Scottish Culture/Scottish Dialect

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Expert: Kaye McAlpine - 9/25/2008


Question
Hello,

Sorry to disturb you. I am an Aberdonian but I am in need of a distinctly Glaswegian accent for a project i am doing. Could you help.

Thank you so much

Answer
Hi Leigh

Erm, I'm not sure how I can help with this online. However, I'll give it a go.

If you have no script as yet, try and get a hold of  The Complete Patter by Michael Munro which will help with phrases etc. It's lighthearted but might help, but you'll have to listen to Glaswegians talking to get the voice patterning.

If you can get a hold of a video (and it'll probably have to be a video) of The Mither Tongue which was a series written and presented by Billy Kay (he's fae Ayrshire if I mind richt),  he discusses what is a regional dialect and what is Scots.

You could actually do worse than get a copy of The Steamie (written by Tony Roper) which is set in a 1950s public washhouse in Glasgow. It might be available on dvd.


Oh, and which distinctly Glasweigan accent are you going for - educated Glaswegian? High Possil/ Barrheid /  Easterhouse Glaswegian? Or do you need that historic anomaly that is Kelvinside - extremely similar to Edinburgh Morningside - which has long, half suppressed vowel sounds and is a hangover from 18th century paranoia about sounding Scots, and therefore trying to speak like the fashionable Londoners!

Any use?

Kaye

Scottish Culture

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Kaye McAlpine

Expertise

Lifecycle (birth, marriage, death) customs in Scotland, Early Modern Scottish social customs, modern Scottish social customs, Border March laws and procedures, criminal processes and judicial execution practices, social history in Early Modern Scotland, ephemera printing in Scotland. While I have some knowledge of the clan system and function of the clan society (Highland and Lowland), I am not a an expert in clan genealogy. Having traced back my own family over a couple of centuries, and traced others due to academic research, I do know how the system works, however. This doesn't mean that I'm a genealogist. Please note that I do not speak Gaelic.

Experience

Research Fellow (University of Edinburgh). Contributer to various books and journals on ballads, including Scottish Life and Society: A Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, The Ballad and History and The Harris Repertoire. Freelance tutor in outreach courses from Edinburgh University on Scottish Culture and Tradition, including lifecycle customs, broadsheet ballads in Scotland, the traditional ballad and history. Freelance writer, guest presenter on Ch4 History Hunters programme, contributor to BBC Radio Scotland's 'Songlines' series on 'The Dowie Dens of Yarrow'. Currently co-director of a media production company

Publications
Books: Forthcoming: The Gallows and The Stake Published: Compendium of Scottish Ethnology, vol. 10, chapter on The Traditional and the Border Ballad; The Harris Repertoire (2000, Scottish Text Society, co-editor), The Ballad in History (chapter on Border ballads). Journals include Folklore, The Review of Scottish Culture,Sottish Studies, and The Scottish Literary Journal

Education/Credentials
Ph D, M. Phil, BA (hons)

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