r/Glasgow Tools

So, contrary to what the title might suggest, I'm not on to rant about the "uni accent" or whatever, but rather, to point out some interesting quirks I've noticed regarding the way we talk.

My girlfriend is from Edinburgh (shocking, I know) and while she herself speaks with the east coast equivalent of the Americanised "uni accent", her mother and grandmother both have fairly standard Edinburgh accents - her nan being quite well spoken and traditional, and her mum having the more "ah'dae'ken'like'eh" sort of vernacular.

An interesting difference I've noticed, however, is the prevalence of actual Scots words and phrases in the Edinburgh dialect as opposed to Glaswegian, which has a lot of it's own slang, as well as more parallels with say, a Cockney accent than an Aberdonian one, whereas Edinburgh accents are borderline Teuchter in a lot of ways. They'll call a close a "stair". A kitchen counter a "bunker". If somebody's making a mess they'll say they're "guddlin'". Instead of saying somebody looks smart, they'll say the look "nacky", and so forth. Even though my gran - Bridgeton lassie born and bred - made sure to educate me with a lot of old Scots words and slang, a lot of the shit these people come out with is totally foreign to me. Glasgow seems to mostly have it's own slang terminology when it isn't just using heavily accented standard English.

My theory is that this is because of Glasgow's former status as "The Second City of The Empire", the Clyde's impact in terms of immigration from other parts of the world, and the more direct English influence. There's also the massive Irish influence as well, which no doubt has a huge part to play, but sadly I'm not very familiar with Irish dialects so it's not something I can speak on confidently.

I've always found the Glaswegian, back of your throat "R" sound very similar to the way the French say it, and it's pretty much unique to Glasgow/the west coast, for instance. Maybe some remnant from The Auld Alliance? We like to use rhyming slang as well, which is again, similar to Cockney London. Of course, both Edinburgh and Glasgow would have had a massive influx of proto-Teuchters during the Highland Clearances and subsequent Industrial Revolution, but it seems like the cultural and linguistic effects of said have been felt more in Edinburgh than in Glasgow, in my experience anyway.

Glasgow seems to have a bit of an ego, a self-important, harder-and-therefore-cooler-than-thou streak that Edinburgh seems to lack. Their identity seems to heavily involve being proud of the fact that *they are not Glaswegian*, albeit in a mostly tongue-in-cheek way, and not wholly justified either; I've been in Wester Hailes, I've almost been accosted by raving junkies on the bridges - Edinburgh is a rough city as well, they just mask it better than we do.

Anyway, that last paragraph was a bit off topic and this whole post has been rather all over the place, but I just thought I'd share my observations and see if someone smarter than me - hopefully an actual qualified linguist or something - could possibly shed some light on why this rift exists, and whether or not I'm actually just chatting shite and haven't got a clue what I'm on about.