Your Language Sounds like it has a Drawbridge

Megan Figueroa: Hi, and welcome to the Vocal Fries podcast, the podcast about linguistic discrimination. 

Carrie: I'm Carrie Gillon. 

Megan: I'm Megan Figueroa. Carrie, I learned a new word. 

Carrie: What? Awesome. What word did you learn? 

Megan: Slides.

Carrie: Slides?

Megan: Slides. Okay. The context was in this like viral tweet from, is it yesterday the 22nd? I think this is something that people like retweet all the time. You know how sometimes viral tweets are like just repurposed, kind of like recycled like, yeah. It was a picture of these Nike slip-on sandals. Did you see it? 

Carrie: No. 

Megan: Okay. Well, basically it was like the woman who posted it or this little story goes like, “I thought that these were kid sandals, but it turns out the sun shrunk my size nine slides. The sun shrunk my slides.”

Carrie: Okay. 

Megan: I had never heard slides before, have you? 

Carrie: I think I have. It's not an active part of my vocabulary though. I'm trying to think like, is this something I've heard in person or have I only seen it written? I feel like I've heard it in person. 

Megan: I'm looking at this this type of sandal, and it makes sense, because your foot slides in. Slides, just that exact sandal have always been chanklas to me. 

Carrie: Can you explain what chanklas are? Like is it all sandals or is it a particular kind of sandal? 

Megan: They're definitely that kind of slip-on sandal for me. I think they can be any sort of house shoe. 

Carrie: Oh.

Megan: Yeah. I mean, you see these stereotypical jokes about like throwing chanklas at kids and stuff. But yeah. They’re definitely these slides for me. They could be like other types of house shoes for people. You're not going to call your like party high heel type shoe sandals, chanklas. 

Carrie: Hold up. Who wears high heel sandals? Probably everybody does in this…

Megan: Okay, wait. That's where this problem comes in for me too, where sandals are like anything to me where your toes show. 

Carrie: Okay. All right. That's fair. I don't have that exact same lexical entry, but that kind of makes sense though. All right. 

Megan: Yeah, so a high heel is technically a sand to me if it has open…

Carrie: If it has the toes showing. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: Okay. Interesting. 

Megan: Yeah. It doesn't matter if it's a slip-on, or if it's like a wedge that needs to be tied. I don't know. It's a sandal to me.

Carrie: Okay. 

Megan: But yeah, so slides. I obviously don't have that in my lexicon, so I don't know how far that goes. If it's just those kind of literally your foot is sliding into it. 

Carrie: I mean, that's my interpretation, but again, I'm not sure it's an active part of my vocabulary, so I don't trust my judgment. 

Megan: I won't be using this obviously, but I was happy to see that. 

Carrie: Yeah, no, yeah. I always like it when I learn a new word. 

Megan: Yeah. Like when you said, what is it, toque? I was like, “What is this?”

Carrie: Yes. 

Megan: Just say beanie, you're in America. Just kidding. 

Carrie: Okay, to me a beanie is those hats with the propeller on top. If I say beanie, it just sounds like so goofy. 

Megan: That's, yeah. 

Carrie: This is from Laura. Hi Megan and Carrie. I recently finished my MSC, Masters of Science in Linguistics/Cognitive Science of Language. Although I'm new to listening to podcasts, yours has been on my to listen to list for ages. I can't believe I put it off for so long. I love the topics you cover and I think the concept of teaching people how not to be an asshole about language is so important. Oh my God. Thank you so much. 

Megan: Yes, Yes. Congrats by the way. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Megan: Yes. 

Carrie: Definitely. Congrats. I've noticed that you've mentioned wanting to provide transcriptions for your episodes, and I wanted to reach out to you to offer my services as a transcriptionist. I've experienced transcribing verbatim speech in a linguistics lab environment and naturalistic speech transcription, both minimally edited and intelligent styles. As a linguist, I'm familiar with the, the topics you cover and love research, which is always a part of transcription. Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks for your consideration. Please get the great work. 

Yeah, we definitely do need a transcriptionist, but until we hit our first, well, our second goal in Patreon, we are not paying for it, but we will as soon as we hit that $300 a month and we're kind of close. 

Megan: Kind of. 

Carrie: Anybody who wants to like throw a dollar a month at us or three or five. 

Megan: Anyone who appreciates what this hustle, we're hustling over here. 

Carrie: Respect the hustle. 

Megan: Respect the hustle, 

Carrie: But yeah, so as soon as we have that, then we'll reach out. We've had two offers so far, actually. We definitely would like to pay people who really do know linguistics. Because like there's a lot of jargon that we try to explain, but still it's not always transparent to a non-expert for sure. 

Megan: For sure. Yeah. What was that? Patreon.Com/Vocalfriespod? 

Carrie: That's right. 

Megan: I actually, I just got that tattooed onto my body in case [inaudible]. I don't even have to say it out loud anymore. 

Carrie: If you're at the $5 level you get bonus episodes. This month we're going to have to record it and put it out early, because I'm going to be in Telluride. 

Megan: Oh, how lovely. 

Carrie: Yes. Going to the film festival volunteering, so…

Megan: Oh, cool. 

Carrie: I can't wait to see who makes me the most nervous because there's going to be a ton of celebrities. 

Megan: Oh my God. 

Carrie: Yep. [crosstalk] Who makes me faint?

Megan: My first thought, for some reason, I really want you to meet Walton Goggins. 

Carrie: Oh, that would be amazing. Yeah. My first thought was Taika Waititi, but there's no guarantee that his movie will be there, so. 

Megan: Yeah. Well, anyway. 

Carrie: But he does have a movie hitting the film festivals, so…

Megan: Yeah. I don't know if Walton Goggins does, or if I was just thinking about Justified right now. 

Carrie: Oh, I have no idea. There's a good chance. He also could just come. 

Megan: He could, because he's… anyway. All right. One more shout out before we get to the episode, which is awesome, because I learned a lot as always, and my ignorant self about anything that's outside of the United States, and even men. But the lily.com and journalist, okay, let me get this right, because she appreciates props. Kristen Millares Young. I want to say Millares but I don't think that's her middle name. I just like want to [inaudible] in Spanish. 

Carrie: I mean, I think it sounds amazing. Even if it was not her real name, if it were me, I'd be like, yes. 

Megan: Yes. She did a great article on like, with friend of the podcast, Dr. Alex Darcy, the like scholar. We have an episode on like, and… 

Carrie: With Alexandra Darcy. 

Megan: ... with Alex. It's a really fun episode and one of our most listened to because it's, well, people love to hate, like, people love to love like, so those are two reasons. But also, it's a really good episode because Alex is great to talk to. 

Carrie: Yeah, it's a good one for sure. 

Megan: I think that that speaks to how well this is written too. Like not only is Kristen just a great writer, great journalist obviously asking Alex the right questions. But Alex, it came out great I thought. It was getting props around linguist Twitter too. People saying like, “Ask a linguist. Yay, this person asked a linguist.” 

Carrie: Yes. Please, for the love of God, ask a linguist if it's about language. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: But she did so good. 

Megan: Yeah. It's just like a short little thing, but there's two pull quotes and they're both great. Like this one seemingly, innocuous stereotypes such as associating like with vapid women have real consequences. 

Carrie: 100%. 

Megan: Boom. Yes. Yes. 

Carrie: Yes. Awesome. 

Megan: I thought that was a really great article to see about linguistics. But I think that like, I don't care if someone was like, somehow gets a technical thing wrong, as much as I care about what happened with Vocal Fry. 

Carrie: The harm you do. 

Megan: This journalism that happened in Vocal Fry in 2011. That's the kind of consequences. It basically started a movement toward hating Vocal Fry in the U.S. and associating it with women because of what we're reading in the media.

Carrie: Yes. I absolutely agree with you. It is worse when it's actually harming people, as opposed to getting a technical detail wrong.

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: I still complain a little bit about the technical details, because sometimes I'm just like, “What is that?” But it's not really actively harming people, so. 

Megan: Exactly. It's only a little grating to people, to linguists who know exactly where the error is or whatever. I'm like you can handle it. You can handle this. 

Carrie: Yeah. It's annoying, as opposed to like, “Oh, no.” 

Megan: Yeah, exactly. There is no misinformation in this article. Yay. 

Carrie: Yay.

Megan: Yay. 

Carrie: That's amazing. I just want to make a tiny little correction that a mistake I made in the actual interview. I said that Canada became fully independent in ‘81, it's actually ‘82. 

Megan: That is so embarrassing for you, so embarrassing. Listen, we have to have one of us that remains steadfast in being knowledgeable. Well, I will be over here…

Carrie: Well we're both knowledgeable. I don't want to be wrong when it's an easy thing to correct. It’s okay if I'm wrong, and then I find out later, but I already was like, “Oh, I should have looked that date up before I said anything.”

Megan: Yeah, well. 

Carrie: But anyway, this was a really fun episode to record, but also to edit because I got to listen to so many Scottish accents. It's like these are my people. 

Megan: Yeah, that's true. 

Carrie: I just was all warm and fuzzy inside.

Megan: Yeah, and I got to be that person who always asks a Scottish person about Trainspotting. 

Carrie: To be fair, it is a very famous and kind of important movie. It's not like it's like some toss off movie that no one cares about or not meaningful.

Megan: Yeah like Paul Blart Mall Cop or something. I don’t know [inaudible]. 

Carrie: If anyone who is listening, let us know what the Scottish equivalent is of Paul Blart Mall Cop, because I guarantee there's something really terrible that we've never seen because… 

Megan: Yeah. Americans don't have the monopoly on making terrible movies right?

Carrie: Absolutely not. No. How could it be that? 

Megan: We're not so special. 

Carrie: How could it be? 

Megan: We're not as special as we think.

Carrie: No. 

Megan: Anyway, hope you enjoy. 

Carrie: Okay, so today we have as our very special guest, the host of Accentricity, which is another podcast about linguistic discrimination. Dr. Sadie Ryan. 

Megan: Hi Sadie.

Sadie Ryan: Hey, hello.

Megan: So happy to have you on our show. I love talking to other podcasters because…

Sadie: Really happy. 

Carrie: Yeah me too. 

Megan: We're all in the same kind of weird struggle. That's like very unique to podcasting. 

Carrie: Yes.

Sadie: Totally, totally. We'll need to get not get too sidetracked talking about the intricacies of need to keep on the topic of language.

Megan: Yeah, exactly. Well and then to meet another podcast about language. It's like this beautiful overlap that is just so exciting. And a woman, another woman. 

Carrie: Yes. 

Sadie: Yes. 

Megan: I always see on Twitter, people are like, give me some podcast recs that are like, hosted by women. People are always saying, “I only listen to like, podcasts hosted by men, and I don't mean to, but that's just how it is.” I'm like, “You're not trying hard enough for one thing.” But… 

Carrie: Although I have read, I don't know if this is accurate, but it seems likely that 80% of podcasters are men. 

Sadie: Really? 

Carrie: So it is harder to find female podcasts. However, there are so many of them now that you can. 

Sadie: Yeah. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Sadie: Yeah, and it was cool to see... Yeah, I saw that post and we were tagged and Lingthusiasm were tagged. 

Megan: Yes. 

Sadie: Yeah, there are so many linguistics podcasts hosted by women.

Megan: Yeah, there really are. 

Sadie: Specifically. Yeah. 

Megan: That's awesome.

Sadie: I don't want to say all. I'm sure there are linguistic podcasts hosted by people of other genders, but I don't think I've heard them yet. 

Megan: No. 

Carrie: Well, Lexicon Valley.

Sadie: Oh, okay. I've not heard that one. Cool.

Carrie: That's John McWhorter. Well there are Lexitecture, which is more about like… 

Megan: Lexicography. 

Carrie: … lexicography but I still consider that linguistics. That's half male, half female, and half Canadian, half Scottish. 

Megan: Oh.

Sadie: Oh cool. I need to listen to more linguistics podcasts [inaudible]. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Sadie: I need to widen my listening school. 

Megan: Oh, yeah. So we got three different nationalities here represented.

Carrie: Yeah. 

Sadie: Yeah. 

Megan: Although I'm very ashamed of mine. So we're not going to talk about that. 

Carrie: Even though we happen to be recording on Independence Day.

Megan: Yeah. American Independence Day, that is. Because Canadian Independence Day was like three days ago, right? 

Carrie: Well, it's technically not really Independence Day. It was just the day that Canada was formed as a country. We didn't fully get our independence until like 1981. Anyway. 

Megan: Sadie, you're in Glasgow?

Carrie: Glasgow. 

Megan: Glasgow. Oh, I'm sorry. 

Sadie: Yes I am, yes.

Megan: Okay. Do people say both? I mean, one can be wrong, I guess. But let's not be prescriptive.

Carrie: Except when it comes to names, [crosstalk] we're a little prescriptive, right? 

Megan: Okay fine, Glasgow. 

Sadie: Carrie, do you have family in Glasgow? 

Carrie: I do have extended family. Yeah. 

Sadie: Cool.

Carrie: My maternal grandmother's family comes from Glasgow. 

Sadie: Oh, excellent. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Sadie: Do they still live in Glasgow? Or… 

Carrie: Or Paisley, actually. Yeah. 

Sadie: Oh, cool. Okay. Yeah.

Carrie: I've been to Paisley one time. 

Sadie: Oh, cool. Excellent. Yeah, Paisley is just right next to Glasgow, but I think it's still… I don't want to get this... I think it's in the greater Glasgow area. But I might be wrong about that. 

Carrie: I believe so as well, but what do I know? 

Sadie: It definitely has a very separate identity. I do know that. 

Carrie: Yes, it does. Cool. 

Megan: I've had this very awful stereotype about Scottish accents because of Trainspotting that I wouldn't be able to understand anyone from Scotland. But we can talk about that more later. Let's talk about your podcast first. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Sadie: Oh yeah, we should definitely come back to trainspotting. 

Carrie: We will definitely. That's a really good point. 

Megan: Yeah. 

Carrie: Why did you want to start your podcast? 

Sadie: Yeah, so I imagine it was not so different from you guys where I had seen that there's quite a lot of assholery around language. I assume I'm allowed to swear, right? 

Carrie: Yes, you're absolutely allowed to swear. 

Sadie: Since your motto is don't be an asshole. I'd noticed how much assholery there is around language, and I was doing my PhD and I was coming across linguistic discrimination, and I just wanted to try and tackle that. Specifically, so I had a conversation with a friend who, and a lot of this assholery comes from people who are otherwise great right? It’s seems like there are a lot of people who language is sometimes like the last vestige of this specific area where people feel like they can make fun of particular identities and particular groups of people.

It was a friend of mine who was like linguistic equality and you shouldn't make fun of the way people speak and stuff. You shouldn't make fun of people's accents. But I hate it so much when people say I done it instead of I did it. 

Carrie: Right.

Sadie: I was like, listen, who gets to decide which is the right one and which is the wrong one? Just because one is used by people in authority, and one is used by the most powerful groups in society, and one is maybe more widespread than the other, although I'm not even sure about that. Does that make one right and one wrong? This friend of mine, who, as I say, is good, is generally like into social justice, was like, “Oh, God, yeah, you're right.” 

Megan: Yeah oops.

Carrie: [crosstalk] good, good.

Sadie: I was like wow. Sometimes not always, but sometimes that's all it takes. Sometimes is enough for me if occasionally that is all it takes to make somebody stop and think about what they've been fed and what they've been taught about language. To kind of question this idea of there being certain ways of speaking that are correct and certain ways of speaking that are vulgar or just wrong or uneducated. That is good enough. Of course it's not always enough. People are probably always going to be assholes about language. 

Carrie: Yes absolutely.

Sadie: I think the people that I really want to talk to you with the podcast are either… A lot of the people who listen already know, so to some extent, I'm sure I am preaching to the choir. But the people that I really want to reach with the podcast are either people who are already interested in language, but haven't thought about how it connects with social justice, and people who are already interested in social justice, but haven't thought about how it connects with language. 

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Sadie: I think there's a lot of room for kind of showing people and getting people to think about how language and social justice interact. That was kind of what I wanted to do. Also just, I was doing my PhD, so I was in the university learning loads about language and doing loads of research. Then I was at parties having really great conversations with people who weren't linguists about language and identity. I thought, “I should really bring these two things together.” Bring together linguistic theory and research with fun conversations with friends.

Megan: Yeah. What I'm hearing is you were doing a PhD and you're like, “How can I do more work?” 

Sadie: Basically. As I was saying to you guys earlier, that's why it's been a long time in production. I started working on it… Probably I started, I remember sort of crystallizing the idea when I was at a conference in Amsterdam. I went over with my boyfriend and we drove to Amsterdam. We had this kind of long journey of kind of chatting and thinking about stuff. We were chatting and listening to a lot of podcasts as well. The idea kind of came together then. But that was about a year before I started releasing it. In between that time, I just tried recording in some ways and it was rubbish, and then tried recording in other ways and it was rubbish.

Then managed to bring together eventually something that I'm really proud of. But I was a bit of a perfectionist about it. I wanted to get it just right before I released it.

Megan: Yeah. It's really hard to let something of you out into the world like this like podcasting does. Especially with something as personal as language. I think that our podcasts, podcasts like ours speak to so many people too, because language is this very human thing. 

Sadie: Yes, absolutely. 

Megan: You're totally right on about how otherwise very good people might be ignorant on [crosstalk] this topic.

Carrie: Assholes.

Megan: Yeah. Assholes. But they're very willing to hear you on this. Otherwise both our podcasts, no one would listen right? 

Carrie: There'd be no point. 

Megan: Yeah, there'd be no point.

Sadie: I think there's so much misinformation about language that really gets drilled into us. I don't want to, not all teachers, not all schools, but I think definitely in my school education, one of my earliest memories about language was in primary school and we had this video that we had to watch. Then the teacher was like, “Oh, do you have any questions about this video?” It was a Jamaican guy speaking in the video. This wee boy called Jamie Sim. I remember both this names. Put up his hand and he was like, “Miss, where's he comfy?” She was like, “Excuse me?”

They used to do this thing sometimes where they would pretend they didn't understand you even though they did. He was like, “Where's he comfy?” She was like, “He doesn't comfy anywhere. He comes from Jamaica.” Jamie was like quite a shy wee boy, and I just remember his face going beetroot and thinking, just feeling terrible for him. I think that when it gets drilled into you in that way at school, sometimes you can leave school with just this assumption that… People, I think sometimes leave school thinking, “Well, yeah, I believe in equality. I believe everyone should have the same chances, but you know, people from disadvantaged backgrounds or marginalized communities just should make an effort and learn to speak properly.”

People have that idea. Like you say, it often isn't that hard to shift. Sometimes it just it takes a little bit of saying, “Look, language isn't just about… Not everybody wants to speak the same way. It's to do with identity and it's to do with your family and your community and where you come from, and that's really important to people.” I think don't be an asshole, but also I like to try and understand where that assholery comes from as well.

Megan: Oh yeah. 

Carrie: Yes.

Megan: Yeah, absolutely. It tells us a lot about how to approach people too, if we know where it's coming from, because again, [crosstalk] a lot of us learned it at school. It's reinforced like every day in some manner. It's just everywhere. But all it takes is just stop and think about it. I just want to pat us on the back and say [inaudible] to us.

Sadie: I feel bad. I especially don't want to be bad mouthing and teachers in schools because I did this amazing… We had this workshop for teachers at Glasgow uni the week before last. It was teachers who wanted to learn how to work with Scots in their classrooms, and bring stuff about language other than Standard English into the classroom. I was talking to like the most amazing teachers, and now I feel like we're going to be fine. 

Megan: Yeah, that’s nice, yeah. 

Sadie: It was really cool. 

Megan: Yeah.

Carrie: Yeah, that’s really cool. No, you're right. I think especially now that this message is starting to be put out there by not just us, teachers are becoming more aware of the problem and are not being part of the problem so much anymore. But from our generation, many of them were many, maybe even all of them at the time. I don't know.

Sadie: Yeah. In Scotland, it's been amazing to see the change. It's hard to know because I don't know how representative my school experience was, and maybe, maybe I was just very unlucky. But there's definitely now in schools in Scotland, just amazing stuff being done to do with language. Now like Scots is part of the curriculum for a lot of schools. There's loads being done to talk about ways of speaking other than Standard English in schools. It's really amazing to see. Yeah, like I say, I don't know if I was just unlucky in school, but I think this is a change from my school days. 

Carrie: I think so. 

Megan: Well, and a lot of teachers speak “standard English,” right, at least back in the day. These are people that don't really have to think about beyond their own accents really, because no one was pushing them to. Unless you're from a marginalized group, you're probably not thinking about it. Again, unless people start talking about it.

Carrie: Although I would assume most teachers in Scotland were Scottish, and so would have at least somewhat non-standard dialect in their background. 

Sadie: Yeah. Certainly a lot of teachers and the teachers I've been kind of working with and speaking to over the past wee while, I've spoken to quite a few people actually who've said that they feel that now it is about… they're learning about how to teach the kids that come to them, but they're also facing up to the linguistic discrimination they've suffered themselves in the past, and rethinking the fact that not everything they were taught about language in school was necessarily right. I was at a conference recently, which was about… Well, it was in part about kind of Scots and education and the future of it.

They were talking about how one of the challenges is that a lot of the people who are now teaching it, their language wasn't necessarily nurtured and supported in that way. There's a little bit of a gap there that they have to work quite hard to catch up almost. That's really interesting to see as well. But yeah, talking to the teachers I was speaking to last week and also people I've been speaking to over the past couple of years, I feel like there's a lot of will and a lot of desire to make things better and change. I'm going to tentatively say, I think we're going in a good direction in the way that language is being used in schools in Scotland just now. 

Carrie: That’s great. 

Megan: Will you tell me a little bit about the social hierarchy in Scotland? Because I think that'll help me understand what's happening with the dialects or all this, because I have no idea, no idea.

Sadie: Every place is complicated linguistically. 

Megan: Sure, yeah. 

Sadie: If we talk about Scots, we're really talking about lots of different ways of speaking. I'm from the central belt, so I grew up in Edinburgh and I've now been in Glasgow for about 10 years, so kind of the middle-ish bit of Scotland, the lowlands. The way that I speak sounds very different from people who are… In the North East, there's a variety which gets called Doric, where it sounds quite different and it has a lot of different vocabulary and syntax and phonology. 

Man 1: [foreign language].

Sadie: Then there's central Scotland area down south from the central belt, there's like the borders and Dumfries and Galloway. Then if you go far, far, far north, you've got the Orkney Islands and the Shetland Islands. 

Man 2: No, this is what the fun and games starts.

Sadie: The way that the Scots they have is very influenced by Scandinavian languages. I've actually been working on a project recently just as an assistant which is a map of Scotland. It's a huge project. There are I think maybe 250 communities in Scotland. Our people have gone and recorded older speakers and younger speakers in those communities. I've been sort transcribing and things like that. I'm very, very familiar with central belt Scots, but I wouldn't necessarily be able to understand older speakers from Shetland when they're speaking to other people from Shetland. There’s this geographical spread, which is quite big, but then there's also a lot of code switching where people will speak differently. I'm not a massive code switcher.

I mostly sound a bit like this, but there are other people who would say it's completely different when they're speaking to someone from their community and when they're speaking to someone outside their community. Then there's also social class hierarchy, particularly in the central belt. From what I understand, I think it's not quite the same up north and in Shetland and Orkney. But in the central belt, there's definitely… I know that in Glasgow there's been a lot of research done, which shows that there's this a really big split between middle class speech and working class speech. Edinburgh would be the same. I've not seen as much research on that as Edinburgh, but I grew up there, so I know from my own experience. There's all these different splits between who speaks in what way and at what time. Sorry, that was a massively complicated answer.

Megan: No, it was actually very helpful. Is the accent that you have or the dialect that you speak, do you think that you don't code switch because yours isn't as marginalized or is that? 

Sadie: I think so. Yeah. I would have pretty Scottish, we call it Scottish Standard English. Yeah, I would have like pretty middle class sounding speech. Although I have been made fun of for not sending posh and being made fun of for sending posh. 

Carrie: So you know, you're right in the middle then. 

Sadie: I'm somewhere in the middle probably, but yeah, more that like people who aren't from Scotland don't tend to struggle to understand me. I've not experienced the linguistic discrimination that other people from my school often experienced. I grew up in a very working class community and went to a very working class school. I think I've seen more linguistic discrimination than I've experienced myself. I'm very aware of it, but yeah, I've been quite fortunate in the way that people tend to respond to my accent. I've never felt that my accent’s really blocked me from anything. 

That's been interesting to think about and look at too. I did my PhD research in a working class high school in Glasgow in the Eastend, and the kids there thought I was super posh. There's this funny thing that people do sometimes in Glasgow where… I don't know if it's just Glasgow, maybe Scotland in general, but if they think you sound posh, they'll be like, “Are you English?” [crosstalk]. 

Carrie: Yeah, [inaudible] other layer there. 

Sadie: When I went to another school a few of the kids were asking me if I was English, which is very strange because it's like, I'm sure I don't sound English at all. 

Carrie: No, you do not sound English. You sound very Scottish. 

Sadie: I don't think so. I realized if I'm doing the map of Scotland, I missed out Gaelic there. 

Woman 1: [Foreign language]

Sadie: I probably don't have to tell you guys this, but occasionally with my students, I have to clarify that Gaelic is very, very different from Scots and English. People sometimes think that it's somewhere on that continuum that we have between English and Scots. But English and Scots are very closely related ways of speaking. Gaelic is from a completely different language family and sounds entirely different. It's historically been spoken much more in the Northwest of Scotland. Up in the Western Isles and Lewis and Skye and the islands around there. Yeah, I'm planning to start learning Gaelic pretty soon, which I'm very excited about. My boyfriend speaks it, so I think it's only polite.

Carrie: It's also spoken a little bit in Nova Scotia. 

Sadie: Oh yes. Yeah. Nova Scotia is the biggest Gaelic speaking community outside of Scotland, right? I think there's still people in Nova Scotia who would learn it as their first language, right? From what I know.

Carrie: I think so. Yeah, I think so. 

Sadie: Yeah. Yeah, I was reading about this recently, or yeah, so maybe like alongside English as their “first language.”

Carrie: There's also a lot of French there too so… 

Sadie: Oh, cool.

Carrie: Yeah.

Sadie: Very interesting. Then obviously also in Scotland, we've got loads and loads of other heritage and community languages and Scottish varieties of British sign language. I've been learning about this recently, but British sign language obviously varies across the UK, but it has very particular dialects in Glasgow and Edinburgh and around Scotland. That's something I really want to find more about in the future.

Carrie: Can you explain to, because I think a lot of people won't know, what is the difference or similarity, or what's going on between Scots and Scottish English? 

Sadie: All right. They very much exist on a continuum for a lot of speakers. I'll give us an example of the kids I work with for my PhD research. They were kids in this working class community and this high school in Glasgow. They were speaking Scottish Standard English in some situations and then moving towards Glaswegian Scots and others. There's not really like a straightforward dividing line there. It's more just a matter of shifting between different ways of speaking, and you couldn't necessarily always put your finger on, okay, now they're speaking Glaswegian Scots, now they're speaking Scottish Standard English. But part of my PhD research was I recorded these kids in three different situations. I recorded them with their pals in an afterschool club.

I gave them these wee headset microphones, and then I was like, “Go run, go have fun.” I recorded them speaking to each other. They weren't really interacting with me or the other adults in the class. They were doing their thing and they were fighting and shouting and crying and screaming and all sorts. That was them using their playground language, their peer group language. That was much more Glaswegian Scots forms. I looked at the syntax and the phonology and the words they were using, and they were much more kind of yeah, ones that would be thought of as part of Glaswegian Scots. Once I got to know them for a while, I sat down with them and had a long chat about their lives, and their interests, and what was going on with them.

By that point they knew me quite well so it was quite a casual conversation. Then one of my supervisors who they didn't know at that point, came in and spoke to them. She set up a very classroom-ish situation where she gave them these books to look at, and then she asked them questions about these books, and it was much more what they'd experienced in the classroom day to day. In that situation they moved right into Scottish Standard English. The conversations with me represented a midpoint where they were using… To speak broadly, they were using a bit of Scottish Standard English forms. I looked at different linguistic features, and for some of the linguistic features they did the same thing when they were with their pals and with me.

I think that might be to do with the fact that those are features that I use a lot as well. Whereas my supervisor is not. She is from Mexico, so she doesn't really have a Scottish accent. Yes, I think they might have been matching what the people they were speaking to were doing. There's this continuum and I think sometimes I've heard people get a bit frustrated when they're talking about Scots and the relationship between Scots and English, because a lot of the words are the same in Scots and English.

They're very closely related ways of speaking because there's not always this clear dividing line. But I've really come to love that. I did an episode of the podcast about linguistic hygiene.

Carrie: Yeah, I was just listening to that one. 

Sadie: Yeah, and the idea of separating out languages and keeping them in their place and putting them in their boxes. I hadn't really thought of it in terms of Scotland before, but I just think, I love that because we can't necessarily draw a line and say that's Scots, that's English, we can't really put them in their boxes. We have to just accept that we mix different ways of speaking and we mix linguistic forms, and we maybe have to be a bit less policey about the borders between languages. I think that has a lot of potential. I think it's potentially quite cool.

I'm trying to embrace that at the moment. But it does make it very difficult when you're explaining and defining what Scots is and its relationship with English. 

Megan: What's the demographic information on who would speak which? Is it younger or is there anything that that is helpful? 

Sadie: Again, that's really difficult because… 

Megan: It is yeah. 

Sadie: There's census information on it. I'm trying to remember the numbers. I think it said that a third of people identified as Scots speakers. But a lot of those people had the same school experience as me where we were very much taught that we had English or we had bad. We were very much taught that there was English and that was that, and there was not proper English. We weren't really taught very much about Scots at all. Or if we were, it was disconnected from the way that we spoke. It was like there's these poets Robert Burns and they write in Scots. I think that if I hadn't studied linguistics, I might not have… I think there'll be a lot of people potentially who filled in the census form and we're like, “Oh yeah, Robert Burns, the poet. Yeah, I don't think I speak him, so I probably don't speak Scots.

It’s difficult. In terms of older and younger people, so with the Scots Syntax Atlas Project I've been helping with, so it's focusing on Scots syntax. But they have got speakers from each community. They've got a set of speakers who are over 60 and a set of speakers who are under 25. The difference between the way that those groups speak is really stark. I think that there's maybe an idea some people have that Scots is being spoken less, but I would argue it's just different and all language changes over time. But the way that younger people and older people are speaking is definitely very different. Also the way that older and younger people maybe think about their speech is quite different often. I would say it's changing, but it's spoken by both young and old people.

Carrie: Is there anything that's like a word or a phrase that's canonically Scots that we wouldn't understand as English speakers? 

Sadie: Interesting. Yeah, canonically Scots. Everything I can think of is the stuff that you get on tea towels, which is so cringy that I don't even want to say it you know? Obviously there's stuff “Och aye the noo” but you guys would know what that means. 

Megan: No. Don’t know what that means?

Sadie: No. Have you heard? Oh no.

Carrie: “Och aye,” yes, but not the rest of it. 

 Sadie: Yeah. This is this awful stereotype, which like… People would say it if they were doing an impression of a Scottish person and trying to be really funny. “Och aye the noo” just means like, “Oh yes, just now.” 

Carrie: [crosstalk] Something you would just normally say all the time. 

Sadie: Yeah, people would really say… So “aye” is yes and “noo” is now. But it's the sort of thing you would get on a postcard with a picture of a Highland cow or something. I'm embarrassed to even… Oh, do what I use actually to describe it when I'm… When I'm presenting conferences and I want to show people what the type of language is. When I was recording with the kids in the after school club, one of the Glaswegian girls jumped on her pal's back and shouted “Giz a backy” which is, “Give me a piggyback ride.” But every single part of it would be different from Standard English apart from “a.” Giz give, geez is give us.

And then a backy is a piggyback ride. But even that word's different. In Glasgow it's backy. But when I was a kid, it was a coaliebacky. That was just over in Edinburgh. It's yeah. We have got quite different lexis in different places. There's a lot of things that are different from place to place, like when I was growing up in Edinburgh the word for kids or children was Bairns. Oh, again, I want to get my facts right. I think that one is from, I think it's Norse influence. 

Carrie: Yeah. I think you're right.

Sadie: I'm going to confidently say, I think it's Norse influence. Yeah, so Bairns. Then in Glasgow, when I came to Glasgow, everyone was talking about weans and I was like, “Well, what's that mean?” And weans is the equivalent word in Glasgow. Even between these two cities, which are only an hour's drive between them, there's quite a lot of differences in the way to speak and even between those places. 

Carrie: Let's talk about Edinburgh. Earlier Megan brought up Trainspotting which is set in Edinburgh and they sound very different from you. 

Sadie: Yeah. 

Megan: Completely. I would say completely different. 

Sadie: It's a while since I watched Trainspotting. I'm trying to remember exactly what they sound like. Do you know what? When I was growing up, I'm sure we thought that the people in Trainspotting sounded way too posh. 

Megan: Whoa.

Carrie: Oh. What? 

Sadie: Yeah. I'm sure we did. I'm sure we thought the actors were making themselves easier for international audiences to understand. [crosstalk] I’m sure we felt a bit annoyed by that.

Megan: Excuse. Making themselves easier to…

Man 3: Doesn’t it make you proud to be Scottish?

Man 4: it’s shite being Scottish. We’re the lowest of the low, the scum of the fucking earth. Most wretched, miserable, servile, pathetic trash that was ever shite into civilization. 

Sadie: I thought so, but it's been a while, so maybe I need to rewatch it after being away from Edinburgh for a while and see what I think. 

Megan: That's so interesting to me because I… So they're not supposed to be posh at all in the movie.

Carrie: No.

Sadie: [inaudible].

Carrie: The opposite. 

Megan: Yeah.

Sadie: Yeah, so I think that was our problem was we were like, “These characters aren't posh, but the actors sound really posh.” 

Carrie: Wow. 

Sadie: But I don’t know, because Ewan McGregor is quite posh. 

Carrie: He is, yes. 

Sadie: Yeah. Have you guys read the book or any of Irvin Welsh's books? 

Megan: No.

Carrie: I have read one of them, but I don't remember which one it was. It was not Trainspotting. I had to train my brain to understand. I basically had to just say it out loud in my head kind of thing, you know? 

Sadie: Yeah. I actually, I think the way that he writes definitely whenever I've read it, I've been that's really representative of working class Edinburgh speech. I've not seen many writers where I've so much being, “Oh yeah, I can hear that voice and I recognize it,” when people are trying to write accents or whatever. Yeah, I think he does a really good job of it. But I don't know. I need to watch Trainspotting again and be… but I'm sure that was my impression when I was a kid. I'm sure I was like, “That's not right.”

Carrie: Because yeah, from a North American perspective, they do not sound posh. Robert Carlyle was the hardest for me to understand at the time. I could I got into it, but it took a minute.

Robert Carlyle: So it comes to [inaudible] the last shot. The deciding ball of the whole tournament. I'm on the black, he's sat in the corner looking all fucking biscuit-arsed, when this hard cunt comes in. Obviously fucking fancied himself, like. Starts staring at me. Looking at me, right fucking at me, as if to say, "Come ahead, square, go."

Sadie: Okay, yeah.

Megan: Yeah I watched it with captioning. I had to. 

Sadie: You guys watched subtitles? Yeah?

Megan: Yeah. 

Sadie: That’s interesting. 

Megan: But I was very young. I guess was in high school when I watched it. I had no experience really with other accents, honestly. That was my first introduction and I was like, “Well, I can never go over there because I wouldn't be able to understand anyone.” 

Carrie: You would be fine. 

Sadie: Well, it's really interesting. I think, yeah, that was a really interesting bit to do with the podcast because one of the things that I kind of… In the first episode, I went and spoke to people around about the city, just in the streets with my microphone. One of the things that people kept saying was, “Oh, people just don't understand Glaswegian people.” Then I met this amazing girl who was talking about how you tune into people's accents and it just takes a little bit of time and exposure. It was so interesting to reframe that and think about, yeah, you were saying, it's about experience and tuning into different ways of speaking.

There was a really great moment in… I was transcribing a sociolinguistic interview once, and it was an interviewer from the south of England, and a speaker who was from the northeast and spoke Doric and was an older guy. The speaker who was from the south of England was like, “How has the area changed in the past 10 years?” Then this guy who would have had not that much experience with people from the south of England, he was, would have mostly spoken to people from his local community and whatever. He was like [foreign language] and he was like, “How has the area changed in the past five years?” He's just like, “Oh, I can't understand you.” He just didn't know what she was saying. That was a terrible impression of someone from the northeast.

Yeah. It just made me think about how it goes both ways. How you tune your ears into people over time. I wonder if a lot of the problem with people not understanding Scottish accents is that there's not that much exposure of Scottish voices in the media. There is some, but less so. Yeah, this girl who met who I was talking to for the podcast, that was what… She's an actress and she was saying that she often gets told to put on a non-Scottish accent when she's acting for no real reason other than that people may be confused by it or it might be distracting or something that. She's very much no, but it's about exposure and she really wanted to have Scottish voices in the media, so that there is some exposure of that way of speaking. It was really interesting talking to her about that.

Carrie: Yeah. There's a lot of English hegemony in the UK. What about the differences between Glasgow and Edinburgh? Is there a rivalry? Are the dialects very different? How do people feel about each other? 

Sadie: There's a very playful rivalry. I think that's a universal thing of having two big cities quite near each other, isn't it? 

Carrie: Yeah. 

Sadie: Okay. There is a stereotype in Glasgow that people from Edinburgh sound really posh. Which is completely not true. There’s a lot of working class communities in Edinburgh. But I think maybe the working class communities in Glasgow have perhaps had a bit more media exposure. There's been people Billy Connolly. 

Billy Connolly: I was always shit at mathematics. I was never ever good and I don't care. I don't give a shit. 

Sadie: He's quite a famous comedian from Glasgow and Kevin Bridges more recently, and Frankie Boyle and other big comedians who would speak in a more working class Glaswegian way. Lemmy, who is my favorite comedian from Glasgow.

Lemmy: Telling you, if you don't start appreciating me, I'll fucking leave, eh? Fucking leave, eh? And take that fucking accent away, you fuck. 

Sadie: They all have been from Glasgow rather than Edinburgh. There's that idea of people from Edinburgh being really posh which is not quite right, but yeah, there's also quite different dialects. For example if you wanted to say… So people from Glasgow would usually say don't, and people from Edinburgh would usually say “dinnae” instead. People in Glasgow say things like cannae, willnae, umnae. Those are all Edinburgh as well, but there's, for some reason, people in Glasgow tend to say don't and people in Edinburgh tend to say “dinnae.”

There’s the word “ken” in Edinburgh, which doesn't really get used much in Glasgow. In Glasgow it would normally be, “I don't know” and in Edinburgh you get “Ah dinnae ken.” Also in Edinburgh, there's this tag on the end of sentences where people say “eh” quite a bit. 

Carrie: Hey it’s like Canadian.

Megan: That’s very Canadian.

Sadie: Yes it is. I don't know what the connection is between… I don't know if it is the same “eh,” or if it's just a coincidence that we have it in both places. 

Carrie: There were a lot of Scottish immigrants to Canada towards the beginning, [crosstalk] so it’s possible.

Sadie: Right. It could well be that it's traveled. This is the thing, I know quite a lot about language in Scotland today, but I really need to brush up on the history. I tend to not know that much about the history unless I've studied that specific linguistic feature. But yeah, so you get “eh”, so that's something people make fun of a lot with Edinburgh people. 

Carrie: I know that feeling. 

Sadie: Yeah. That's Edinburgh and then further up in Fife up the coast as well. What other differences are there? There’s differences just in vowel sounds. In the way that the "reh" sound is produced and things that, but they're much more subtle. The ones that people notice and comment on are always kind of yeah, the differences, the same kind of things that people say about Canadians say this and Americans say this. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Sadie: Like is it beanie and is it toque? Is it…

Carrie: Toque.

Sadie: Toque. Right. Yeah. Those are the ones that people always pick up on and laugh about right? Yeah, there's subtle differences and not so subtle differences between Edinburgh and Glasgow. But yeah, I think the big myth is that everyone from Edinburgh sounds really, really fancy and everyone from Glasgow doesn't. Because obviously there’s a working class in Edinburgh and there's a middle class in Glasgow. I think sometimes that gets forgotten about when people are talking about the way people speak in different parts of Scotland. 

Carrie: Even I had that in my head that that was true. Where I picked that up from, I don't know. But obviously it can't be true. 

Sadie: I suppose if you move beyond language as well Edinburgh's got this big castle, Edinburgh. You know stuff's going to happen in Edinburgh. There's a castle, there's drawbridge. I don't know if there's actually drawbridges. There's a palace in Edinburgh, there's a parliament. 

Carrie: That’s true, that’s true. 

Megan: I love it. Like thinking about how your language sounds you have a drawbridge. 

Sadie: Exactly. Yeah. 

Carrie: That’s amazing. 

Sadie: Edinburgh's got all those trappings. Glasgow is much more of a postindustrial say. Glasgow's definitely had much more publicity about sort of like… Well, yeah to some extent. People always talk about the Glasgow slums in the past and stuff, but I think all that did exist in Edinburgh too. It's all smoke and mirrors. 

Carrie: Yes. It all is.

Megan: I think this is a really good way to see how absolutely absurd it is to think that language… There's nothing inherent in language that tells us about class or about the speakers. We do this to language. It's total proof that it's a proxy for other things. Judging other people for their language. You're saying, “So and so will think that they sound posh.” I'm like that's absurd. It all sounds the same to me. How would I know? It makes no sense. But yeah, it’s fascinating. It's sad. It's funny. It's so many things.

Sadie: No, you're totally right. Yeah. No, I get the same thing when I'm listening to people talk about other languages, which I don't speak. If you ask people who speak languages, you don't speak and say, “Oh, what do people from this parts,” and people will say like, “Oh, they pronounce their vowel ‘ooh’, and we pronounce like ‘ooh’” that kind of thing. If you're not familiar, if you're not tuned into it, it reveals how absurd it is. But then obviously when you tune into it in your own head and your own linguistic experience, you see how things get that meaning. But yeah, totally. You can see how it's always a proxy for something else. What do you really mean when you complain about the way someone says the “u” vowel? 

Megan: Yes. 

Carrie: Yeah, exactly. Wow. I think there's lots more things we could talk about, but… 

Megan: Time. 

Carrie: Time's a ticking. Is there any last thing that you would to leave our listeners with? 

Sadie: Oh, anything I'd to leave? I don't know. I'm really stoked to be on the same mission as you guys. [crosstalk] We should definitely keep in touch. But yeah, I think I love what you guys are doing. I'm big, big fan of the podcast, a long time listener, first time caller. Yeah, I think. 

Carrie: Oh my god. That was the best use of that. 

Sadie: Okay, I feel like, and this could be just my experience. It's maybe not universal. It could be totally wrong. But I feel at the moment language is one of the few things in the world where we're moving in a good direction in general, and we're not there yet and there's still a lot of linguistic prejudice and discrimination. Maybe I'm just in this little bubble where people are questioning their assumptions and thinking about the lies they've been told in the past about good ways of speaking and bad ways of speaking. But I feel like it's one of the few places where we're moving in a good direction and I think it is really important because it's so bound up with identity in who we are. If I get to be even a little part of that journey making podcasts about it and doing research on it, then I think that's really, really exciting, so woo, go us.

Carrie: Yay.

Megan: Yeah, go us. I got to say you helped me in a positive direction. Even as a linguist, I was having all of these ideas about Scottish English. I'm not going to be able to understand anything. Carrie's going to have to translate for me. I'm just kidding.

Sadie: I really hope I explained everything well because… 

Megan: Oh beautifully. 

Sadie: … I'm very aware doing this that I'm speaking to you guys and I'll be speaking to your listeners who don't have as much experience with Scotland, but I'm also probably going to have Scottish people listening. I would to say a big sorry if I've said anything that's not right, especially about language outside the central belt, which I do. I'll admit I know a bit less about. I'm learning. I'm getting there. Yeah.

Carrie: We also always welcome corrections [crosstalk] or more nuances. 

Sadie: Okay, great. Okay. 

Carrie: There's always more to learn. 

Sadie: I'll bear that in mind. If I've pronounced anything wrong, if I've said anything wrong about the different dialect areas of Scotland… But yeah, I think I've probably done a good job, right? 

Megan: Yeah. 

Sadie: I hope so. But I'm on a journey. 

Carrie: I mean I think so but… 

Sadie: I'm still, I'm learning myself. 

Megan: We're all on a journey. As long as we're willing to admit when we're wrong, I think it's really important. Especially for PhDs. 

Sadie: Yes. I was actually complimented in my Viva exam at the end of my PhD for being extremely ready to admit the shortcomings of my thesis. To acknowledge the shortcomings of my thesis. They said that was really good. I passed. 

Megan: I love it. Yeah. Yes. Well [crosstalk].

Carrie: It’s all that matters. 

Megan: Yes. It’s all that matters.

Sadie: I think I knew they were going to ask about that, so I just went in with a list of like, “Okay, this could have been better. This is wrong. This isn't great.” They were like, “Okay, you know that, that's good. 

Carrie: That's great.

Megan: That's amazing. 

Carrie: All right. Well, thank you so much for being our guest.

Megan: Yes, thank you. 

Carrie: We always leave our listeners with don't be an asshole. 

Megan: Don’t be an asshole. 

Sadie: Don’t be an asshole. 

Carrie: Is that the correct Scottish way to say it? 

Sadie: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean we've got a million words for asshole. I won't go into all of them. 

Carrie: Just one? 

Sadie: Yeah. Oh, just one. Oh, well, arsehole. 

Carrie: Yeah.

Sadie: Arsehole. Yeah. 

Megan: I love it. Thank you. 

Carrie: Thank you. 

[Music playing]

Carrie: The Vocal Fries podcast is produced by me, Carrie Gillon for Halftone Audio. Theme music by Nick Granum. You can find us on Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram at Vocal Fries Pod. You can email us at [email protected]. Our website is vocalfriespod.com.

[END]