THE Scots leid will be given legal protection for the first time in history if the Scottish Languages Bill passes after a final debate at Holyrood on Tuesday.
However, while this momentous occasion has been lauded by the Scottish Government’s communications team, the focus has been largely on the bill’s implications for Gaelic.
Statements about its importance were published by Gaelic poet Peter Mackay and Deputy First Minister Kate Forbes. While, perhaps unsurprisingly, Mackay’s focus was on Gaelic, Scots had also been entirely left out of the equation by Forbes. As a Scots language author and advocate, this was of huge personal concern.
As famously noted in Iain Crichton Smiths’ poem, The Beginning of a New Song, which was read at the Scottish parliament in 1999 and more recently by Billy Kay in 2022, we are a “three-voiced” country. This needs to be at the forefront of public consciousness ahead of the new bill hopefully becoming an act.
Broadcaster Billy Kay (Image: NQ archive) While Scots and Gaelic have both been supported by the Government, Gaelic has received significantly more funding. A Freedom of Information request published in March showed that while Gaelic initiatives had a budget of at least £28 million between 2021 and 2023, Scots initiatives received just £448,000 of support – a figure that was increased to £553,500 in the year 2023 to 2024.
This discrepancy was also reflected in the Government’s most recent press release about the need to strengthen Gaelic and Scots legislation. Despite it mentioning both languages, the focus was almost entirely on Gaelic, and the bill giving Scottish parents the option to put their children into Gaelic schools. But what about Scots-medium schools?
While they have been considered as part of the bill, this information has been absent from reports, even though the most recent Scotland census had the highest-ever number of people reporting an understanding of the language – a whopping 2.4 million compared to the 136,000 people who reported an understanding of Gaelic.
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Unfortunately, I think we are a long away from Scots schools existing, as much as I think support for schools in both languages is ultimately needed. But it is a point worth making – as is the need for a Scottish Higher and National Five, which will hopefully be finally made a reality by the bill.
Formal qualifications in Gaelic have existed for years, but this has notably not been the case for Scots, potentially preventing millions of Scottish children from getting a qualification in their native tongue.
Even in the Government’s overview of the bill, the focus remains on Gaelic, which is notably placed above Scots even in order. This sadly emphasises the status of Scots even within Scotland’s indigenous languages – because it is a sister language to English, and therefore characterised by a degree of mutual intelligibility, it has struggled to be taken seriously as a language in its own right. That is despite having every characteristic of an independent language and not a dialect, as it is wrongfully often classified.
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Any talk of the potential introduction Scots language road sign, for example, has been met with horror online, despite Gaelic signage being commonplace in Scotland.
The protection of indigenous languages might seem trivial amid issues like the cost of living crisis and, more recently, the widespread onset of artificial intelligence, I’m here to stress that this only makes them more important.
Languages connect communities, past and present, especially in a wee country, and protecting Scotland’s indigenous languages will hopefully give us more opportunities and a sense of identity that has been historically denied, especially to Scots speakers.
While I have been critical of the Government’s public focus on Gaelic, it is worth noting that the press releases about the Scottish Languages Bill were written in our nation’s three native languages – English, Gaelic and Scots. Now, we can only hope that such practices become normalised, which will ensure our tongues are finally moving towards an equal footing.
