SOME thoughts concerning the recent and ongoing debates about the Scots language. I feel those who often react negatively to this haven’t been given a fair press or hearing, and so I thought you’d welcome this.

There are radical language activists throughout the world facing persecution, torture, impoverishment, imprisonment and death for having the courage to write, speak and create art in their own tongue, to whom we should offer whatever solidarity and support we can. Then there’s conceited, affected creatures like Matthew Fitt.

I’ve been paying close attention as various luminaries of the national cultural intelligentsia have graced your pages recently waxing lyrical about the Scots language. It’s interesting to see how few of them can even imagine that people might have principled objections to their project, let alone for them to understand them. For them it’s just the Scots’ cringe intit? Well when I read articles like Matthew Fitt’s that exactly what I do. I cringe because I’m reading a bookish Hen Broon writing in a made-up language who’s trying to convince me that I should write in as well. Walloper!

Why is it made up? Because nobody talks like that. Really they don’t. And that’s what a language is; first and foremost, it’s something that people speak.

Of course, I recognise some of these words these people are using. But cobbling together lots of words that were/are used in different spaces and in different times is not a language. If you wish to use this synthetic Scots for your private literary activities, by all means do so. But don’t try and make out that that’s how I would talk, how I should talk, how I’d want to talk if only the education system hadn’t beaten it out of me. Don’t patronise me. I know exactly how education functions in this country.

The reason why kids were told their language was debased, impure, not fit for purpose, the language of the gutter, was not because they were Scots or were speaking in Scots.

It’s because they lived in a society premised upon that concept of ownership whereby the people who own the means of production also own the culture and the language. These people and their values dictate the content of that education and what it is for. And it is to sort people into a hierarchy of value, to let them know that some people are entitled to get more of the pie than others, because they are “better”.

One way in which this education system does this is by telling those who speak low-status languages what it thinks of them and their language. In a society organised around the principle of profit, this means primarily the languages of the working classes; Mathew would know this if he’d had the curiosity to dig a wee bit deeper into what Tom Leonard was actually saying.

Barring a social and economic revolution this will not end in Scotland, whether it remains part of the UK or becomes nominally “independent”.

The independence recently debated was primarily a conversation between different groups of capitalists. The Scottish ones reckoned they could manage capitalism more effectively in Scotland but they lost out to the British ones who feared the loss of global prestige, as well as what a prolonged period of political instability might do to their bottom lines.

Given that the social and economic relations that govern production, distribution and consumption were/are not to be altered, it is reasonable to infer that our education system will function much the way it has as before.

Linguistic codes will still be used to make children who haven’t grown up in a household where good language isn’t spoken feel inferior. Although if current developments continue, the barometer of appropriateness will no longer be RP English, but RP Scots. This is how nationalism works.

John Woods, Ullapool

We must do more to celebrate great Scots like Burns

WHILE we have the landscapes, cityscapes and mind-scope to realise some of the truly astounding individuals in our history, it is right to point out how strange it is that a life of Burns has never been realised on film (Letters, January 29).

I believe David Hayman had been looking at just such a project. I also believe that at one point an American producer was attempting to make a film of the life of John Muir, and Billy Connolly was to be cast as Muir! What a missed chance! There are so many unsung figures with astonishing lives that would be a gift to any scriptwriter: John Muir, Thomas Muir, RB Cunninghame-Graham, Mary Barbour, Elsie Inglis – the list goes on...

Yes, let’s look at the sweeping narratives of our “national figures” (and ones we didn’t realise we had), but also “figure” the nation as forward-looking; able to imaginatively incorporate its own waysides and micro-histories.

Alex MacMillan, Dunbar via text

LET’S celebrate all artistic talent and give credit where credit is due. The excellent statue of Fergusson (featured in the article ‘Not Burns – Fergusson’ on January 29), showing the bard not on a pedestal but striding down the High Street amongst us all, is by the renowned Fife sculptor David Annand.

Liz Murray, Kilmany

YOUR correspondent Thom Cross regrets the fact that we have no major film of the life of Robert Burns (Letters, January 29). I would be pleased to tell him that we do have one, a serious two-hour biopic: the manuscript of which has been sitting in my filing cabinet for a number of years.

Like Mr Cross, the lack of such a film troubled me, and I set out to research and write one, which I called Love and Liberty. After a year or so of research and writing I duly sent out the script to various studios, including BBC drama, but failed to engender interest.

I am not a screenwriter but I am an experienced writer of history/ historical fiction. And while my script may well have imperfections it would easily reward development.

Like Mr Thom, I would be delighted to see that film one day, even if it’s not mine.

Mary Edward, Cardross

REGARDLESS of a strong business case, the Great Tapestry of Scotland deserves a better location than a small Borders village. Perhaps the new V&A in Dundee. I agree with Christine Graham. Its a concern that council taxpayers’ money is being spent when services are being cut.

A Leitch, via text

I SO agree with Des McFarlane regarding setting out just how much money Scotland’s oil industry generated for the UK’s exchequer over the last 40 years (Letters, January 30). Pushing the figures again and again in black and white would help concentrate the minds of the naysayers and ditherers.

Catriona Whitton, Dunblane

YOU should accept the challenge put to you by Des MacFarlane. He makes a very good point and it would be a significant contribution to the discussion if you did so.

We cannot allow the Tories and Cameron to get away with this derisory offer to Scotland when we know how much they have taken from Scotland and how much remains in the North Sea, Atlantic Margins and Clyde Estuary.

It is nothing short of disgraceful.

Gordon Robertson, Blairgowrie

I’VE heard it all now. A Labour member of the elitist House of Lords complaining that Alex Salmond and the SNP are not socialist enough to join a group within the EU Parliament. Maybe Lord Prescott could remind everyone what exactly is so socialist about the House of Lords?

Kenny MacLaren, Paisley

EVEN in the increasingly bizarre world of Willie Rennie and the LibDems, his comment that the SNP propped up the Tory Government takes the biscuit. Does Mr Rennie not remember that it was his party that allowed the Tories the keys to 10 Downing Street in 2010, which led to the vicious attacks on the most vulnerable in society?

Mags MacLaren, Paisley







Letters to The National I: EU must probe UK’s tax deal with Google



