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Scottish Accents/ Dialects


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6 minutes ago, invergowrie arab said:

Do you have ears? From West End to  Whitfield everyone calls it a circle

This is what fascinates me. I'm in Newport but went to school in Dundee, and even then I don't recall people calling it a circle. Madness.

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47 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

I've always been baffled by the talk on here about circles/roundabouts in Dundee. I don't think I've ever heard someone call a roundabout a circle. Maybe I just instinctively don't associate with the type of people who would do such a thing.

It was originally called a traffic circle. 

There is a story that it was a Dundonian that invented the circle/ roundabout but I can't find any evidence of this online.

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1 hour ago, Zetterlund said:

I've always been baffled by the talk on here about circles/roundabouts in Dundee. I don't think I've ever heard someone call a roundabout a circle. Maybe I just instinctively don't associate with the type of people who would do such a thing.

Whit?

I thought it was a legal requirement for Dundonians to call roundabouts circles.

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46 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Whit?

I thought it was a legal requirement for Dundonians to call roundabouts circles.

I managed to get through school without any wedgies for calling them roundabouts. 

Plenty wedgies just for being a Fifer tbf.

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4 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

I managed to get through school without any wedgies for calling them roundabouts. 

Plenty wedgies just for being a Fifer tbf.

Did you refer to road features a lot in your school days?  I don't remember them coming up that much in mine.

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3 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Did you refer to road features a lot in your school days?  I don't remember them coming up that much in mine.

Plenty of them around the school and the route into town, mates' houses etc so I assume they came up. 

Even now I'm struggling to think of anyone I know who I've heard call it a circle. My mind has been blown by this.

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10 minutes ago, Zetterlund said:

Plenty of them around the school and the route into town, mates' houses etc so I assume they came up. 

Even now I'm struggling to think of anyone I know who I've heard call it a circle. My mind has been blown by this.

Fair enough.

My parents are from Dundee, so lots of extended family is.  I just thought it was a total thing.  Is it generational maybe?

Is it fading?  I don't know and am not well placed to say.

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9 minutes ago, Monkey Tennis said:

Fair enough.

My parents are from Dundee, so lots of extended family is.  I just thought it was a total thing.  Is it generational maybe?

Is it fading?  I don't know and am not well placed to say.

Certain traffic circles which might be considered landmarks by the locals were only ever called roundabouts in my experience. Swallow Roundabout, Forfar Rd Roundabout, Claypotts Roundabout etc. Maybe 'circle' is common but not as widespread as some of the natives think. 

For the circle proponents, would you pull someone up for calling it a roundabout?

Is the Swallow Circle acceptable?

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On 27/01/2020 at 15:09, Aim Here said:

...whereas someone from Shetland can hear the difference between someone brought up on various islands. To prove it, here's a Shetlander singing about how indecipherable he finds the Whalsay accent.

 

Shetland's quite a big place in terms of distances so even different parts of the Shetland Mainland can be different. Used to find the Cunningsburgh accent noticeably different from the Lerwick and Dunrossness ones on either side, for example, and that's just one of the peninsulas involved.

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50 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

Shetland's quite a big place in terms of distances so even different parts of the Shetland Mainland can be different. Used to find the Cunningsburgh accent noticeably different from the Lerwick and Dunrossness ones on either side, for example, and that's just one of the peninsulas involved.

It's not that big. The distances you're talking about are maybe, what, 15-20 miles (about as far apart as Edinburgh and Livingston), and maybe 2000 people, not all of them locals (outside of Lerwick proper, which is 7000 or so). But yeah, there's noticeable differences - especially when islands are involved.

 

Edited by Aim Here
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It’s interesting in fife with the differences in dialects in places that are relatively close.   It’s probably easier to notice as a local but they are certain words/phrases that stand out.  Take Di for example,  it’s very in the common in central fife mining  villages,  not very common in the west fife mining villages and very rare in the towns/villages in between! 

Edited by parsforlife
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I remember my best pal when I was wee was a lassie whose family were Shetlanders.  She was born in Elgin but fucked off up to Shetland for a year when she was about 8 or something and came back speaking about weird words for apples (pirry montes or somesuch?) and the likes.

We also had Desmond Ward who arrived from Lerwick in second year at high school.  The only c**t that could understand him was Keith Plant, and Australian. 

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