Yorkisland Arts and Heritage Association, in Northern Ireland, is calling for singers, instrumentalists, poets and story tellers under the age of 25 to perform through the medium of the Scots dialect of Ulster. Entrants can perform either solo or in a group of up to four. Entry to the competition, called Ulster-Scots Talent, is free and will provide winning performers the chance to perform in the media. The competition will take place during 28-31 August 2009 and those interested should contact yorkisland@hotmail.com

The first thought that came to mind on seeing it was “isn’t that ridiculous looking?”. If I were a Welsh speaker on seeing an equivalent sign with Welsh in it I’m sure that their first thought would be more like “at last” but then Welsh is a whole lot more supported within Wales than Ulster Scots currently is in Northern Ireland.

My second thought was: well, yes it does look ridiculous, but you know it shouldn’t. The problem with Ulster Scots is that the vast majority of us only every heard it from our grannies, never learned to spell it and, until quite recently, didn’t even think of it as a separate language. So, whilst it may well look ridiculous to me at the moment that’s because I’ve really never had the chance to see it written and at last that is starting to change.

One big plus point that we have is that there are still native speakers of the language around so it’s “just” the matter of writing it all down that needs to be covered. That’ll not be easy but at least the prononciation will remain authentic rather than needing to be guessed as happens in the case of some languages that need to rebuild a pool of native speakers as would need to be done for Manx (the last native speaker died in 1974) or Cornish or for that matter. Although Cornish is now spoken as a native language by a small number of people they didn’t learn it from their parents as the last of the continuous line of native speakers died out in the 1700s.

Sure, it’ll take a while before we don’t look at a sign like that and think that it looks ridiculous but at least we’ve made a small start down that route. Perhaps yin day ah’ll nay ha a problem wi writin tha blog in it too.

Going back several centuries the Scots returning to Ireland (more on that in a later post) during the plantation period of the late 1600s would have mainly spoken Scots as that was the language of lowland Scotland where most of them came from at that time. Therefore the original language would simply have been Scots.

However, just as the colonisation of America brought many new words into the English language though interaction with the people then occupying those areas that were to become America, so too the interaction with the people living in Ireland also brought new words and phrases into the Scots language. So, for example, farl is only used in Ulster Scots in connection with soda farl (a local form of bread) whereas the word isn’t used much in Scotland these days and has a wider meaning when it is.

That said, I was able to carry on a conversation in Scots a few years ago with someone from Glasgow and neither of us noticed any difference in the language that we were speaking to each other. So, for day to day use of the language there doesn’t seem to be a whole lot of difference.

Where there is a difference that is currently growing is in the elaboration of the language. This is mainly down to its use in, for example, the Scottish parliament, where clearly they’ve needed to extend the language in some areas to cope with the 21st century thus we have wabsite for website. At present, there is no organisation in Northern Ireland that would use the language to the same degree of sophistication thus new words are primarily coming from Scotland at the moment.

Does that mean that Ulster Scots will eventually become simply Scots once more? Although at present the visible developments are mainly in Scotland, there are a number of initiatives in Northern Ireland that are similar to those early steps taken in Scotland some years ago and we should, in time, see the language used in a wider range of contexts as it is in Scotland today. When that point is reached I suspect that we’ll see more of a balance in development of the language between Scotland and Northern Ireland just as there’s a balance in the development of English between America and the UK today.

Well, tha’s a guid question an yin we’ll be lookin at. Ye see the problem is tha befor a coupla years back there wasne any Ulster Scots writin at all. I learn’d it at me granny’s knee but didnae larn tae spell it so ah hope y’all excuse my goes at spellin it

But it’ll not all be in Ulster Scots because for one thing there’s only around 100,000 of us that could claim to speak it even a little. Yet, there are millions who could claim to BE Ulster Scots or at least of Ulster Scots descent. Most of those are, of course, Americans who think they are Irish American yet are actually Ulster Scots American.

On the spelling front, since my granny spoke it to me but didn’t teach me to spell it (after all, it wasn’t a written language until very recently) my words won’t always be spelled in the same way as another Ulster Scots speaker would. That’s because Ulster Scots is very much at the stage of codification cum standardisation which basically means that I can make it up as I go along. In practice I suspect I’ll also need to extend the language a little too so, for example, I’m currently counting “blog” as an Ulster Scots word.