Glasgow Patter

The Glasgow dialect, popularly known as the Glasgow patter or Glaswegian, varies from Scottish English at one end of a bipolar linguistic continuum to the local dialect of West Central Scots at the other. Therefore, the speech of many Glaswegians can draw on a "continuum between fully localised and fully standardised". Additionally, the Glasgow dialect has Highland English and Hiberno-English influences owing to the speech of Highlanders and Irish people who migrated in large numbers to the Glasgow area in the 19th and early 20th centuries. While being named for Glasgow, the accent is typical for natives across the full Greater Glasgow area and associated counties such as Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire, Dunbartonshire and parts of Ayrshire, which formerly came under the single authority of Strathclyde. It is most common in working class people, which can lead to stigma from members of other classes or those outside Glasgow.

As with other dialects, it is subject to dialect levelling where particularly Scots vocabulary is replaced by Standard English words and, in particular, words largely from colloquial English. However, Glaswegians continue to create new euphemisms and nicknames for well-known local figures and buildings.

Literature

The Glasgow vernacular has also established itself in Scottish literature. Many authors spell some of the Scots elements phonetically, often coinciding with common spelling errors,Macafee C.I. (1983) ‘Glasgow’ in Varieties of English around the World. Amsterdam: Benjamins p.40 rather than using the prestigious Modern Scots conventions. The general effect of that, particularly its comic forms, is to exaggerate the unintelligibility of Glasgow speech to outsiders. The resulting orthographic representation of the vernacular gives the overall impression of an anti-standard rather than a local standard.

Michael Munro wrote a guide to Glaswegian entitled ''The Patter'', first published in 1985. With illustrations by David Neilson, and later by the Paisley-born artist and playwright John Byrne, the book became very popular in Glasgow. It was followed by ''The Patter – Another Blast'' in 1988, with ''The Complete Patter'', an updated compendium of the first and second books, being published in 1996.

James Kelman's 1994 novel ''How Late It Was, How Late'' is written largely in Glaswegian dialect from the point of view of Sammy Samuels, a 38-year-old ex-convict who wakes up blind after a drinking binge and a fight with police. The novel won the 1994 Booker Prize.

Jamie Stuart, a Church of Scotland elder from the High Carntyne Church, produced "A Glasgow Bible" in 1997, relating some biblical tales in the Glaswegian vernacular. More recently, in 2014 ''Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' was translated into Glaswegian Scots by Thomas Clark as ''Alice's Adventirs in Wunnerlaun''. A 2020 Graeme Armstrong novel, ''The Young Team'', narrated by a gang member in the local dialect, focuses on the ' ned culture' of the region in the early 21st century (albeit set in Airdrie, North Lanarkshire a few miles east of Glasgow rather than the in the city itself).

Phonology

Jane Stuart-Smith contributed a chapter to the 1999 book ''Urban Voices'' entitled "Glasgow: accent and voice quality". She defined two varieties for descriptive purposes:
* Glasgow Standard English (GSE), the Glaswegian form of Scottish Standard English, spoken by most middle-class speakers
* Glasgow vernacular (GV), the dialect of many working-class speakers, which is historically based on West-Central Scots, but which shows strong influences from Irish English, its own distinctive slang and increased levelling towards GSE

Differences between the two systems are mostly in lexical incidence. Many working-class speakers use the SSE system when reading aloud, albeit with different qualities for the vowels. The table below shows the vowels used in both variants, as given in Table 11.1 of Stuart-Smith's work.

Stuart-Smith also gave the following summary of how consonants differ in the Glasgow patter from other dialects.
* T-glottalization is "strongly stigmatized yet extremely common". Glottalization also occurs of and , albeit less frequently.
* and can be pronounced with dentalisation. is sometimes omitted at the end of a word (e.g. ''old'', ''stand'').
* Th-fronting occurs with some younger speakers.
* is used in words such as ''loch'', although this is dying out amongst younger speakers.
* is used in words beginning "wh" (e.g. ''whine'').
* There is no H-dropping except in unstressed cases of ''him'' and ''her''.
* Yod-dropping only occurs after or .
* Most Glasgow speech is rhotic, but non-rhoticity can be found amongst some younger working-class speakers. The realisation of /r/ can be , or .
* is a dark ''l'' in almost all positions.

In the media

In the 1970s, the Glasgow-born comedian Stanley Baxter parodied the patter on his television sketch show. "Parliamo Glasgow" was a spoof programme in which Baxter played a language coach and various scenarios using Glaswegian dialogue were played out for laughs.

The 1998 film by Ken Loach, ''My Name is Joe'', is one of the few films recorded lmostentirely in Glasgow dialect. As a result, the film had to be given subtitles when released in the United States and even for audiences in England. The same situation occurred with another Loach film, 2002's '' Sweet Sixteen'', based in the town of Greenock which has a local accent virtually identical to that of Glasgow, and with the 2010 release '' Neds'' set in the city.

Popular Scottish television comedies such as ''Rab C. Nesbitt'', ''Chewin' the Fat'', '' Still Game'', ''Burnistoun'' and ''Limmy's Show'' also provide reference material, and have themselves contributed popular new expressions to the patter.

Alleged influence from Cockney

Studies have indicated that working-class adolescents in areas such as Glasgow have begun to use certain aspects of Cockney and other Anglicisms in their speech, infiltrating the traditional Glasgow speech. For example, th-fronting is commonly found, and typical Scottish features such as the post-vocalic /r/ are reduced, although this last feature is more likely to be a development of Central Belt Scots origin, unrelated to Anglo-English nonrhoticity. Researches suggest the use of English speech characteristics is likely to be consequential on the influence of London and south east England accents which feature prominently on television.

The linguist John C. Wells, a critic of the media reporting on Estuary English, has questioned whether Glasgow is being influenced by Cockney speech. He claimed that journalists had misrepresented the prevalence of th-fronting in Glasgow and that there is no evidence that th-fronting originated in London. He also wrote that all dialects change over time and that change does not mean that the Glasgow patter will disappear.

References

*References to "Stuart-Smith" are to

External links

Glesca Glossary: self-published glossary (of variable quality and pertinence)




A series of articles on the Glasgow dialect on the Scots Language Centre website



The Online Scots Dictionary

{{DEFAULTSORT:Glasgow Patter
City colloquials
Culture in Glasgow
Scottish English
Scots dialects