is often used to render the semivowel of the letter y, especially for the palatalised consonants in words such as Yule in English— rendered Yuil in Scots— which becomes written Jøl in Shetland dialect (for the additional change of the Scots ui to ø in this word, see below). Literary Scots au and aw (vowel 12 and sometimes vowel 17) are often represented by aa in written Shetland dialect. Literary Scots ui and eu (vowel 7) are often represented by ü, ö, or ø influenced by Norse spelling.

The grammatical structure of Shetland dialect generally follows that of Modern Scots, with traces of Norse (Norn) and those features shared with Standard English.

Nouns in Shetland dialect have grammatical gender beside natural gender. Some nouns which are clearly considered neuter in English are masculine or feminine, such as spade (m), sun (m), mön (f), kirk (f). This can also apply to dummy constructions, e. g. what time is he? In a study comparing pre oil Shetland dialect usage from oral history recordings and contemporary speech from interviews, the gender system in Shetland dialect was found to be a stable feature of modern dialect usage, and is not tied to use alongside "traditional lexical items". The plural of nouns is usually formed by adding s, as in Standard English. There are a few irregular plurals, such as kye, 'cows' or een, 'eyes'.

As is usual in Scots, the past tense of weak verbs is formed by either adding ed, it, or t, as in spoot, spootit (move quickly). The auxiliary verb ta be 'to be', is used where Standard English would use 'to have': I'm written for 'I have written'. Ta hae 'to have', is used as an auxiliary with the modal verbs coud ('could'), hed ('had'), micht ('might'), most ('must'), sood ('should'), and wid ('would') and then reduced to , often written a in dialect writing: Du sood a telt me, 'you should have told me'. As is usual in Scots, auxiliary and monosyllabic verbs can be made negative by adding na: widna, 'would not'. Otherwise, the Scots negative has no where standard English has 'not'.