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Doric Scots
Doric, the popular name for Mid Northern Scots or Northeast Scots, refers to the Scots language as spoken in the northeast of Scotland. There is an extensive body of literature, mostly poetry, ballads, and songs, written in Doric. In some literary works, Doric is used as the language of conversation while the rest of the work is in Lallans Scots or British English. A number of 20th and 21st century poets have written poetry in the Doric dialect. Nomenclature The term "Doric" was formerly used to refer to all dialects of Lowland Scots, but during the twentieth century it became increasingly associated with Mid Northern Scots. The name possibly originated as a jocular reference to the Doric dialect of the Ancient Greek language. Greek Dorians lived in Laconia, including Sparta, and other more rural areas, and were alleged by the ancient Greeks to have spoken laconically and in a language thought harsher in tone and more phonetically conservative than the Attic spoken in Athens. ...
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Scottish Lowlands
The Lowlands ( sco, Lallans or ; gd, a' Ghalldachd, , place of the foreigners, ) is a cultural and historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Lowlands and the Highlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland Scots replaced Scottish Gaelic throughout most of the Lowlands. Geography The Lowlands is not an official geographical or administrative area of the country. There are two main topographic regions: the Lowlands and the Southern Uplands. The term "Lowlands" mainly refers to the Central Lowlands. However, in normal usage it refers to those parts of Scotland not in the Highlands (or Gàidhealtachd). The boundary is usually considered to be a line between Stonehaven and Helensburgh (on the Firth of Clyde). The Lowlands lie south and east of the line. Note that some parts of the Lowlands (such as the Southern Uplands) are not physically "low," Merrick for example reaching , while some areas indisputably in the Highlands (such as Islay ...
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Cardinal Vowels
Cardinal vowels are a set of reference vowels used by phoneticians in describing the sounds of languages. They are classified depending on the position of the tongue relative to the roof of the mouth, how far forward or back is the highest point of the tongue, and the position of the lips (rounded or unrounded). A cardinal vowel is a vowel sound produced when the tongue is in an extreme position, either front or back, high or low. The current system was systematised by Daniel Jones in the early 20th century, though the idea goes back to earlier phoneticians, notably Ellis and Bell. Table of cardinal vowels Three of the cardinal vowels—, and —have articulatory definitions. The vowel is produced with the tongue as far forward and as high in the mouth as is possible (without producing friction), with spread lips. The vowel is produced with the tongue as far back and as high in the mouth as is possible, with protruded lips. This sound can be approximated by adopting t ...
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Vowel
A vowel is a syllabic speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness and also in quantity (length). They are usually voiced and are closely involved in prosodic variation such as tone, intonation and stress. The word ''vowel'' comes from the Latin word , meaning "vocal" (i.e. relating to the voice). In English, the word ''vowel'' is commonly used to refer both to vowel sounds and to the written symbols that represent them (a, e, i, o, u, and sometimes y). Definition There are two complementary definitions of vowel, one phonetic and the other phonological. *In the phonetic definition, a vowel is a sound, such as the English "ah" or "oh" , produced with an open vocal tract; it is median (the air escapes along the middle of the tongue), oral (at least some of the airflow must escape through the mouth), frictionless and continuant ...
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Central Scots
Central Scots is a group of dialects of Scots. Central Scots is spoken from Fife and Perthshire to the Lothians and Wigtownshire, often split into North East Central Scots (Northeast Mid Scots) and South East Central Scots (Southeast Mid Scots), West Central Scots (West Mid Scots) and South West Central Scots (Southwest Mid Scots). Like other varieties of Scots, Central Scots has been undergoing a process of language attrition, whereby successive generations of speakers have adopted more and more features from Standard English. By the end of the twentieth century Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland. Phonology Consonants Most consonants are usually pronounced much as in English but: * ch is traditionally realised in, for example, ''bocht'' (bought), ''coch'' (cough), ''dochter'' (daughter), ''focht'' (fought), ''socht'' (sought ) and ''troch'' (trough). * ld and nd elision to and occurs in all Central Scots dialects but in th ...
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Consonant Cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster, consonant sequence or consonant compound, is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word ''splits''. In the education field it is variously called a consonant cluster or a consonant blend. Some linguists argue that the term can be properly applied only to those consonant clusters that occur within one syllable. Others claim that the concept is more useful when it includes consonant sequences across syllable boundaries. According to the former definition, the longest consonant clusters in the word ''extra'' would be and , whereas the latter allows , which is phonetically in some accents. Phonotactics Each language has an associated set of phonotactic constraints. Languages' phonotactics differ as to what consonant clusters they permit. Many languages are more restrictive than English in terms of consonant clusters, and some forbid consonant clusters ...
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Buchan
Buchan is an area of north-east Scotland, historically one of the original provinces of the Kingdom of Alba. It is now one of the six committee areas and administrative areas of Aberdeenshire Council, Scotland. These areas were created by the council in 1996, when the Aberdeenshire council area was created under the Local Government etc (Scotland) Act 1994. The council area was formed by merging three districts of the Grampian Region: Banff and Buchan, Gordon and Kincardine and Deeside. The committee area of Buchan was formed from part of the former district of Banff and Buchan. Etymology The genesis of the name ''Buchan'' is shrouded in uncertainty, but may be of Pictish origin. The name may involve an equivalent of Welsh ''buwch'' meaning "a cow". American academic Thomas Clancy has noted cautiously the similarity between the territory names ''Buchan'' and ''Marr'' to those of the Welsh commotes ''Cantref Bychan'' and ''Cantref Mawr'', meaning "small-" and "large-commote ...
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Modern Scots
Modern Scots comprises the varieties of Scots traditionally spoken in Lowland Scotland and parts of Ulster, from 1700. Throughout its history, Modern Scots has been undergoing a process of language attrition, whereby successive generations of speakers have adopted more and more features from English, largely from the colloquial register. This process of language contact or dialectisation under English has accelerated rapidly since widespread access to mass media in English, and increased population mobility became available after the Second World War. It has recently taken on the nature of wholesale language shift towards Scottish English, sometimes also termed language change, convergence or merger. By the end of the twentieth century Scots was at an advanced stage of language death over much of Lowland Scotland. Residual features of Scots are often simply regarded today as slang, especially by people from outwith Scotland, but even by many Scots. Dialects The varieties of ...
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Consonants
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced with the back of the tongue; , pronounced in the throat; , and , pronounced by forcing air through a narrow channel (fricatives); and and , which have air flowing through the nose ( nasals). Contrasting with consonants are vowels. Since the number of speech sounds in the world's languages is much greater than the number of letters in any one alphabet, linguists have devised systems such as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) to assign a unique and unambiguous symbol to each attested consonant. The English alphabet has fewer consonant letters than the English language has consonant sounds, so digraphs like , , , and are used to extend the alphabet, though some letters and digraphs represent more than one consonant. For example, th ...
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Theocritus
Theocritus (; grc-gre, Θεόκριτος, ''Theokritos''; born c. 300 BC, died after 260 BC) was a Greek poet from Sicily and the creator of Ancient Greek pastoral poetry. Life Little is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems ('' Idylls''; ) commonly attributed to him have little claim to authenticity. It is clear that at a very early date two collections were made: one consisting of poems whose authorship was doubtful yet formed a corpus of bucolic poetry, the other a strict collection of those works considered to have been composed by Theocritus himself. Theocritus was from Sicily, as he refers to Polyphemus, the Cyclops in the ''Odyssey'', as his "countryman." He also probably lived in Alexandria for a while, where he wrote about everyday life, notably '' Pharmakeutria''. It is also speculated that Theocritus was born in Syracuse, lived on the island of Kos, and lived in E ...
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Allan Ramsay (poet)
Allan Ramsay (15 October 16867 January 1758) was a Scottish poet (or ''makar''), playwright, publisher, librarian, and impresario of early Enlightenment Edinburgh. Life and career Allan Ramsay was born at Leadhills, Lanarkshire, to John Ramsay, superintendent of Lord Hopetoun's lead-mines and his wife, Alice Bower, a native of Derbyshire. Allan Ramsay and his elder brother Robert probably attended the parish school at Crawfordjohn. In 1701 Allan was apprenticed to a wig-maker in Edinburgh and received his indentures back by 1709. He married Christian Ross in 1712; a few years after he had established himself as a wig-maker (not as a barber, as has been often said) in the High Street, and soon found himself in comfortable circumstances. They had six children. His eldest child was Allan Ramsay, the portrait painter. Ramsay's first efforts in verse-making were inspired by the meetings of the Easy Club (founded in 1712), of which he was an original member; and in 1715 he becam ...
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Margaret Drabble
Dame Margaret Drabble, Lady Holroyd, (born 5 June 1939) is an English biographer, novelist and short story writer. Drabble's books include '' The Millstone'' (1965), which won the following year's John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize, and ''Jerusalem the Golden'', which won the 1967 James Tait Black Memorial Prize. She was honoured by the University of Cambridge in 2006, having earlier received awards from numerous redbrick (e.g. Sheffield, Hull, Manchester,) and plateglass universities (such as Bradford, Keele, University of East Anglia, East Anglia and University of York, York). She received the American Academy of Arts and Letters E. M. Forster Award in 1973. Drabble also wrote biographies of Arnold Bennett and Angus Wilson and edited two editions of ''The Oxford Companion to English Literature'' and a book on Thomas Hardy. Early life Drabble was born in Sheffield, the second daughter of the advocate and novelist John F. Drabble and the teacher Kathleen Marie (née Bloor) ...
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