Just after the Scottish Independence referendum in 2014. I had a conversation with a relative of my wife at a family gathering. My wife is English as is my wife's relative. I was telling this person how pleased I was that my home city of Dundee had overwhelmingly voted for Scottish independence. My wife's relative was not impressed with my information. Neither, he said, was he impressed by Dundonians' inability to speak the English language.
"In fact," he said,"your dialect massacres the English Language."
My hasty response was, "No, it is the English language that destroys Dundee Scots." We finished our conversation there. We were both in the huff with each other. On this matter I believe we still are. I calmed down but over the years I have tried to make sense of my omnipotent claim. Convincing or not, here in the following lines, are my thoughts.
"In fact," he said,"your dialect massacres the English Language."
My hasty response was, "No, it is the English language that destroys Dundee Scots." We finished our conversation there. We were both in the huff with each other. On this matter I believe we still are. I calmed down but over the years I have tried to make sense of my omnipotent claim. Convincing or not, here in the following lines, are my thoughts.
Recently I read an obituary in The Guardian for Edward Kamau Brathwaite, the distinguished Caribbean poet and historian. I was interested in something he thought about dialect and language. He insisted that the language spoken by the Caribbean peoples should be regarded as a “nation language" and not as an inferior form of English or as a dialect.
I have similar thoughts about a much older language, Scots. I would go further, I think the language spoken in any locality should be considered its language and not its dialect. To call it otherwise is to presume it is a lesser form of some notional master language. The Queen's English is a fake language.
The language the people of Dundee speak is genuine. It has developed organically through its usage by the people of Dundee. While the language spoken 15 miles away in Forfar is subtly different - and at times a not so subtly - from Dundee's but it too is a genuine language.
You may wonder why I am raising this issue and some may just wonder what exactly my issue is. To explain this I need to go back to Dundee in the early to mid-1950s. If my parents heard me playing with my friends out on the street speaking Dundee Scots, I was hauled inside the house and told speaking like that was common and would get me nowhere. I discovered later that my parents' message was propaganda. Posh English was the language of the world of power, influence, wealth and status while trying to speak it was supposedly the ordinary folk's way of unlocking the door to that world. Well that didn't work out despite the elocution lessons my parents arranged for my younger sister and me to be taught by that snooty lady who had a big house on the Ancrum Road, Lochee.
I am glad that it didn't work. Dundee Scots is the language of my soul even though down here in Devon I have little opportunity to exercise it.
Yet English and Scots speakers can meet together and, with comic results. In the early 1960s, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who lived in the nearby Castle of Mey, inspected the troops of the Queens Own Highlanders Regiment at Fort George barracks near Ardersier.
She walked along the line of soldiers presented for inspection and occasionally had a brief word with one or two of the men. She stopped in front of one Private and asked him if he had a family.
"Eh Ma'am, we have a hoose jist ootside the barracks"
The Queen Mother adopting her woman of the people mode continued,
"And are you comfy there?"
"No Ma'am," the private replied, "Eh come fae Dundee."
The language the people of Dundee speak is genuine. It has developed organically through its usage by the people of Dundee. While the language spoken 15 miles away in Forfar is subtly different - and at times a not so subtly - from Dundee's but it too is a genuine language.
You may wonder why I am raising this issue and some may just wonder what exactly my issue is. To explain this I need to go back to Dundee in the early to mid-1950s. If my parents heard me playing with my friends out on the street speaking Dundee Scots, I was hauled inside the house and told speaking like that was common and would get me nowhere. I discovered later that my parents' message was propaganda. Posh English was the language of the world of power, influence, wealth and status while trying to speak it was supposedly the ordinary folk's way of unlocking the door to that world. Well that didn't work out despite the elocution lessons my parents arranged for my younger sister and me to be taught by that snooty lady who had a big house on the Ancrum Road, Lochee.
I am glad that it didn't work. Dundee Scots is the language of my soul even though down here in Devon I have little opportunity to exercise it.
Yet English and Scots speakers can meet together and, with comic results. In the early 1960s, Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, who lived in the nearby Castle of Mey, inspected the troops of the Queens Own Highlanders Regiment at Fort George barracks near Ardersier.
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| Fort George |
She walked along the line of soldiers presented for inspection and occasionally had a brief word with one or two of the men. She stopped in front of one Private and asked him if he had a family.
"Eh Ma'am, we have a hoose jist ootside the barracks"
The Queen Mother adopting her woman of the people mode continued,
"And are you comfy there?"
"No Ma'am," the private replied, "Eh come fae Dundee."
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