English in Orkney and Shetland

This chapter deals with Scotland’s Northern Isles, Orkney and Shetland, which are home to two of the most conservative and distinctive local dialects in Scotland and Britain. An overview is provided of the local histories that led to the emergence of the present-day dialects and speech communities. Linguistic features are summarised and the linguistic situation discussed with regard to Scots and Scottish Standard English (SSE) . To illustrate the local Scots–SSE speech range, a model of vowel variation along with text passages for the two poles is provided for Shetland. A corpus-based study of the lesser-known feature of pulmonic ingressive speech in Orkney and Shetland is presented. The chapter concludes with a discussion of ongoing societal and demographic changes and their potential effects on the linguistic situation and local dialects.