Scottish?

Hello!

I'm not actually Scottish, but I live in Edinburgh and have done for several years. If I can help at all, let me know!

I think the biggest difficulty you'll face is in actually getting the sounds of the speech, while not making it too much like hard work for the reader.
E.g. "ge' ower yersel'" is Glaswegian for "Get over yourself," but takes some time to mentally translate and could ruin the flow of your writing and/or put readers off.

One way of getting round this I've seen several times, is not to go for the full phonetics, but to concentrate on the way certain sentences are structured and a few key words, such as "no" for "not" and "ye" for "you.": E.g. "You'll no be leaving just yet?" "and "Ye'll have had your tea?" (I've just realised that both those examples use the very common Scottish habit of asking a question as a statement - You'll be following my drift?)

The best advice I can give, and I speak as someone born of Scottish parents, is to find some recordings of Scots speaking naturally (not reading) and listen to them carefully, mainly for flow and sentence structure and those common words and phrases. Billy Connolly would be a good place to start, or try to find some old recordings of "Dr. Finlay's Casebook," a TV drama set in Scotland, but written for a sassenach (English) audience I would also suggest you avoid the linguistic stereotypes. I'm a comparatively old man and I've never heard a Scotsman say "Hoots." An' gi' yersel' a wee bit o' time, lass. Ye canna tak' on a girt new language in a short time an' that's what ye're talkin' aboot.

Another non-Scottish person living in Scotland! Hi

It's a weird thing for us Americans to wrap our heads around, but accents across the UK vary from city to city and from village to village. In Scotland, politics do as well. And politics are a big deal here right now. Calder is absolutely right about writing in the accent making hard work for your reader. I suggest (if you have a strong stomach) you check out a chapter or two of Trainspotting. The entire book is written in the varying dialects of the characters. My personal opinion is it's better to avoid writing in the accent, but a smattering of slang can really go a long way. They use slightly different sentence structures here, and that you can only pick up from listening to native speakers. Billy Connolly, Frankie Boyle, and Kevin Bridges are the first names that come to mind. All easily searchable on YouTube.

But I do understand that there are weird questions that come up when you're writing, and the internet doesn't always have an answer for things like what Scottish people call a dartboard. So you can PM me if you like, and if there's anything I'm not sure on, I'll ask some actual Scots for you

I also live in Scotland. I have done for most of the last 12 years.

I'm a Scot. Happy to help in any way, including reading over stuff to look for clangers. I'm from greater Glasgow so the dialect I know best is West Central Scotland. As krinaphobia says, there's a lot of variation.

To answer the questions in your OP: yes, parking spaces are called parking spaces, and pubs usually contain pool tables and almost always a dart board. Usually also a "one-arm bandit" type gambling machine, which in this area is know as a puggie. What else it includes will depend on the type of pub - a standard local may not have much else and is unlikely to serve food beyond crisps/nuts, pie and beans and maybe a toastie. Larger family pubs will serve meals - sometimes very good ones, often standard chain-pub fare.

As for language and dialect, the broadness varies a LOT, and so do the words used. One thing to understand is that Scotland has several languages in it's history - Scots (Germanic, similar to English but not a dialect of it), Doric (a Norse language that was used in the north-east), Gaelic (a Celtic language still spoken in the West Highlands and islands and certain parts of Glasgow, VERY similar to Irish Gaelic) and Norn (another Norse language spoken in Orkney and Shetland).

Most "slang" is actually a dilute form of one or other of these, and as such it is not always considered "wrong" to use "slang" words - even people in positions of power will use distinctly Scottish formations and Scots or other non-English words - sometimes unconsciously, sometimes for emphasis or deliberately to have fun with people. The First Minister does this reasonably often, so look her up. Also Mhairi Black MP was recently in the news for confusing journalists with Scottish vocabulary.

Most Scots speak a dilute form of one of these root languages habitually, which shapes their sentence structure even if they avoid the distinctive words for clarity. Scots will also code-switch mid-sentence between their usual way of speaking and standard English (Google code-switching, pretty interesting).

I observed all this while working as a transcriptionist, which is excellent for improving your dialogue - I agree that the best way to get your head into it is to listen to people from the area you're focusing on, and maybe transcribe what they're saying into dialogue. But I agree not to overdo the phonetic stuff or it's distracting.

There are also some Scottish words which we don't realise are distinctive - I only recently realised the rest of the English-speaking world has no access to the word "outwith". How on earth do you manage?

Where is your story set? This is hugely important.

Another Scot here!

Not originally Scottish, but have lived in the Highlands for the past ten years.

just came in to say im also an expat living in Scotland and love love love the country!!!! every time i travel somewhere else i cant wait to be back