Re: Appalachia/Scots

--- On Wed, 2/18/09, congotre o <congotron@...> wrote:

> From: congotre o <congotron@...>
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: Appalachia/Scots
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Wednesday, February 18, 2009, 8:47 PM
> Where in Appalachia do they speak something closer to
> Lowland Scots than English?
> Thanks.

Perhaps I'm stretching a bit but what my family spoke in Lincoln Co. WV (SW WV) sounded just like Ulster Scots. When I first heard Ian Paisley speak, I thought he sounded exactly like one of my relatives giving a hell-fire sermon. My grandparents, uncles and older cousins spoke it.
Basically, /eyr/ > /@r/, /It, aet/ > /Et/; final /@/ > /@r/.
I remember my grandmother saying: "set down in thet chur, we're havin' taters and maters for supper." They didn't have the trill of Scots, though. One strange thing was a hypercorrection of -ack > /ayk/, "He likes two weeks to graduatin" [sic]. Plural nouns with numbers were singular: "ten mile", "five pound of taters", etc.