The SCOTS project ("Scottish Corpus of Texts and Speech") has opened up an internet search facility. A story from The Scotsman of 11/30/2004 is here. Abnu at Wordlab, from whom I learned about this, offers this sample:
Faar I wis brocht up, e only seabirds we'd see wis e seamaas. In my time we caad em seagulls, bit aaler fowk wid say seamaas, makin't soon like 'simaaze'. Ere's ay change goin on in e dialect, an ye get a mixter o aal an new, bit it's e life o language tae be aye adaptin tae different generations an different times. It's naething tae greet aboot. Naething staans still, bit gin a wye o spikkin's richt hannlet, fa's tae say bit fit it michna leave its mark tee on fit ey caa e standard language? - for ere's nae doot at e standard language sair needs a bit o revitalisation noo an aan. Bit I'm on aboot seagulls, nae hobbyhorses.
The current inventory is 531K words in 385 documents, with some audio (seven conversations, four interviews) and video (two lectures).
Posted by Mark Liberman at December 1, 2004 05:33 AM