Many older speakers employ a very distinctive affirmative or backchannel item taken from Scottish Gaelic which involves an ingress of breath[REF] with clearly audible friction and whose function to indicate agreement with what a speaker has just said or is saying or to indicate continuing agreement or comprehension.
H-dropping, not generally found in Scots or Scottish English dialects, has been reported to be a standard speech feature in the Black Isle, near Inverness [REF].