After a vigorous campaign by the Scottish government to restore the Scots language to the tongues of every Lowlander, the latest progress report makes difficult reading.
This is not because it has been written in Scots. No, it seems that the majority of Scots do not regard Scots as a language at all.
Research for the SNP administration suggests that 64 per cent of the Scottish people regard Scots merely as “a way of speaking”. This must come as something of a skaich (disappointment) for its advocates.
Scots was once the language of eastern Scotland, though James VI’s ascension to the English throne brought in some English words and the Acts of Union diluted it further.
In the 18th century it was cast into the prose and poetry of Allan Ramsay, Robert Burns, Robert Fergusson and Walter Scott; the following century it was used by Robert Louis Stevenson and J. M. Barrie. Poets of the 20th century also lent their pens to its revival, though it may have been a revival in verse alone.
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Devolution and the election in 2007 of the SNP brought a new enthusiasm to the cause, however. The government uses Scots in official party documents and is pledged “to promote awareness and usage of the language”.
Then it commissioned the survey to gauge the enthusiasm of the rest of Scotland. Jings! Crivens!, ministers might have said — if there was anyone to understand them.
Beyond the rather disheartening conclusion that a majority did not regard Scots as a language at all, there were some more encouraging responses. Just under two thirds (63 per cent) of those asked disagreed with the statement that Scots “doesn’t sound nice — it’s slang”, and 40 per cent disagreeing strongly. Eighty-five per cent claimed to speak Scots, with a substantial proportion (43 per cent) claiming to speak it “a lot”. Most said that they either spoke Scots when socialising (69 per cent) or at home with family (63 per cent) and about two thirds thought they probably spoke it without realising.
Researchers say that the results show that some Scots have “negative perceptions” of Scots as a language. Fiona Hyslop, the Culture Minister, claimed the study showed that Scots was “a living language, important in the majority of Scots’ daily lives”.
Ted Brocklebank, the Scottish Tory culture spokesman, said he had never regarded various forms of Scots as “anything other” than dialects of English. “We have a second language in Scotland and that is Gaelic, and that is where the effort should be concentrated. Dialects like Doric in the North East or Lallans in the Borders are immensely rich but ultimately they are variations of English.”
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Regarding the differ (dispute) from south of the Border, Sassenachs are almost certainly blinkin (smirking).