Braid Scotch

Published on 05/02/2013 00:00

If Daibhidh Rothach (Letters, 4 February) were to read Burns’ works, he would discover that they are written in “Guid braid Scotch”, not in Scots.

All my long life, I have been bilingual in English and in that same Ayrshire Scotch, which was the normal speech when I was a boy. I never thought about it until I read the definitive dialect works of Sir James Wilson, author of Lowland Scotch.

Robert Pate

Minnigaff

Newton Stewart

Daibhidh Rothach says that whether Scots is a language or a dialect is open to debate.

Nations have languages, provinces have dialects. The Scots are a nation; they have a language. Unfortunately nae muckil of us hae muckil ingyne in the leid, a shameful state of affairs.

R Mill Irving

Station Road

Gifford, East Lothian