0.3 Ulster-Scots: vocabulary, grammar and syntax

Despite a history of long-standing and widespread use, almost nothing exists in print to describe the structure of the Ulster-Scots language. It has been allowed to become one of the most stigmatised and culturally marginalized lesser-used languages of Europe.

The only aspects of Ulster-Scots which have been subject to scholarly attention until recent times are its vocabulary and, to a lesser extent, its pronunciation. Linguistic studies making mention of Ulster-Scots have been conducted almost exclusively by academics with an English language specialism and from an English language perspective. Indeed, with very few exceptions, these scholars have not been themselves speakers of Ulster-Scots and their consequent ‘dialectal’ approach to Ulster-Scots may have increased, rather than decreased, its marginalisation. Even within the field of lexical studies, for example, the available dictionaries have considerable limitations. With the exception of James Fenton’s The Hamely Tongue, dictionaries of Scots and Ulster-Scots are restricted in their value in that they fail to provide the total vocabulary of the modern language (including words and meanings shared with English). Furthermore, as they provide only the English meanings for non-standard English or ‘dialect’ Ulster words (and none of the reverse English-to-Ulster-Scots meanings), we have no way of discovering how an Ulster-Scots speaker would express a particular English word. For example, we cannot look up ‘material’ and discover that the Ulster-Scots equivalent is stuff. Indeed we cannot even look up the word stuff in any of the Scots or Ulster ‘dialect’ dictionaries since the word (with this sense) happens to be shared with English. In contrast, we may look up 'material' in an English-Norse dictionary to find stoff, or even in an English-Dutch dictionary to find stof.

All languages differ from each other in grammar and syntax just as they do in vocabulary. Unfortunately for the reputation of Ulster-Scots as a language in its own right, most of its creative writers (that is, those writers who have deliberately attempted to write in Ulster-Scots) have tended to concentrate on including pronunciation-spellings or distinctive ‘dialect’ words in their own work, at the expense of using distinctive grammatical or syntactic features. This is particularly true of the Ulster-Scots poets who, since the 1700s, have consciously written verse with a fuller Ulster-Scots vocabulary than later writers, while at the same time preferring English rules of grammar and sentence construction. So it is that written Ulster-Scots differs significantly from the spoken, vernacular language which has its own peculiar grammar. Ulster-Scots grammar, therefore, cannot be studied from the written texts alone, for the grammatical evidence in the corpus of literature is scant. An intimate knowledge of the spoken tongue is also required.

The vocabulary, or the range of words used by the speakers of a language, can provide only a partial view of that language. No-one can properly learn a language by reference to a dictionary alone. Syntax – or the rules or combining, structuring and modifying words in meaningful sentences – is the essence of any language. If Ulster-Scots speakers were to employ only Standard English syntax when articulating ‘dialect’ words, then we would not be describing a ‘language’. However, it is important to note the relationship between Ulster-Scots and English both in vocabulary and in grammar. Some words are shared by both languages and so are some grammatical rules. More importantly, however, it is also true that not all the words and not all the grammatical rules of everyday English are used in Ulster-Scots.

The point that Ulster-Scots speakers employ their own distinctive range of words but without a full English vocabulary is not often appreciated. ‘Partly-corrected’ Ulster-Scots, that is, Ulster-Scots modified by Standard English, is a fact of life as each generation witnesses the erosion of its distinctive vocabulary by Standard English. ‘Meat’ (full Ulster-Scots form mait or mate) was, in the recent past, preferred to the alternative English word ‘food’; ‘over’ (full Ulster-Scots form owre) is often used instead of English ‘too’, as in ‘the coast wasn’t over dear’; ‘corn’ (full Ulster-Scots form coarn) is still preferred to ‘oats’; 'maybe' ‘(full Ulster-Scots form aiblins) is preferred to ‘perhaps’; 'folk' (full Ulster-Scots form fowk) is preferred to 'people'; and 'sore head'  (full Ulster-Scots form sair heid) is preferred to 'headache'.  In trying to establish what is ‘good’and what is ‘bad’ Ulster-Scots, it might be better to regard sore head as more acceptable Ulster-Scots than an artificial construction like heidache; over as better than ‘too’ spelt artificially as tae; corn as better than 'oats' spelt as aits; and similarly to regard meat as better than ‘food’ spelt as fud or fuid. Ulster-Scots speech is also characterised by understatement, so that wairm (‘warm’) tends to be used rather than het (‘hot’) and cuil ‘cool’ rather than coul (cold), for example in the frequently-heard observation cuil day theday (when ‘cold day today’ is meant). A scathing critique of some pretentious individual is not likely to be lengthy – probably no more than “thon’s a boy!” (‘he’s a rare one’).

It is inevitable that any ‘grammar’ of Ulster-Scots will focus on those features of the language which differ most from Standard English grammar. However, just as some ‘non-standard English’ words may be shared between Ulster-Scots and some English dialects, so too it is with grammar: some of the grammatical features which differ from those of Standard English, and which are noted in this book, may also be shared with English colloquial or dialectal speech, or even by speakers of some dialects of American English. It is well beyond the scope of this work to draw grammatical comparisons with dialects or languages other than Standard English. So, whenever ‘English'  is referred to hereafter, it can be taken to mean Standard English (and usually, ‘literary’ English. When Ulster-Scots pronunciation is compared to ‘English', this should, however, be taken to mean Standard English as spoken in Ulster. No claims are made that the grammatical features described here are unique to Ulster-Scots, for even the precise parallels with Scottish-Scots grammar are still relatively unknown.

Grammar and Syntax

Grammar and syntax, the main focus of this book, constitute the system of rules which speakers of any language use to produce, arrange and modify the words in their vocabulary in order to express themselves meaningfully. A prescriptive grammar book presents these rules in order to demonstrate how one ought to speak or write, and so provides a standard for the language. This grammar is not intended to be a prescriptive one, but rather it is a descriptive grammar, providing an externalised description of one speaker’s perceptions of the language (although confirmed and substantiated in parts by others).

Unavoidably, this study is mostly introspective, for it is based on the author’s own understanding of the Ulster-Scots tongue, an understanding formed by his upbringing, socially and geographically, just inside the periphery of the Ulster-Scots community in east Antrim. However, this ‘native’ understanding has been coloured by years of historical research involving familiarity with many early Ulster-Scots documents, and more recently, with a detailed exploration of 18^th and 19^th century Ulster-Scots literature.