I came across the following article in the Belfast Telegraph 21 May 1959.� It is about academic research on the speech of the Ulster-Scots and J Y Mather was one of the editors of�The Linguistic Atlas of Scotland.� This was published in three volumes in 1975, 1977 and 1985 respectivley but is now back in print.� The three volumes were republished by Routledge on 27 April 2010 and they offer a thorough and comprehensive dialectological study of Lowland Scotland, Orkney and Shetland, Northern Ireland, Northumberland etc.
Braid and Ards talk the purest Scottish
Experts dialect comparisons
Speech is one of the most evident of Ulster's many links with Scotland.� But which Ulster dialect has the closest connection with Scottish speech?� In the opinion of Mr J Y Mather it is in the Braid area, near Ballymena, with the Ards peninsula a close second.�
Mr Mather, a lecturer at the University of Edinburgh, is in County Antrim on a survey of the phonetical construction of dialect words.
He will take his findings back to Edinburgh and record them for further research.
We deal mainly with the Scottish dialects but we are also interested in the Ulster dialects, he said at Ballymena.
Armed with a tape recorder, he is travelling round the Glens of Antrim asking people to read a prepared list of words to find out how the phonetical construction differs from district to district.
It is amazing how the pronunication of a word differs from area to area, he said.
Mr Mather was over in Ulster two years in the Co Down area and helped to start the Ulster Dialect Dictionary.
In 1952 the University of Edinburgh prepared a questionnaire which they sent to Belfast Field Naturalists Club.
It gave lists of common objects and the club had to find the dialect name for them.� From the lists returned Ulster was split upinto dialect zones, and this helped in the completion of the dictionary.
Mr Mather is recording all his findings for research purposes.
We will have all the information in Edinburgh for anyone who wants to go into it in further detail, he says.
The next stage after this phonetical survey will be into intonation - the ups and downs the voice makes.
Mr Mathers survey will finish in about three weeks time.
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