in worship in both countries. The Acts of Union 1707 amalgamated the Scottish and English Parliaments. However the church, educational and legal structures remained separate. This leads to important professional distinctions in the definitions of some words and terms. There are therefore words with precise definitions in Scottish English which are either not used in English English or have a different definition. Phonology The speech of the middle classes in Scotland tends to conform to the grammatical norms of the written standard, particularly in situations that are regarded as formal. Highland English is slightly different from the variety spoken in the Lowlands in that it is more phonologically, grammatically, and lexically influenced by a Gaelic substratum. Similarly, the English spoken in the North-East of Scotland tends to follow the phonology and grammar of Doric. Although pronunciation features vary among speakers (depending on region and social status), there are a number of phonological aspects characteristic of Scottish English: Scottish English is mostly rhotic, meaning is typically pronounced in the syllable coda, although some non-rhotic varieties are present in Edinburgh and Glasgow. The phoneme may be a postalveolar approximant , as in Received Pronunciation or General American, but speakers have also traditionally used for the same phoneme a somewhat more common alveolar flap or, now very rare, the alveolar trill (hereafter, will be used to denote any rhotic consonant). Although other dialects have merged non-intervocalic , , before (fern–fir–fur merger), Scottish English makes a distinction between the vowels in fern, fir, and fur. Many varieties contrast and before so that hoarse and horse are pronounced differently. and are contrasted so that shore and sure are pronounced differently, as are pour and poor. before is strong. An epenthetic vowel may occur between and so that girl and world are two-syllable words for some speakers. The same may occur between and , between and , and between and . There is a distinction between and in word pairs such as witch and which. The phoneme is common in names and in SSE's many Gaelic and Scots borrowings, so much so that it is often taught to incomers, particularly for "ch" in loch. Some Scottish speakers use it in words of Greek origin as well, such as technical, patriarch, etc. (Wells 1982, 408). is usually velarised (see dark l) except in borrowings like "glen" (from Scottish Gaelic "gleann"), which had an unvelarised l in their