Event report
Thank you to everyone who attended the talk on Scots. There were some very thought-provoking questions afterwards including about the informal Scots used in comic strips such as ‘Oor Wullie’, and the differences between Scottish Gaelic and Scots.
We were fortunate to have in the audience J. Derrick McClure, an authority on the Scots language, who answered some of the questions posed by attendees.
Some of the attendees wanted more information about Scots, so here are some resources:
Scots Language Centre: https://www.scotslanguage.com/
Dictionaries of the Scots Language. “What is Scots?” https://dsl.ac.uk/about-scots/what-is-scots/
The Online Scots Dictionary. n.d. https://www.scots-online.org/dictionary/index.php
Scots resources: http://www.scotseducation.co.uk/
The Doric dialect of North-East Scotland: https://www.thedoric.scot/
The Saltire Society’s Aberdeen Branch. https://www.saltiresociety.org.uk/sheena-blackhall-on-writing-in-doric
Scottish Gaelic: https://www.abdn.ac.uk/sll/disciplines/gaelic/the-gaelic-language-323.php#panel1165
The Itchy Coo project: http://www.itchy-coo.com/resources/The+Story+of+Itchy+Coo.pdf
Books:
Corbett, John. 1999. Written in the language of the Scottish Nation: a history of literary translation into Scots. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters.
Frae Ither Tongues: Essays on Modern Translations into Scots., edited by Bill Findlay, Clevedon [England]; Buffalo, NY: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
McClure, J. Derrick. 1996. Scots and its Literature, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company
McClure, J. Derrick. 1997. Why Scots Matters. Edinburgh: The Saltire Society.
McClure, J. Derrick. 2002. Doric: The dialect of North-East Scotland, Amsterdam; Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Millar, Robert McColl. 2007. Northern and Insular Scots. Edinburgh University Press.
Millar, Robert McColl. 2020. A Sociolinguistic History of Scotland. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Scots, the third language of Scotland alongside Scottish Gaelic and English, comprises different dialects such as the Leith of Irvine Welsh and the Doric spoken by the late Queen Elizabeth II.
In this Zoom talk, Josephine Murray will discuss how Scots was a prestigious national language promoted by King James VI in the 16th century, became stigmatised as a lower form of English from the 18th century until the early 20th century, but is now an integral part of Scots education and a major cultural asset.
You will receive the Zoom link nearer to the date.
3 key take-aways:
- Learn about Scotland’s rich history of literature - from Walter Scott to Hugh MacDiarmid - and literary translation, from Rabelais to The Gruffalo.
- Discover how the fact that Scots has no high register, or standardised spelling system prompted writers and translators to create their own experimental forms of the language.
- Learn some words and phrases in Doric, the dialect of North East Scotland, where Josephine’s family is from.
Josephine Murray, Chair of CIOL Gloucestershire, is a freelance journalist and teacher. She recently completed an MA in Literary Translation at UEA, with a dissertation on translation into Scots. Her father’s family is from the North East of Scotland.
Programme timings:
7pm Welcome and introduction
7.05pm Talk and PowerPoint presentation
7.45pm Q & A
8pm Event ends.
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