While listening to a Scot on the radio today I observed that she dropped the "T" from "bottle" and similar words. My father used to do the same, but my mother did not. My parents were from a part of South Carolina that was heavily Scotch/Irish, so why would one drop the "t" and another not? They weren't THAT isolated back then! Well, at least I didn't think so.

Just as in England, Wales and Ireland, there are a lot of different Scottish accents/dialects. Someone from Morningside in Edinburgh, for instance, will likely sound completely different from someone from The Gorbals in Glasgow.

Asa, I am having a hard time imagining how you say "bottle" with no "t." I suppose I'd understand what was being said because of the context, but I don't think I've ever heard it said that way before.

I guess it had a glottal stop instead of the t: [bɒʔl̩]

quote:

Originally posted by Kalleh:
Asa, I am having a hard time imagining how you say "bottle" with no "t." I suppose I'd understand what was being said because of the context, but I don't think I've ever heard it said that way before.

Try this

Say "boh <pause> ull"

Now say it faster.

Faster!

Say it ten times, as fast as you can.

There you go. Got it!

quote:

There you go. Got it!

Or even goh-it...

Now you know, Kalleh.

It's a common-enough occurrence phonologically in varieties of English, most famously in Cockney. In many kinds of American English an intervocalic t is often an alveolar tap [ɾ] (which is the same as the r in Spanish pero 'but'). This is sometimes inaccurately called a d by some prescriptive grammarians.