Corss word clue

Margaret E Salmond (Letters, 16 January) remarks on the fact that Scots has tended to survive only as dialects since the central powers of court and parliament were moved from this country, and that could make teaching it difficult.

This problem was noted by the scholar David Murison, who worked on the Scottish National Dictionary in 1976.

He concluded that prose had to be restored to an integrated form.

Once, when laws were still made in Scots and “cryed frae the Corss” – that is, announced to the inhabitants of the burghs in the language they all used – such a form existed. It has been carefully recorded in the National Dictionary .

Since then, I have been writing in geographically and historically reintegrated Scots, guided by that great work.

After writing three original fictional books in Scots prose, and translating three classic books into Scots, I was able to produce A Scotch Spell, A Scots Spelling Book, which details the vocabulary and spelling decisions in these six books over 250 pages.

Because of the requirements for learners of Scots, I am now writing and publishing three suitable books based on A Scotch Spell, two with audio discs, which show that an integrated Scots is comprehensible to all speakers.

One of these is also translated into Gaelic by Seonag Barbour, to indicate equal support for the two languages.

Iain WD Forde

Main Street

Scotlandwell