Friday, March 18, 2011

Ah dinnae speak Scots, Ah speak English!

Over recent days I've noticed several Facebook users campaigning for people to use the forthcoming census to record their national identity as "Scottish, not British". That's of course a no-brainer, but flicking through the form there are a few more problematic related questions. I'm sure most nationalists would instinctively prefer to also record their 'ethnic group' as being Scottish, but in the case of someone like me that would be downright dishonest! To the best of my knowledge, my ancestry is roughly 75% Irish and 25% French-Canadian, so the Irish tick-box it'll have to be. Strange though it feels, it's actually am extremely good thing to be able to claim a Scottish national identity but a completely different ethnicity - that's the very essence of SNP-style civic nationalism.

It's also fantastic to finally see questions on the Scots language in the census, although I fear the number of speakers may still be grossly understated due to confusion over exactly what is being asked. Many native speakers of what could be most accurately described as English-Scots transitional dialects may well have always regarded themselves as simply speaking 'bad English', and might not realise the questions apply to them. Fortunately, this website has been set up to unambiguously clarify the position, although how many people will actually find it is another matter. For my part, the questions about 'understanding' and 'reading' Scots pose no problems, and although I've basically spoken standard English since I was a teenager, the words I can recall using as a young child probably just about qualify me as a native Scots speaker. 'Writing' Scots seemed the trickiest question to answer in the affirmative - but then I recalled that I made several hundred edits to the Scots Wikipedia in its early days back in 2005/6. Admittedly it was an almighty struggle, but if that doesn't entitle me to claim that I can write Scots, I don't know what does!

But then there's the issue of Gaelic. Many years ago, I made a tentative start to learning the language, but never got past the very basic conversational stuff. As a result it would never have occurred to me that I should be doing anything other than ignoring the Gaelic questions in the census, but reading this comment from the Scottish government Gaelic ambassador Allan Campbell gave me slight pause for thought -

"It is extremely important that all those people with any knowledge of Gaelic indicate this in their response to Question 16 in the census questionnaire."

On a maximalist interpretation on those words, I should maybe consider ticking the 'understand Gaelic' box on the tenuous grounds that I have 'some knowledge' of the language, but somehow the idea still seems too absurd. Any thoughts?


  1. I was just looking at my census form last night and decided that I can indeed understand Scots, probably speak it somewhat but most of the words I know would be those which appear in the most popular Burns poems (which seems to be enough for your web reference). So, I've decided to state that I can speak and read it, but not write it.

    The problem is that a lot of the time I could offer an interpretation of the sense of a line from a poem. but if you were to ask me the meaning of a word on it's own, I'd probably struggle.

    I'm not really sure I understand why they are offering an online service for people to fill in the form in Gaelic though. I doubt there is anyone out there who is both computer literate and limited to the Gaelic language.

    I have some knowledge of Gaelic, but I have more knowledge of French, German and Japanese. I really don't like the idea that a census is deliberately skewed in this manner to make Gaelic look more prevalent than it actually is.

  2. Of course, there are many people in Scotland who would throw up their hands in horror at the thought of speaking Scots. It's become a class indicator (as ever, association with a dominant culture confers social status) and we make so many unjustified presumptions based on whether a person speaks Scots or English.
    There are many parents who have spent a great deal of time and effort in ensuring their children reap the benefits of speaking
    'properly'. It's an instant badge of distinction from the common herd. It let's both you and them know you're socially superior. I know a few people at work who determinedly pronounce the aspirated K in Loch or McCulloch as a hard K. One of whom, born and bred in my neck of the woods, claims he simply can't make 'that sound'. In common with Gordon Brown, he has also tried to change the 'uh' sound we make, (as in 'murder') and as a result of the effort sounds a bit like a yodelling Yorkshireman.

    Talking of skewing the results of the census, after the question about use of Scots, I was surprised that Scots wasn't a named alternative in the subsequent question asking which language, other than English, you use at home. The options being: English Only, Sign Language or Other.

  3. I think what really bugs me is that there ought to be a graded scale on langauge ability. For instance, I'd like to give a '1 out of 10' score on being able to read, speak, and understand Gaelic, because filling the tick-boxes in almost implies a score of ten (or certainly well over five), which isn't accurate, but leaving them blank implies a score of zero, which isn't accurate either.

    I think on writing Scots I'd give myself a two or three out of ten, speaking it maybe a four, and understanding/reading it an eight. Like you, Jim, there are individual words I'd always have to look up, but that's the inevitable product of Scots ceasing to be taken seriously as a literary language - its use in everyday life becomes debased.

    Voiceofourown - yes, the juxtaposition of the two questions seems a bit peculiar. Surely BSL should also have been included in the first question (I gather it's more widely known in Scotland than Gaelic), and Gaelic and Scots should also have been included in the second question (I'm quite sure Scots is used in the home by more people than BSL).