Central Scots Dialect in the East Lothian County: 2018 Morphosyntactic Dialectal Survey

Abstract

The Scots language belongs to the Teutonic Germanic language family essentially spoken in the Lowland Scots area covering central and southern Scotland as well as the north-eastern part of the country. It is divided into four different groups of varieties, i.e. the Broad Scots dialectal group spoken in southern Scotland, the Doric dialect spoken in the north-eastern part of Scotland, the Insular Scots group spoken in the Shetland and Orkney Islands and the most spoken and written Scots dialectal group called Central Scots extending from the central western to the central eastern part of the country. The study carried out in the East Lothian county from 13 August to 21 August 2018 had the purpose to analyse the syntax and grammar of the local Lothian Scots and to determine if it still survives in the pervasive wave of Standard England English. A semi-structured type questionnaire was distributed to 17 people during this period revealing a radically different grammatical attitude from the other enquiries conducted in the Scottish Borders five years earlier.