Thread by @CarlT_03

Here is an update to last week’s discussion of the the Prologue to Scots by Billy Kay. Here follows my discussion of Chapter 1. Thank you to all the kind people who responded to the last post. I hope I saw all the comments. I don’t think I had my notifications set correctly.

#Scots #ScotsLeid #scotslanguage
A Reflection on Scots by Billy Kay
Chapter 1 The Mither Tongue?

All Excerpts From the book Scots by Billy Kay @billykayscot
books.apple.com/us/book/scots/…
This material may be protected by copyright

Other people I reference and/or quote —

Len Pennie Scots Word of the Day @Lenniesaurus
Damian Barr @Damian_Barr
Ian Henderson CTO of Rubric @rubricinc
rubric.com/en-US/scots-la…
Mozilla Firefox in Scots mozilla.org/sco/
BBC Radio Scotland 5 @bbcradioscot Good Morning Scotland 13 Aug 2021
BBC Scotland @BBCScotland

https://twitter.com/BBCScotland/status/1426214713814175744

Any and all mistakes, misquotes, and misrepresentations are my own. I gladly accept gentle correction. If any of those mentioned or quoted would like to be removed from this thread, I will do so.

“The guid Scots tongue . . . a slovenly debased dialect .

. . the Doric . . . corrupt English . . . artificial Lallans . . . uncouth gutturals . . . the National Language . . . an unintelligible dialect of English . . . Braid Scots . . . coarse slang . . . a language that never existed.” (36) I’ve heard these and a few more to describe

Scots. What Scots is depends on who you talk to.

Kay begins chapter one with his own experience as a Scots and English speaker, growing up speaking Scots and then learning English. “Alongside the Scots of my community, I acquired knowledge of English, as it was the medium of

education, the Kirk, the doctor’s surgery, and the radio and eventually television …” (37) Everyone who has a home language and another language for outside has to switch between the two, called switching registers or code-switching. All of us naturally switch between levels of

formality, but the complexity of code switching increases when the home language is different than the prestige or standard one. “One of the most debilitating phenomena of Scottish society is the false notion that to get on you have to get out.” (38) Len Pennie discusses this

classism with Damian Barr in the BBC Scotland video, how people are discouraged from speaking Scots to have class mobility. She’s been told “You’ll never get a job speaking like that.” Kay writes 15 years ago “English hegemony is so all pervasive in our society that a sign of

success and sophistication among some is to attempt to erase signs of Scottishness from their public persona.”(38) The stigma remains. What follows are several pages of heartbreaking stories of how children are treated, being belted for speaking Scots at school, and examples of

educators’ hostile attitudes towards Scots, such as “any form of Scots was banned as cheek.” (42) It is not an understatement to say “if a person’s being is expressed through a language which is not recognised as a valid means of communication by the authorities which govern his

life, the results can be traumatic.”(40) My grandmother was left handed and her first grade teacher beat her left hand with a ruler so she couldn’t use it to write. This kind of abuse follows a child throughout life. Not all educators had these attitudes thankfully.

“In schools

now, you can have that kind of attitude adhered to in one classroom and the opposite – where articulacy in the dialect is encouraged – operating in the room next door.” (42) Hard to imagine having the one teacher one year and the other one the next. And Kay notes “Not a few

teachers have replied to my criticism of Scottish education’s treatment of Scots by saying that my views are rooted in the past and do not reflect the present situation.”(43) Progress will always be uneven. It is encouraging that there are those who argue that it is better now.

Another sign of progress is in technology. Firefox has a version of their browser with Scots leid as an option. BBC Radio Scotland interviewed Ian Henderson CTO of Rubric and Len Pennie about the new Scots Firefox browser. Pennie was asked why is Scots important. Setting aside

the irony of that question being asked in Scotland, Pennie argued that Scots is important because it gives us “a culture and a language and a heritage … a place and sense of home.” For Kay, “…not to continue using Scots would have been tantamount to rejecting the culture of

the people I came from and hacking off the cultural roots which gave me the strength of identity I am lucky to possess.” (38) It seems obvious that language and culture are interdependent. Valuable culture is lost when we lose language.

Those learning another language discover

the richness of their own. No English speaker learning French or German doesn’t have those aha moments of “oh that’s were that comes from!” That is also my joy with learning Scots, finding the moments of connection and difference. Learning another language and culture makes for a

less provincial world view. Multi-culturalism became a political issue in California and bilingual education for native Spanish speakers was mostly banned in the 1990’s, also eliminating most bilingual education programs for English speakers. We have foreign language classes, but

few bilingual classrooms like Miss McKie‘s bilingual classroom described in the Prologue.(29)

Kay states, and I would agree it’s true for the US as well, “Britain is one of the few countries in the world where being monolingual is frequently considered preferable to being

bilingual in any of the country’s other native languages.”(44) This linguistic singularity also has a correct version with one proper way of speech and writing. This lack of linguistic education leaves the discussion about Scots “based on half-truths and prejudices rather than

actual knowledge.” (45) Thus Twitter.

The last half of chapter 1, I swear Kay was reading Twitter comments from 2021 when he wrote it. He addresses the numerous whatabouts I frequently see. What about the different dialects of Scots? Scots is English with an accent. We say that

word in the north of England. Other countries do this, and etc. It’s worth a read for the clear answers and examples.

But the common thread is education, especially for children. “Despite all the pressures, Scots survives. But if it is to resist the threat of erosion…, it must

be more actively promoted in our media and our schools.” (54) I can see it doing so with the new words coined for the internet, like wabsteid and fankle-fixin. To remain a living language, Scots adapts.

Kay closes Chapter 1, “For if we lose Scots, we lose the key to

how people have lived, loved, thought and played in our part of the world for many centuries. … It duisnae need tae happen an gin ye ken the history o the leid, ye micht jine the fecht tae mak siccar it never happens.”(55)

Let’s make certain it never happens.

Just as an aside, I wasn’t able to get an iOS version of Firefox in Scots, nor was I able to find the setting to change the language. If someone smarter than me knows how, please let me know. Thanks.

This is a link the thread about the Prologue

https://twitter.com/CarlT_03/status/1424491585106964488