Scottish vowel length rule

Phonemes

Vowel length

• ,,,, and are usually short.
• * In some Modern Scots varieties vowel 17 may merge with vowel 12 in long environments. In Ulster Scots, and are usually always long and the realisation of vowel 13 is short before a voiceless consonant or before a sonorant followed by a voiceless consonant but long elsewhere.
• ,,,, and are usually long in the following environments and short elsewhere:
• * In stressed syllables before voiced fricatives, namely, and also before. In some Modern Scots varieties, before the monomorphemic end-stresses syllables, + any voiced consonant, and. In Shetland dialect the realisation of underlying, usual in other Scots varieties, remains a long environment.
• * Before another vowel and
• * Before a morpheme boundary so, for example, "stayed" is pronounced with a longer vowel than "staid".
• The long, or realisations of vowel 12 usually occur in all environments in final stressed syllables.
• and are usually long.
• The diphthong usually occurs in short environments, vowel 8a, which occurs stem final, is always short, and occurs in the long environments described above.
• The diphthong is usually short.

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