Ganfer 2

2. The word ‘Shaetlan.’

The pronunciation given at the start of this video is that of the ‘official’ English form of the word - Shetland - rather than that implied by the spelling 'Shaetlan.' The vowel in the official form 'Shetland' is approximately [ɛ] as in English ‘set,’ whereas that in the first syllable of the native form 'Shaetlan' is a closer vowel without an obvious point of reference in standard English spelling. In the Linguistic Atlas of Scotland (LAS vol.3) it is typically represented as [e], before /t/ often centralised [ë] and/or lowered [e̞ ].

Phonologically, the two vowels may be distinguished as /ɛ/ and /e/ (or by my Sjætlan orthographic spellings E and Æ - see below.) Both vowel phonemes occur in Shetlandic, but it’s the /e/ vowel that occurs in the first syllable of ‘Shaetlan.’ It can be heard distinctly in the word ‘faest’ (feast) in the penultimate line of the poetry reading (around 56:10 - I can’t see the number exactly against the black background.) Also see my ‘Short Guide’ PDF and video on the Shetland vowel sounds - link below.

It is important to recognise that the vowel spelt AE in ‘Shaetlan’ is a different phoneme from the vowel normally written E, and not an allophone of the /ɛ/ - or any other - phoneme. In Scots linguistic terms, it is Aitken vowel #3, which has merged with other vowels in most dialects of Scots on the Scottish Mainland. (In Shetland, owing to a process which I call soft mutation, it merges with /ɛ/ or /i/ before voiced consonants in some dialects, but not before voiceless consonants such as /t/.) So although not historically unique to Shetland it is certainly characteristic of Shetlandic, although, because it does not have an obvious reference in ‘proper’ English spelling, it tends to fall below the radar. It is not, for example, mentioned in the list of vowel sounds in J.J. Graham’s Shetland Dictionary, even though he frequently uses the AE spelling to represent it in the body of the dictionary itself.

In Anglocentric Shetland dialect spelling it also tends to be confused with the I (<i> /ɪ/) phoneme (e.g. *lik, *spik and *sic for laek (like) spaek (speak) and saek (such), and even the ad hoc spelling 'Shitland'!) This is because the Shetlandic pronunciation of /e/ sounds superficially like the English pronunciation of /ɪ/. But in Shetlandic the /e/ and /ɪ/ phonemes are distinct, and although they each have what I call ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ allophones (depending mostly on whether they occur before voiceless or voiced consonants) they do not rhyme in any environment. In Shetlandic, the I /ɪ/ phoneme before voiceless consonants is pronounced further back - in the LAS, it is often transcribed as [ɜ]. ‘Laek’ does not rhyme with ‘lick’. Rather than give more minimal pairs here, I’ve given them in a video with audio in a link in the description to the blank video below.

Pronouncing ‘Shaetlan’ as ‘Shetland’ gives credence to the misconception that the spelling ‘Shaetlan’ is what is known as ‘eye dialect’ - a different spelling of the same pronunciation as the official English term ‘Shetland,’ whether tokenistic, or to distinguish the language from the place. By contrast, the article on Shetland on the Scots Language Centre website starts as follows.

‘When using English, we say 'Shetland dialect' or just 'the dialect'. 'Shetlandic' is an English name used when writing in English. But, for dialect speakers among dialect speakers, the word is 'Shetland' (pronounced Shaetlan). The name of the speech and the name of the islands are the same.’

Far from using the spelling ‘Shaetlan’ as a written tokenism, the writer here is using it specifically to show that the Shetland pronunciation differs from the one suggested by the spelling ‘Shetland.’

In my Sjætlan orthography, I spell the vowel in the word ‘Sjætlan’ as Æ, representing its identity as a discrete phoneme by a single letter. (Note that the use of Æ for this vowel is a development from the Shetland dialect spelling of AE - which is in turn a reversal of the EA in many English cognate words - rather than directly from its use in Nordic languages, where it represents other sounds.)

The word ‘Shaetlan(d)’ - it varies as to whether there is a ‘d’ at the end - simply means ‘Shetland.’ It is not a designation of the language as such, but a spelling of the native phonemic pronunciation of the name of the place, which has officially been transcribed into English as ‘Shetland’ because there is no obvious way in English spelling conventions to spell the actual vowel sound. This use of ‘Shaetlan’ for the tongue is simply the use of the name of the place with that meaning, much as others might talk about ‘speaking Aberdeen,’ or inhabitants of individual islands about ‘spaekin Burra’ (the word ‘spaek’ has the same phoneme) or ‘spaekin Whaalsa.’

To sum up: ‘Shetland’ is the official name of the place, reflecting the English pronunciation, and ‘Shaetlan(d)’ is the native name of the place, reflecting the native pronunciation, which is also used for the language. There is no official term for the language, as this is conceived of by the Shetland establishment simply as ‘dialect,’ and the use of any other term would challenge the narrative that it consists of an indefinable continuum of regional variations, for which any attempt at consolidation, emancipation, or even identification must be vigorously resisted.

The confusion over the pronunciation and spelling of the word ‘Shaetlan’ shows the success of the Shetland establishment in eliminating any word other than ‘dialect’ to describe the native language. The word ‘Shetlandic’ - the obvious English translation of ‘Shaetlan,’ which would logically be used in an English language video like this one - represented a danger of ‘dialect’ climbing out of its allocated place in the social order, and was vociferously denigrated until it disappeared. The word ‘Shaetlan,’ if pronounced correctly, sounds a bit like ‘Shitland’ to Anglophone ears. And the word ‘Shetland’ is ambiguous as to whether it refers to the language or the place. So the Shetland establishment - administration, intelligentsia, literati and media - have successfully cemented the basilect dialect status of the language by depriving it of a name.

I have recently posted a phone-friendly PDF with accompanying video which gives the pronunciation (in my accent, but with some typical regional variations at the end) of the 15 essential Shetlandic vowel phonemes and six phonemic diphthongs. (This includes pronunciations before voiced consonants, which raise other considerations - owing to the process that I call soft mutation - again explained on the Sjætlan website.) To illustrate points made in my comments below, I've also made a video to illustrate the contrasts, in minimal pairs, of Æ with E and I before voiceless consonants.

Shetlandic Vowels - A Short Guide

Æ Contrasts