Scottish velar fricative change by age, gender and class in Glasgow - hypothesis

[danny la rouge]

If anyone wants to undertake this research in a systematic way, my totally unrepresentative and subjective observation is this:

In Glasgow, the ch sound from loch is disappearing among young male working class Glaswegians. But not in young working class women, nor in middle class Glaswegians of any gender.

I’m originally from a rural area. In my day ch was pronounced as in loch in Greek origin words like patriarch, synchronised, and even melancholy. I’m slipping away from that in the last two, but patriarch and patriarchy definitely still get the ch.

But in my observation, young urban working class men will often say “lock” for loch. This is startling and I would like to see a study done.

Thank you, linguists of Urban.

 

[A380]

If anyone wants to undertake this research in a systematic way, my totally unrepresentative and subjective observation is this:

In Glasgow, the ch sound from loch is disappearing among young male working class Glaswegians. But not in young working class women, nor in middle class Glaswegians of any gender.

I’m originally from a rural area. In my day ch was pronounced as in loch in Greek origin words like patriarch, synchronised, and even melancholy. I’m slipping away from that in the last two, but patriarch and patriarchy definitely still get the ch.

But in my observation, young urban working class men will often say “lock” for loch. This is startling and I would like to see a study done.

Thank you, linguists of Urban.

young urban working class men, Do you see yourself in all three categories? Working class and Urban I'll grant you....

 

[Pickman's model]

maomao

 

[danny la rouge]

young urban working class men, Do you see yourself in all three categories? Working class and Urban I'll grant you....

No. I’m sorry if it looks like I was making that claim. No, I’m not young. I’m working class and urbane though. And I still say ch.

 

[Silas Loom]

I mentioned Zurich yesterday at dinner and my daughter was furious at what she believed was the pretension inherent in my voiceless velar fricative. She wanted it to be Zurick. She’s a yod dropper as well. I despair for her generation.

 

[ddraig]

also Cardiff/South Wales

Welsh accents: Is commuting changing how people speak?

Cardiff University researchers find some Welsh accents are being replaced by a more uniform one.

www.bbc.co.uk

Now Cardiff University researchers have found some of south Wales' accents are becoming less prominent among the young and being replaced by a more uniform one.

In Cardiff, they say, the distinctive "a" sound is not as pronounced as it once was.

 

[maomao]

That's not a hypothesis as in your title by the way but it is an interesting observation.

We think of accents as geographical identifiers but they also identify for class and generation (and sometimes other things). With mass media, internet etc. the geographical component is becoming weaker. It may be that young working class Glaswegians are dropping the 'ch' because they want to sound more like people on TikTok, want to sound less like middle class wankers or just because that was the sound that was easiest to change. The important thing is that it a) identifies them as different from other classes and generations and b) pisses old people off, as these are the main functions of accents.

 

[rubbershoes]

My knowledge of Glasgow accents is limited. I've visited the city once and spent only enough time there as it takes to buy a car.

But many regional accents are softening and dissipating. The mellifluous Devon accent is far less common amongst the young.

 

[maomao]

I mentioned Zurich yesterday at dinner and my daughter was furious at what she believed was the pretension inherent in my voiceless velar fricative. She wanted it to be Zurick. She’s a yod dropper as well. I despair for her generation.

It's extremely pretentious to use non-native phonemes when discussing foreign places. There's almost always an accepted English pronunciation. My mum used to use an uvular r if she talked about the Metro in Paris and I still bring it up to this day.

 

[weepiper]

It's extremely pretentious to use non-native phonemes when discussing foreign places. There's almost always an accepted English pronunciation. My mum used to use an uvular r if she talked about the Metro in Paris and I still bring it up to this day.

How about if you're Scottish and you say Zurich instead of Zurick? It's not a non-native phoneme then.

 

[maomao]

How about if you're Scottish and you say Zurich instead of Zurick? It's not a non-native phoneme then.

Absolutely. But Silas Loom is a plummy North Londoner.

 

[Silas Loom]

How about if you're Scottish and you say Zurich instead of Zurick? It's not a non-native phoneme then.

Or Jewish, and you grow up talking about chazzerim. Again, not weird or pretentious to pronounce Zurich properly.

 

[Silas Loom]

Absolutely. But Silas Loom is a plummy North Londoner.

See above . . .

 

[JimW]

The gender split seems more telling and ominous than the class one.

 

[Puddy_Tat]

My knowledge of Glasgow is close to zero, so can't comment on the specifics, but this is pretty much standard across the UK - the london accents that were around when i was a kitten are disappearing - in the 80s, it was usually possible to tell (for example) a woolwich from a catford from a bermondsey - i've read that in victorian london, working class people could be identified to within a few streets of home.

I have read something that suggests that accents in some of the london overspill 'new towns' are closer now to 1950s london accents than current london accents are (most of the new towns took their original population from one or two london boroughs) - are any of the new towns in scotland like that?

 

[danny la rouge]

How about if you're Scottish and you say Zurich instead of Zurick? It's not a non-native phoneme then.

Yeah, I wouldn’t say Paree for Paris, but I’d say Zurich for Zurich and Bach for Bach.

(In fact I even thought the place in England was Sandbach until I was told it’s Sandbatch).

 

[Sue]

Well I for one had no idea what a velar fricative was until I read this thread.

It may be that young working class Glaswegians are dropping the 'ch' because they want to sound more like people on TikTok, want to sound less like middle class wankers or just because that was the sound that was easiest to change. The important thing is that it a) identifies them as different from other classes and generations and b) pisses old people off, as these are the main functions of accents.

Pronouncing the 'ch' isn't anything to do with being middle class (wankers or not)

 

[maomao]

See above . .

Depends who you're talking to. I don't go around pronouncing Chinese names with tonal values just because I'm used to it. I adjust to my listener's expectations. But I'll allow it this once.

 

[ElizabethofYork]

I have read something that suggests that accents in some of the london overspill 'new towns' are closer now to 1950s london accents than current london accents are (most of the new towns took their original population from one or two london boroughs)

the London accent has completely changed since I was a kid in the 60s and 70s. There are traces of the old accent in pockets of Essex.

 

[maomao]

Well I for one had no idea what a velar fricative was until I read this thread.


Pronouncing the 'ch' isn't anything to do with being middle class (wankers or not)

It is according to Danny's observations.

 

[xenon]

Never heard of velar fricatives.

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying you pronounce the words patriarch, patriarchy as per your examples, with ch as in church, cheese, chandler?


Don't think I've heard a Scot pronounce loch as lo-ch as opposed to lock with a sort of extended ccc on the last syllable.

 

[maomao]

The gender split seems more telling and ominous than the class one.

It is often the case (or at least I have observed it to be so within several dialects in London) that a larger number of working class women are more fluent code switchers than of working class men because they are more likely to have indoor/office jobs that require them to speak 'properly'.

 

[Silas Loom]

Never heard of velar fricatives.

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying you pronounce the words patriarch, patriarchy as per your examples, with ch as in church, cheese, chandler?


Don't think I've heard a Scot pronounce loch as lo-ch as opposed to lock with a sort of extended ccc on the last syllable.

The velar fricative is the extended ccc. A noise imitative of a two stroke motorbike made in the back of the throat.

 

[ouirdeaux]

How about if you're Scottish and you say Zurich instead of Zurick? It's not a non-native phoneme then

The ich-laut in Zurich is not the same thing as the pronunciation of the CH in loch, which is the ach-laut.

I'm still reeling from the news that there are Scottish speakers who use this sound in words like patriarch, synchronised, and melancholy. Either I've never heard it or it's passed me by.

 

[klang]

How about if you're Scottish and you say Zurich instead of Zurick? It's not a non-native phoneme then.

on a slightly related note - I always thought swiss-german and scottish-english had a lot in common wrt pronunciation and how certain sounds are shaped and used.

 

[danny la rouge]

Well I for one had no idea what a velar fricative was until I read this thread.


Pronouncing the 'ch' isn't anything to do with being middle class (wankers or not)

It might be now, though. That’s a hypothesis.

 

[weepiper]

Never heard of velar fricatives.

Not sure what you mean. Are you saying you pronounce the words patriarch, patriarchy as per your examples, with ch as in church, cheese, chandler?


Don't think I've heard a Scot pronounce loch as lo-ch as opposed to lock with a sort of extended ccc on the last syllable.

Velar fricative means the same difference between a written 'k' and 'ch' as the difference between a written 't' and 'th'. It's not the same as the sound in 'church'. English spelling is very unhelpful.

 

[klang]

The ich-laut in Zurich is not the same thing as the pronunciation of the CH in loch, which is the ach-laut.

ich is more hissy.
difficult to get into the throatiness of ach after an i.

 

[weepiper]

The ich-laut in Zurich is not the same thing as the pronunciation of the CH in loch, which is the ach-laut.

I'm still reeling from the news that there are Scottish speakers who use this sound in words like patriarch, synchronised, and melancholy. Either I've never heard it or it's passed me by.

No, but it's the same as the one in 'wheech'. We have both.

 

[ouirdeaux]

It's a palatal fricative, as opposed to a velar fricative.