In skimming through it though I chanced upon a little quiz about the language or rather the fluency that one has in it. Moreover, it distinguished between Ulster English and Ulster Scots which many people don’t bother to differentiate.

Anyway, as I would have expected I just about fall into the category of Ulster Scots speaker although I could understand perfectly just about all of the Ulster Scots in the little test. It was as I expected in that I never really heard it spoken other than by my granny and, of course, by those in the country area where I spent the summer throughout my youth.

What I thought was particularly interesting about the test though wasn’t where I fell but that many of the words I’d have plonked squarely in the remit of the Ulster Scots language, the book considered more of a part of Ulster English. Somehow, I suspect that there’d be a whole lot of debate about that if/when the Ulster Scots language gets a higher profile here. Certainly, I’d say that many people who the test would classify as merely Ulster English speakers would consider themselves very much as Ulster Scots speakers.

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.

However, you will find people in Northern Ireland who say they’re Irish as around 40% of the population is Irish. The rest are mainly made up of the descendants of the lowland Scots who returned to Ireland in the 1600s and they will say they’re British.
OK, so 60% of the population would say they’re British and the other 40% would say they’re Irish then? By and large that’s true these days but interestingly my granny and people of her generation (essentially those born prior to the 1930s) would have said that she was Irish. The difference is that she would have been saying it in the same sense that someone from Edinburgh would say they’re Scottish ie with the understanding that she was saying that whilst she was British, she happened to have been born in Ireland.

Now you might think that as the 1600s are quite a long time ago that there’d have been considerable intermarriage between the two sets of occupants and in most parts of the world where similar settlement took place that’s indeed what happened. However, in the case of Northern Ireland the returning Scots were almost entirely Protestant whilst those that were there already were almost entirely Catholic. Combine large independent settlements with religious rules making it difficult for intermarriage to occur and what happened in practice was that there was very little intermarriage so that even over 300 years later most people have ancestors that were exclusively from one side or the other.

Interestingly the emigrants going to America went in much the same proportion as the nationalities that now exist in Northern Ireland. Consequently, something of the order of 60% of those that would consider themselves “Irish Americans” are really “Ulster Scots Americans”. How can you tell which you are? Thanks to the lack of intermarriage it’s generally quite easy to do: if your ancestors came from Ireland but you have a Scottish surname then it’s almost certain that you are Ulster Scots descent since the Scots were generally concentrated in the province of Ulster.

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.