Pupils, teachers and students can now not only read but also listen to the Scots language, thanks to a website created by University of Glasgow researchers.
The recently completed Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech website contains more than four million words in Scots and Scottish English incorporated within texts from 1945 to today. A significant proportion of the Corpus is made up of transcripts of spoken language linked to audio recordings, so that users can hear or analyse features of Scottish accents and pronunciation for themselves.
Among the texts included in SCOTS are a large number of spontaneous conversations in varieties of Scots; interviews with well-known figures including Ian Rankin (pictured) and Suhayl Saadi; collections of personal correspondence and diaries; and documents from the Scottish Parliament. It is funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council.
Wendy Anderson, project researcher, said: “The Scots language is a source of interest across the world as it is one aspect of a long and flourishing cultural heritage.
“The website will be a useful language resource for academic researchers and students, language learners and teachers, dictionary writers and secondary school language teachers, not to mention the large number of general users who want to satisfy a curiosity about the Scots language.”
* www.scottishcorpus.ac.uk
