/θ, ð/

In Scottish Standard English /θ, ð/ are realized as voiceless dental fricatives. In Urban Scots /θ/ has the traditional variant [h], in e.g. think, something, which may also be completely deleted in e.g. think, both, and a possible retroflex or alveolo-palatal fricative or  in the initial cluster /θr/ , in e.g. three (Wells 1982: 410; Macafee 1983: 33). Macafee (1983: 34) noted sporadic instances of /f/ for /θ/ in Glasgow. By the time of the collection of the 1997 Glasgow corpus [f] had emerged as a variable but frequent variant in the speech of working-class adolescents (Stuart-Smith 1999: 209). Interestingly [f] is added to the existing Scots variants to form a constellation of ‘non-standard’ variants for /θ/ such that in spontaneous speech [θ] accounts for less than a third of the overall variation in these speakers.

The traditional Urban Scots variant for /ð/ , particularly in intervocalic position, is the tap [R], in e.g. brother, though complete elision is also common, in e.g. the tag, an(d th)at (Wells 1982: 410; Johnston 1997: 508). Again the working-class adolescents in the 1997 Glasgow sample showed [v] for /ð/ in words such as smooth; [v] joins the traditional Scots variants to extend the array of possible ‘non-standard’ variation, though unlike /θ/ this makes up a much smaller proportion of the variation (under 20%).

Stopping of /θ, ð/ occurs occasionally in Scots in Glasgow (Johnston 1997: 506) where it may be due to Irish/Ulster influence.