Spelling guide to Ulster-Scots vowel sounds

The simplest way of illustrating the vowel spelling systems used in Ulster-Scots today is by comparison with common English equivalents in the range of their shared vocabulary. It should be remembered, however, that some of these ‘homonyms’ can carry different meanings in Ulster-Scots from their English word equivalents.

Words spelt with the vowel ‘-a’ in English

The short a-sound in modern English is represented by e in Ulster-Scots, except where it precedes r, when it can be written ai. This distinction reflects the traditional orthography.

a) English ‘a’ → Ulster-Scots ai (before ‘r’)

b) English ‘a’ → Ulster-Scots e

Notable exceptions (in accordance with the traditional spelling):

c) English ‘a’ → Ulster-Scots u

Words spelt with the vowel ‘e’ in English

a) English ‘e’ → Ulster-Scots i

b) English ‘e’ → Ulster-Scots u

c) English ‘ea’ → Ulster-Scots ei

Notable exceptions (spelling only):

d) English ‘ea’ → Ulster-Scots ai

Notable exceptions (spelling ‘a-e’ traditional):

Notable exception (spelling and pronunciation):

Note: Although ‘heart’ does not have the same [ee] vowel sound as rear, cheat, etc. in English, the Ulster-Scots spelling and pronunciation follows the same ‘ea’ → ai pattern hairt.

e) English ‘e’ and ‘ea’ → Ulster-Scots a

Notable exception (spelling and pronunciation):

Words spelt with the vowel ‘i’ in English

a) English ‘i’ → Ulster-Scots ï

Where the Ulster-Scots equivalent of a word with short ‘i’ would traditionally substitute with an a, the diacritic may be retained (eg ‘quit’ → quät; ‘ministry’ → männystrie).

b) The short ‘i’ after ‘w’ or ‘wh’ is spelt with a u (eg ‘witch’ → wutch), as follows:

c) English ‘i’ Ulster-Scots ee

Words spelt with the vowel ‘o’ in English

a) English ‘o’ → Ulster-Scots a or ai (with same [ai] sound rhyming with ‘rain’)

The Ulster-Scots pronunciations associated with this feature are self-evident. The spellings are traditional, well-known and often used as ‘markers’ of Ulster-Scots writings and speech to distinguish Ulster-Scots from mid-Ulster English dialect. Historically the same vowel sound is represented in Ulster-Scots in two ways as follows:

English ‘o’ → Ulster-Scots a

English ‘o’ Ulster-Scots ai (with the same [ai] sound)

b) English ‘o’ → Ulster-Scots a (sounding [ah] sound)

c) English ‘o’ and ‘oe’ → Ulster-Scots ae

d) English ‘o’ → Ulster-Scots oa

e) English ‘-ow’ → Ulster-Scots -owe (sounding as in ‘how’)

f) English ‘o’ → Ulster-Scots i

g) English ‘ow’ and ‘ou’ → Ulster-Scots oo

These two spellings in English are historically spelt one way in Ulster-Scots as follows English ‘ow’ → Ulster-Scots oo

Notable exceptions (spelling and pronunciation):

English ‘ou’ → Ulster-Scots oo

Notable exceptions (spelling and pronunciation):

h) English ‘oo’ → Ulster-Scots ui

One of the best-known conventions for representing Scots vowel sounds is the -ui-equivalent to English ‘-oo-’ as in ‘good’ → guid. However, there are different local pronunciations of guid as [gid], [geed], [gud], etc (rhyming with English ‘hid’, or ‘need’, or in some areas with English ‘mud’).

Notable exceptions (spelling only):

Notable exceptions (spelling and pronunciation):

The shortened vowel sounds suggested by tuk and stud are also reflected in the spelling conventions of wud, cud, shud:

i) English ‘-old’ → Ulster-Scots -oul (with an ‘ow’ sound)

j) English final ‘-ow’ → Ulster-Scots -a and -ae

Notable exceptions (spelling and pronunciation):

Words spelt with the vowel ‘u’ in English

a) English ‘u’ and ‘ou’ → Ulster-Scots i

b) English ‘u’ → Ulster-Scots ü (denoting [uh] pronunciation)

Loss of final ‘-e’ of English words to signify a vowel sound change in Ulster-Scots

The dropping of final ‘-d’ in words like ‘find’ and ‘blind’ → fin and blin represents an actual vowel sound change in Ulster-Scots. Similarly, the vowel sound change in the following words can also be represented by the omission of the final ‘-e’.

Note: Divid appears to follow a similar pattern, but is the Ulster-Scots form of ‘divided’ rather than ‘divide’. Time only has a spelling and pronunciation change when used as a suffix in compounds like: ‘simmertim’, and ‘onietim’.

Long ‘a’ represented by á, aa and aw

In Ulster-Scots (and in Scots), the letter ‘a’ is generally pronounced [ah] (rhyming with ‘ma’ and not with ‘may’). However, the [ah] sound in words such as ava (pronounced [a-va]), can contrast with a longer [aw] sound in other words such as awa (pronounced [awah] or [awaw]) and anaa or anaw (‘and all’). Sometimes an accent to indicate the lengthened sound of this vowel may be encountered:

However, this is generally avoided by modern writers, and is not recommended.

Long ‘i’ represented by medial ‘y’

Another situation where accented vowels have been used is to indicate which particular vowel is stressed or lengthened in speech. For example the word ‘minister’ is often written meenister in Scots, but in Ulster-Scots speech the pronunciation is closer to [manny-stther] with some stress along with a change in pronunciation on the second vowel. In certain cases, medial English ‘i’ (and to a lesser extent medial ‘a’, ‘e’ and ‘u’), are represented by medial y in Ulster-Scots.

The use of medial ‘y’ in this way can also include massycrae for ‘massacre’ and monnyfectèr for ‘manufacture’, where ‘y’ is used in place of ‘a’ and ‘u’.

Long ‘o’ → Ulster-Scots ó (in English ‘-oa-’ words)

Shared English/Ulster-Scots words with an ‘oa’ spelling such as ‘road’, ‘boat’, ‘goat’, ‘coat’ etc, are pronounced locally [row-ad], [bow-at], [go-at], [co-at] in Ulster-Scots. In these situations, some writers have used an accent to indicate a vowel which is pronounced distinctly and separately from the adjacent vowel. As this is a local feature, it is only recommended for use by writers intending to indicate their local dialect.