Thread by @simon_brooke

A bit of a thread about Scots language, Scots orthography, and erasure: how our past and identity are deconstructed.

So, let's start: how many letters are there in the alphabet?

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If you answered 26, go to the bottom of the class.

Next, how do you pronounce the last syllable of the placename 'Cockenzie'?

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If, for you, it sounds like the Dutch 'Zee', also go to the bottom of the class. But the two answers are related, and the relationship is hegemonic.

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But before we get further into this, what actually is a letter? Is 'æ' a letter, or is it a ligature of the letters 'a' and 'e'? Is 'ç' a letter, or is it a 'c' with a diacritical mark?

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A letter is a glyph - a distinct graphical form with features distinguishing it from other letters - which, in the context of a language, is (broadly) associated with a sound.

Do you agree?

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We were taught that English is written using the Latin alphabet, but in fact that's a lie.

The Latin alphabet had 21 letters. It did not have 'j', 'u', 'w', 'x', 'y' or 'z'.

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Icelanders would tell you that the alphabet has 32 letters. However, that includes 'æ' and 'á', and so on. So Iceland has letters just like our letters, but they count ligatures and letters with diacritical marks as letters?

No. It's more complicated than that.

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Icelandic also includes the letters 'ð' (eth) and 'þ' (thorn), which are neither ligatures nor diacritically marked letters. They are entirely different glyphs, associated (in Icelandic) with sounds not associated with any other letters.

But, Icelandic also has no 'z'.

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So that all seems rather a long way from Cockenzie, doesn't it? No, it doesn't.

Cockenzie also has no 'z'.

"Oh yes it does," you may say. "I can see it."

Oh no it doesn't.

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Because Scots also doesn't have 26 letters. Scots has a letter 'ȝ' (yogh), which doesn't exist in the modern English alphabet, or the Latin alphabet, or even the Icelandic alphabet.

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That letter 'ȝ' is in 'Dalȝiel' and 'Menȝies' and 'Kirkgunȝeon' and 'Culȝean' and 'Ȝetland', and, yes, 'Cockenȝie'.

We know how to pronounce those words (well, maybe we've forgotten how to pronounce 'Shetland' and 'Cockenzie'). We know there's no 'z' sound in them.

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So why have we forgotten how to spell them?

Well, one answer - the answer I was taught - was that in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, printers in Scotland used to buy their type from foundries in England, and those English type foundries didn't produce 'ȝ'.

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There's probably truth in that. But there's probably also truth in the fact that we've suppressed - we've not formally taught - Scots as a language for three hundred years. And consequently no-one was taught the Scots alphabet. And consequently we've forgotten it.

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Alphabets have hegemonic power, because we use them for canonical orderings. We use them so universally for canonical orderings that we've forgotten that they're arbitrary.

So, quick! Where would you look for a word starting with 'ȝ' in the dictionary? In the phonebook?

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A Scots schoolchild in James VI's day could have told you that quick as a flash. They'd think you unlairit for not immediately knowing. But I can't tell you. I don't know. I don't know whether anyone now alive still does.

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And how many more letters would that Scots schoolchild have known that we don't now recognise? That 'd' in 'Kirkcudbright' that people can't pronounce can't be pronounced because it isn't a 'd', it's an 'ð', just like in Icelandic.

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But is also can't be pronounced because the saint it remembers, Cuðbrecht, wasn't Scots; he was Northumbrian, an Angle. The Angles used a script derived from a collision between the late Latin and Elder Futhark alphabets, and it included 'ð'.

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(Elder Futhark also included a letter 'ᛇ' (called eihwaz, a yew tree), which may be the ancester of the Scots yogh).

So, should a Scots alphabet include 'ð'? I simply don't know. And are there other candidates? I don't know that either.

But I think that, gin we are tae big up a new nacion, we maun decide. We must reconstruct our own language as a first class language of literature and everyday communication, even though it will probably not supplant English as a language of business. >>>

Because, as you'll notice from this thread, I, at 65, can't write Scots with confidence, and it shames me. Let's not bring up new generations to be similarly shamed.