It is the party that - arguably - has done more than any other to back Scotland's indigenous languages.

A Labour Government in Westminster, after all, was the first to formally recognised both Scots and Gaelic. And Labour steered through current Gaelic laws.

So there were a bit of surprise in linguistic circles when the party in its latest Holyrood manifesto discovered a third Scottish minority language in its manifesto: Nordic.



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"We recognise Scotland's rich cultural heritage, including Gaelic, Scots and Nordic," the party said, before adding: "We will meet the current commitment to Gaelic education to all students that require it."

This caught the eyes of language policy wonks. Why? Well, there is no such language as Nordic. There isn't even a Nordic language group. Voters in Orkney, Shetland and other parties of Scotland may well have ancestors who spoke Norn, a western Scandinavian tongue similar to modern Faroese. Norn, however, is long dead, although its legacy still heard in some of the broader Scots spoken in the Northern Isles.

Did Labour mean they want to protect Scandinavian cultural influences in Scotland? (The Nordic world is usually considered to be made up of the Scandinavians of Denmark, Sweden and Norway, as well as Icelanders and, lastly Finns, who have no language connection to the others). And if they wanted to protect something called Nordic culture, whatever that is, did they no also want to do the same for Irish, or Welsh, or Norman or Anglo-Saxon?