The Last Long Vowel

In today's mail Linguistics Lounge received a copy of Arab Strap's 2005 album, The Last Romance, on vinyl, a rare find. Linguistics Lounge is a fan of Arab Strap in general, but of this album in particular, and is sad the band broke up after making it. Anyway, whilst listening to Arab Strap in all their depressing glory, Linguistics Lounge was reminded that the Scottish English accent is phonologically interesting.

Try listening to "The Shy Retirer" music video, from their Monday at the Hug and Pint album. It's a great song. So why is it difficult to understand the singing?



The answer is probably due in part to the elongated Scottish vowels. The Scottish have what's known as the Scottish Vowel Length rule, developed by a phonologist to explain the phonological environment of Scottish English vowels. This rule states in part that:

• [ə], [ɪ], [ʌ], [ɛ] and [a] are usually short.
• [e], [i], [o], [u] and [ø] are usually long.

These variations in vowel length make the fact that Scottish English is being spoken apparent. In standard British and American English, all vowels are the same length.

However, this isn't the only phonological variation going on in Scottish English. Try listening to "Love Detective", from The Red Thread album.



Do you notice how the [r]s sound during the singing? That's because Scottish English speakers often change their [r]s into flaps.

Finally, here's "Speed Date", from the amazing The Last Romance.


As you can tell from these three videos, Arab Strap sings about love in all its disgusting, murky, fascinating, complicated forms. This is what makes them compelling-the lyrics are always stellar. However, the accent that is noticeable due to the vowel length variations and the flapping of [r] is difficult to get past at first for non-native speakers. It just takes practice-so go out, find lots of Arab Strap to listen to, and before you know it you'll sound like a native Glaswegian!