Paul Scott: Scots must no longer be poor relation of national languages

Published on Thursday 2 July 2009 21:35

THE Scottish Government published a report on 20 June about the state of the Scots language and announced it was setting up a working party under culture minister Michael Russell to consider the next steps.

There is a strange contradiction between different ideas about Scotland. Many historians, especially Americans, have been eloquent in praising us as an important cultural and intellectual influence. Harold Orel, for instance, in his book The Scottish World, wrote: "The record is rich; when seen as an entirety, almost unbelievably so. No nation its size has contributed so much to world culture."

On the other hand, those who deplore the present state of Scotland are themselves Scots. As Douglas Gifford says in a recent essay: "We have for two centuries turned at least one blind eye to our real cultural achievements. The responsibility for this neglect lies with our much vaunted educational system."

Most of our schools have not only largely ignored Scottish history and literature but have done their best to stamp out the Scots language, in which much of the best of this literature is written. They have succeeded so well in persuading generations of children that their native speech is inferior and deplorable that many of them have concluded that so is everything else which is Scottish.

Scotland has two languages of its own, Gaelic and Scots. Both are an important part of national life and the vehicle of great literatures. Scots is understood by more people than Gaelic and its literature is more extensive; but for years, successive governments have given far more support to Gaelic which recently acquired its own TV channel. Is this because the decision-makers have taken the ignorant view that Scots is merely bad English?

It is true that Scots and English share a common origin, but they developed separately for centuries. If we lose Scots, we should not only lose the ability to understand much of our own literature but a vocabulary which is rich in words to describe our environment, feelings and ideas. It is one of the pleasures of life in Scotland. The best part of the best novels of Walter Scott is the dialogue in Scots, and the same is true of RL Stevenson. It is the language of great poetry from the 15th century to the present.

Our schools in the past seem to have assumed they had to teach English and suppress Scots. They should encourage both, as in the German-speaking part of Switzerland, where both Swiss and Hoch Deutsch exist happily together. Bilingualism stimulates the intelligence and encourages the acquisition of other languages.

In addition to its other qualities, Scots has the advantage of sharing words, not only with English but with many other languages, such as Latin, French, German, Dutch and Norwegian. The dying words of Goethe were said to be "mehr licht". This is good German, but it is also good Scots.

Many recent plays in Scots, such as those by Robert Kemp, Robert McLellan, and Liz Lochhead, are among the triumphs of the Scottish stage. The Edinburgh Festival this year includes performances of Robert Henryson's narrative poem of 1590, The Testament of Cresseid, unfortunately not in the original language, but in English translation. By coincidence, Seamus Heaney has just published another translation of the same poem. Reviewers have asked why did he bother when the original language is so powerful.

It seems to me that one of the best ways to revive the Scots tongue is encourage more productions in it on the stage and on the radio and television. It is a force which speaks for itself.