A tongue twister... Shetland’s ‘Wirdle’ goes global

IT IS spoken regularly by only around 3,500 people.

But the unique dialect of Shetland has now been made into an online game in an attempt to promote it.

Thousands of players from around the globe are playing Wirdle – a ‘Shaetlan’ version of the hugely popular Wordle.

Just 60 hours after its launch, Wirdle had been played by more than 2,500 people on every continent except Antarctica. It even featured on a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) course.

Developers said Wirdle brings Shaetlan into the modern world. The game comes from the I Hear Dee project, which aims to promote the dialect.

Professor Viveka Velupillai, from Giessen University in Germany, who is leading the project, said users are a mix of native speakers and others around the world. She said: ‘There have been people from the US, Finland, Sri Lanka, who are playing and getting it right.

‘Obviously most players are in Shetland, but there is a huge, worldwide interest in Shaetlan. It’s even on the MIT course on linguistic and social rights.

‘It brings Shaetlan into the modern world, so that reviving the language is not just about old poetry and archaic things, but it belongs in the modern world.’ Graphic designer and native Shaetlan speaker Roy Mullay is working with Professor Velupillai on I Hear Dee.

He said: ‘It gives Shetlanders a bit of pride in their own mother tongue and lets them know not everything has to be English.’

Dr Michael Dempster of the Scots Language Centre said: ‘We are aye chuffed to see anything that gets people engaging with literacy in their own language.’