Let’s value all Scots tongues

THE teachers who first taught me about Orkney language literature were themselves taught not to use it in school, sometimes through physical punishment. That was the case for many folk who spoke dialects of Scots, from Buchan to Bathgate, and it’s a familiar story of language suppression. Children who speak in ways not thought proper by power are made to feel uncertain of their own tongues.

As well as disconnecting us from our own history and literature, suppressing language can push people out of education altogether. That Orcadian poems, stories and possibilities were still passed on to me at school in the 1990s was something language activists fought for, and I’ll never stop being grateful. Writers and community organisers kept the language alive, through work by authors like CM Costie and Robert Rendall, often forgotten in favour of their Anglophone peers.

Today, I’m looking at the published copies of my own book, Deep Wheel Orcadia, a science fiction verse novel written in the Orkney dialect of Scots, and can’t quite believe I’ve dreamed it into being. I certainly never thought I’d be seeing photos of it in bookshops across the country.

Even better, I’m far from alone: we’re in the middle of a literary renaissance for Scots and its dialects. From the stellar success of poet and social media star Len Pennie to the sell-out events for

Ely Percy’s novel Duck Feet, it’s clear there’s huge public enthusiasm for the language, and for new writers to pursue their own ideas through it.

At home in Orkney, my book was published in the same season as Kevin Cormack’s poetry collection Toonie Void and the anthology gousters, glims and veerie-orums, edited by Alison Miller. Authors, publishers and projects like the Scots Language Publishing Grant (which supported the editing of my own book) are writing a new future for the language.

At a Book Week Scotland event called Island Literatures, I talk about the possibilities of Scotland’s languages with Raman Mundair, Evie Wyld and Pàdraig MacAoidh. We discuss how power shapes the ways we speak, how language shapes belonging, and how island writing can unsettle these systems. The event is a reminder that the future for languages in Scotland needs to be, like Scots itself, diverse, inclusive and rebellious.

I don’t think our imagination should be limited to the languages peculiar to Scotland, however. Campaigners have repeatedly organised to protect and further Urdu teaching in Glasgow, against systematic prejudice against the language. Since 2015, the British Sign Language (Scotland) Act has required authorities to plan for BSL use and promotion. Such movements remind us that it can be an ordinary thing to live in a place many languages are used, and for communication and

I’m grateful to Orkney poets

collaboration between languages to enrich all of them.

We’ve had Scots language revivals in the past too, and seen how easily gains are lost and work is forgotten. For the new renaissance to keep building momentum, it’s going to take collaboration and mutual support between language movements, as well as a literary excitement about what can happen between languages. Deep Wheel Orcadia is science fiction because I wanted to imagine a future in which the Orkney language thrives and grows. Language pluralism in Scotland shouldn’t be thought of as something in the past, but a future to write towards.

The Book Week Scotland event, Celebrating Island Literature, premieres today 4pm. Free tickets: www.scottishbooktrust.com/bookweek-scotland/events/2021/ celebrating-island-literature. Deep Wheel Orcadia, Picador, £10.99