Scottish Vowel Length Rule

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The Scottish Vowel Length Rule, also known as Aitken's Law after Professor A.J. Aitken, who formulated it, describes how vowel length in Scots and Scottish English is conditioned by environment.

The rule affects all vowels in Central dialects, while in peripheral dialects some vowels remain unaffected.

• [ə], [ɪ], [ʌ], [ɛ] and [a] are usually short.
• [e], [i], [o], [u] and [ø] are usually long in the following environments, and short elsewhere:
  • in stressed syllables before voiced fricatives, namely [v], [ð], [z], [ʒ], and also before [r].
  • before another vowel and
  • before a morpheme boundary, so, for example, "stayed" is pronounced with a longer vowel than "staid"
• [ɑ], [ɒ] and [ɔ] are usually long in most dialects.
• The diphthong [əi] usually occurs in short environments and [aɪ] in the long environments described above.

The Scottish Vowel Length Rule is assumed to have come into being between the early Middle Scots and late Middle Scots period.

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