Scottish

There are many accents of British English, but one that is spoken by a large number of people and is radically different from BBC English is the Scottish accent. There is much variation from one part of Scotland to another; the accent of Edinburgh is the one most usually described. Like the American accent described above, Scottish English pronunciation is essentially rhotic and an 'r' in the spelling is always pronounced; the words 'shore' and 'short' can be transcribed as ʃɔr and ʃɔrt. The Scottish r sound is usually pronounced as a "flap" or "tap" similar to the r sound in Spanish.

It is in the vowel system that we find the most important differences between BBC pronunciation and Scottish English. As with American English, long vowels and diphthongs that correspond to spellings with 'r' are composed of a vowel and the r consonant, as mentioned above. The distinction between long and short vowels does not exist, so that 'good', 'food' have the same vowel, as do 'Sam', 'psalm' and 'caught', 'cot'. The BBC diphthongs eɪ, əʊ are pronounced as pure vowels e, o, but the diphthongs eI, aI, OI exist as in the BBC accent (though with phonetic differences).

This brief account may cover the most basic differences, but it should be noted that these and other differences are so radical that people from England and from parts of lowland Scotland have serious difficulty in understanding each other. It often happens that foreigners who have learned to pronounce English as it is spoken in England find life very difficult when they go to Scotland, though in time they do manage to deal with the pronunciation differences and communicate successfully.