Scots' legitimacy as national tongue

YOUR correspondent Archy Macpherson (‘Survival of the Gaelic language’, Letters, January 30) makes no mention of Scots. If any language deserves to be recognised as ‘Scottish’, on the analogy of Polish, Danish, etc, it is Scots.

Although it is derived from the Northumbrian dialect of Old English, it has for centuries been the vernacular speech of southern Scotland, the central lowlands, the north-east lowlands and Caithness. It has its own regional variations and its own established literature.

Furthermore, it is the only speech that can claim to have been the official language of the pre-Union Scottish state.

While the 1872 Education (Scotland) Act undoubtedly discriminated against Gaelic, the important events affecting the future of that language took place centuries earlier.

Once the various Anglian, Welsh and Norse elements of medieval Scotland adopted ‘Inglis’, as it was then called, as the common vernacular, the long-term future of Gaelic, one of gradual decline, was decided. This happened in the early Middle Ages.

Fred Forrester, Dunfermline