The Scots Language

The Scottish Education Act of 1872 stipulated that education in Scotland should be through the medium of English. That wasn't an accident. It was the end of the UK government's plan to send Gaelic and Scots to the very edges of Scottish cultural life that had been going on since 1745 (and maybe even 1701 or before). The fringes are where our languages and cultures have stayed ever since. Shamefully. Who knows how much Scots and Gaelic language, how much history, how much poetry and music have been lost since then?

The refusal to understand what language in Scotland is about - how complex the language map within Scotland is - can't be just a failure of understanding, because we're among the best educated people in Europe. The discrimination in favour of English and against Scotland's native languages continued right up to last week - that's 147 years+), when a BBC Scotland radio programme invited an expert on the Scots language onto its 'show' and then contented itself with debating the question: 'Is Scots even a language?'

I've had enough of this and, frankly - whatever your opinion of the debate about independence, the EU and so on - so should you. The ignorance (or pretended ignorance) of journalists, a lot of them Scots themselves, about Scottish history, language, music, poetry is frankly disgraceful.

So here's a map. It shows the languages of the Old World (there's a separate one for the New World). It's hard to make out Scots (bottom right-hand quadrant) or Gaelic (right in the centre along with other Celtic languages) because the size of a language's 'presence' depends on the raw numbers of speakers, and there are fewer and fewer Scots and Gaelic speakers left.

But what you can see clearly is the connection between Scots and other European languages like Dutch, Frisian and German as well as English. Gaelic is clearly connected to other Celtic languages like Welsh, Cornish, Manx and Irish. We are Europeans, have been for a few thousand years. We share a heritage.

We don't, contrary to what Scots are still told today in the Central Belt, speak 'slang.' In fact our language background is very complex: for centuries we've been moving back and forth between the Highlands and the Lowlands, between south-west Scotland, Northern Ireland and what is now Eire. We've picked up language wherever we've gone.

My niece asked today where the word 'oxter' comes from. Probably from the Brythonic language that was spoken in a lot of England, Wales and the Lowlands of Scotland in Celtic times - about 1500 years ago. Great, isn't it? Having that kind of ancestry, I mean.

There are so many Scots words and phrases we use without even knowing English speakers don't use them. My neighbour (who was English) went to a new job in Bristol and asked people: 'Where do you stay?' Nobody had a clue what he meant. I once said to my headteacher: 'Well, forbye that...' He looked confused. I've been caught out myself a few times too. My friend's mother used to talk about doing things 'The morn's morn.' My brother in law tells his grandson: 'Pull yer breeks up!'

I hate the thought of reducing the way we talk to a series of English phrases. We're told all the time that English is the world's common language. It's not. English as it is spoken in the UK is quite different from American English, South African English, Aussie English, etc. And they are quite different from each other. Maybe it's time for BBC Scotland to get with the programme. See what I did there?.