The loss of the Scots

language would be a

cultural catastrophe

 

Michael Hance

I have a confession to make. Once many years ago I tried on a tweed jaiket – in a charity shop in Edinburgh. I'd read that tweed was now fashionable, looked good and I imagined that because it was made in Scotland and infused with the colours of our native land it would enhance my sandy hair and freckled, peely-wally, complexion. It didn't. In fact I looked like a wee skinny malink in his dad's oot o date auld suit.
     That's the nearest I ever got to David McVey's stereotype (8 December) of a Scots language guardian since I am not only a disdainer of tweed but an inhabitant not of Corstorphine or Bearsden but a small ex-mining town in West Lothian.
      Mr McVey's bitterness towards those he attempts to satirise arises it seems from the suggestion that his poetry wasn't good enough for publication in a Scots language magazine. Now, on that subject, I cannot comment. I have no qualifications as a literary critic and have never worked for the magazine to which he submitted his work. But I do know that one ought not to make assumptions about an entire community based on a brief connection with one individual associated with it. 
     But the facts, as the old saying goes, should never get in the way of a good story. Mr McVey suggests that Scots language 'guardians' are opposed to the use of contemporary language but cites no evidence to back up that position. In fact at the Scots Language Centre, the organisation of which I am the director, we seek to represent the widest possible range of Scots registers, dialects and forms. Indeed our critics have suggested that we over-emphasise modern Scots. If he visits our website or our group on facebook he'll find plenty of variety and along with the 'uncos' and 'aiblins' he so dislikes he'll read and hear examples of the language used by hundreds of thousands of people in streets, homes, shops and pubs throughout the country.
      He might enjoy 'Bedroom Radio', the touching documentary from Glasgow-based film makers, Autonomi, which follows the lives of Paisley couple, Gary and Yvonne, who run a pirate radio station from their cooncil flat, or clips from 'One Day Removals', the raucous story of robbery in modern Doric from Aberdonian producer, Mark Stirton. It's not that we're against preserving – and celebrating – older Scots but we understand fully that to promote pride in the language and to encourage understanding of its history and cultural significance we need to present it in all its lively and creative modern forms.
     Mr McVey's antipathy to those who use lexical items which have become less common in recent times glosses over serious questions about language loss and language shift. As a boy I heard many words like, for example, 'ilka' which have now become rare. But this is not as Mr McVey suggests the result of a natural process. Language shift has occurred because efforts have been made to change the way people speak.

 

     Anyone can search the internet to find heartbreaking examples of Scots-speaking youngsters encountering linguistic prejudice and ridicule at school. Studies of attitudes towards Scots by Austrian linguist, Dr John Unger, reveal that Scots-speaking children were subjected to physical and psychological abuse by teachers who sought to stamp out the language. And just because this process of linguicide is no longer carried out with the aid of a leather strap does not mean it is a thing of the past as Polish academic, Wojtek Gardela, discovered when he recently researched attitudes to language in schools in Midlothian. So if some thoughtful souls are over-zealous in their attempts to redress this situation then surely we cannot do anything but sympathise with their efforts.
     The claim that a language which requires support is a language that is beyond saving is one which is often made but rarely critically examined. The argument fails to take into account the support which 'national' languages like English receive at the taxpayers' expense through broadcasting, education and the various institutions of the state. It is precisely because Scots does not and did not receive these indirect forms of support that it is being lost at such speed. To stand by and sneer while this cultural catastrophe continues is not in my view a reasonable response. 
     I wish David McVey had visited our website – he might have discovered a Scots language world in which he would have felt very comfortable since it is an inclusive and affirming space where in podcasts, blogs and videos the speech forms of ordinary Scots can be heard and enjoyed alongside readings from literary classics like the W L Lorimer translation of the New Testament. He would also be pleased to hear our positive views about Glasgow dialect, the form of speech towards which Scots language 'guardians' are alleged to have a particular hostility. Glesga Physics, the marvellous videos created by Paul Greer, an innovative young teacher from Clydebank, to help students revise for their Higher exams is just one example of the range of Glasgow dialect focussed resources that we promote. The tweed-jaiketed, 'big man' denizens of Corstorphine are entirely absent and one wonders if they were ever anything but a figment of Mr McVey's imagination.
     We all have tastes, likes and dislikes but are there many things more depressing than someone who wears his prejudices like a badge of pride? It is not an act of cultural radicalism to seethe inwardly at another person's use of their local dialect. Speakers of Scots are guardians of a centuries-old language and culture. For far too long they have been told to shut up and 'speak properly'. That Scots and its many dialects have survived against all the odds is a triumph of small over large, right over might and local over global. Surely we should celebrate the language where it survives, encourage experimentation and expression in it, and rejoice when we hear it.

 

Michael Hance is director of the Scots Language Centre