Hae a guid crack: Scots
A leid's a leid for a tha
Like many countries before and since, Scotland became a two-tier nation. A small ruling class spoke Scottish English, and everyone else spoke Scots or Gaelic. The latter is now in mortal danger, victim of a concerted extirpation campaign by Westminster. But Scots survived, ironically because England refused to accord it the respect it did the Celtic tongue. Dismissed as a silly accent, Scots was permitted to ride its court jester role into the second millennium, to emerge in strapping health once the coast was clear.
Linguists generally recognise four dialects of modern Scots. Northern, Central, and Southern cover all of the mainland except the Gaeltacht; Insular picks up the non-celtophone islands. Northern Ireland boasts a Scots tradition of its own, thanks to Scottish migration to the region.
The current explosion of Scots advocacy groups includes the Scottish National Dictionary Association, which is compiling a 10-volume dictionary; the Scottish Parliament's Cross-Party Group on Scots, publishers of a terse bulletin; the Scots Speikers' Curn Glesca conversation club; Scots Tung, publishers of Scots Tung Wittins; the Scots Leid Associe; and the militant Scots Leid Owerband.
An equally important part of the battle is to get Scots back into education, and activists have not been remiss in this respect. Among many online resources for linguists and students are Scots-Online.org's PDF essays and Clishmaclaiver, its online Scots-language chat. Wir Ain Leid provides a good general overview, as does Dick Gaughan's brief grammar overview. Discussion lists include The Moray Claik and Lowlands-L. In the realm of schooling, Merlin Press and Scuilwab supply traditional learning materials. Nor has the University of Edinburgh been idle; its English Department now offers a full slate of Scots coursework.
(For its part, Ullans has spawned a sidebar renaissance, thanks to political developments in Ulster. Ullans-specific resources include the Ulster Scots Research Centre, Ullans-L, and mony an mony a Web page.)
We're no awa...
Few languages boast as many names as Scots. Doric, the Buchan Claik, the Moray Claik, the Patter, Lallans, Braid Scots, the Braid, the Mither Tung, Scotch, and Ullans are all synonyms for this lively tradition. While multiple terms are common to marginalised tongues, such
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