dis / yun / dat

Demonstratives are used to point something out in a situation or an utterance. Shaetlan has a 3-way contrast system with dis / yun / dat where dis is closest ("proximal"), yun is further away ("distal") and dat is even more removed in space or time ("remote"): dis ram is moorit, yun ram yundroo is catmoget, bit da ram mi fokk haed, dat ram wis a boanny sholmet een ('this ram is brown, that ram there is black bellied, but the ram that my parents had, that ram was a beautiful white faced one). This is different from the Standard English system, which only has a 2-way contrast, and more similar to the Spanish 3-way system.

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Because StE only has two contrasts, yun and dat both translate to English 'that'. But that only reflects the less fine-grained nature of the StE system and does not mean that yun and dat are interchangeable.