The Scottish Languages Act

Scotland’s status as a multilingual country is now recognised in law with the Scottish Languages Act coming into force on St Andrew’s Day. The Act beefs up the legal protections previously given to Gaelic and elevates it to the status of an official language of Scotland. For the first time in history, official legal recognition has been granted to Scots, which like Gaelic is now an official language of Scotland.

Although the granting of official status to Gaelic and Scots is largely symbolic, it’s an important step forward in the recognition and promotion of the languages. Both Gaelic and Scots are now equally recognised as national languages of all of Scotland, reflecting the pivotal role which they have played in the formation and expression of Scottish nationhood.

They now join English which has been the de facto sole official language of Scotland since 1707. But why are just Gaelic and Scots being recognised, and not any other language variety now or formerly spoken in Scotland? The first and most obvious answer to this question is that Gaelic and Scots are still spoken. The latest census statistics show that 130,161 people in Scotland claimed to have some Gaelic skills in 2022, an increase of 43,105 from 2011. The census also shows that 2,444,659 people in Scotland had some Scots skills in 2022, an increase of 515,215 from 2011.

Other languages sometimes mentioned, such as Pictish, Cumbric, and Norn are all extinct and no longer have speakers. Pictish and Cumbric, the pre-Gaelic Celtic languages of Northern and Southern Scotland respectively, are meagrely attested. We don’t have any connected texts in these languages and what remains is not sufficient to revive them.

Norn, the Norse language of the Northern Isles, died out as a spoken language by the end of the 18th century. Only a few short and corrupt texts survive. An attempt has been made to recreate Norn but the extent to which this is faithful to the traditional language is debatable.

Gaelic and Scots not only still have speakers, they are abundantly attested.

Without Gaelic or Scots there would be no Scotland as we know it. Much of what is essential and fundamental to Scottish culture was created and expressed in these languages. Scotland itself was created by the Gaelic language. Both languages are the vehicles of a rich literature which is specific to Scotland.

Gaelic is of fundamental importance to Scotland. The very name Scotland means the land of the Gaelic speakers.

While the ethnic name Scot was never applied by Gaelic speakers to themselves when speaking Gaelic, it was the name by which the Gaelic speakers of Ireland were known to the Romans in Latin texts from the later years of the Roman occupation of Britain. Due to the immense prestige of Latin as one of the very few written languages of Europe in the post Roman period, the name was adopted by other European languages to refer to the Gaelic speakers of Ireland and their extension into northern Britain. In Old English the name Scotland referred to Ireland, the original home of Gaelic language and culture. It was only later that the name Scotland came to refer to those parts of the island of Britain which were Gaelic in speech and culture. This occurred after English adopted the Norse name Írland to refer to the island of Ireland.

The name Scotland literally means the land of the Gaelic speakers. This fact alone would make the Gaelic language of paramount importance to Scotland even if Gaelic had died out shortly after its introduction into what is now Scotland. But Gaelic did not die out, it became the language of the most important and powerful polity in the northern half of the island of Britain. Gaelic was the language of Scottish kings and the Scottish nobility for most of the Middle Ages. During this time the language spread across almost all of mainland Scotland, writing itself into the Scottish landscape in the form of the Gaelic derived place names which remain so characteristic of Scotland. Only the Northern Isles and the extreme south east of mainland Scotland never became Gaelic speaking. Even in Midlothian around 40% of modern place names are Gaelic in origin, survivors from a time when there was an important and politically and culturally influential native Gaelic speaking population in and around Edinburgh.

The name Scoti is of obscure origin, it does not derive from the name of any known Celtic tribe, but it is probably of Celtic origin. One theory derives it from a Celtic word meaning ‘cut off’ or ‘outcast’, ultimately from Proto-Celtic *skutā, ‘the point or cutting edge of a weapon’, which in this instance would be a reference to those Celts who had rejected Roman rule and who mounted increasing attacks on the western coasts of Roman Britain in the later years of Roman occupation. The name first appears in late Latin texts to refer to Celtic speaking marauders from Ireland who assailed the western coasts of the Roman province of Britannia.

Scots originates in the Anglo-Saxon speech of that corner of South East mainland Scotland which did not become Gaelic speaking. These speakers called their speech Inglis. They were later reinforced by thousands of refugees from the north of England fleeing William the Conqueror’s brutal pacification of the north. It’s to these people that Scots owes much of the characteristic Norse derived vocabulary which distinguishes it from English, words like kirk, bairn, brig and gait.

Scots started to spread throughout Scotland with the establishment of royal burghs by the Scottish monarchy, intended to promote trade and commerce. Settlers from England and the Low Countries were invited to live in these new urban settlements. From these centres, Scots spread out into the surrounding countryside which at this time was predominantly Celtic speaking, Gaelic in most of Scotland but with remants of Cumbric in Southern Scotland.

Scots established itself as the language of the Scottish royal court by the high Middle Ages, it became the language of the Scottish legal system and the Scottish aristocracy. Over time an awareness grew that Scots was different from its English relative as Scots increasingly evolved along lines of its own with a distinct vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar which eventually led to it being sharply differentiated from English.

It’s fair to say that Gaelic was the language which created the Scottish nation and the Scottish state, but Scots then became the language through which Scottish statehood was expressed.

Ever since the political decision to impose the English language bible in Scotland, Scots has been driven out of many formal literary spheres. The language has been dialectalised and increasingly percolated by English. Many people have lost the sense that the various dialects of spoken Scots are all part of a single Scots language. This is particularly the case with North East Scots, or Doric, and Shetland Scots. These are not languages in their own right but part of the wider Scots language. In fact the differences between the various dialects of Scots relatively minor in comparison to the deep dialectal divisions in certain other languages. The various dialects of Basque or Slovenian are not mutually intelligible, whereas Scots speakers can understand other dialects of Scots with relatively little difficulty.

Recognising Scots and Gaelic as official languages of Scotland is a symbolic step, but an important one. As such it is to be welcomed.

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