Ulster Scots language
Ulster Scots, also known as
Ullans,
Hiberno-Scots, or
Scotch-Irish, refers to the
variety of
Scots (sometimes referred to as
Lowland Scots) spoken in parts of the province of
Ulster, which spans the six counties of
Northern Ireland and three of the
Republic of Ireland.
Native speakers traditionally called it simply
Scots,
Braid Scots or
Scotch (see
Scotch) - as did
James Orr in
The Irish Cottier's Death and Burial:
"To quat braid Scotch, a task that foils their art; For while they join his converse, vain though shy, They monie a lang learn'd word misca' an' misapply".
Ullans is a
neologism merging
Ulster and
Lallans - the Scots for
Lowlands - coined by the physician, amateur historian and politician
Dr Ian Adamson. The magazine of the
Ulster-Scots Language Society is also named
Ullans, ostensibly from "
Ulster-Scots
language in
literature
and
native
speech" but ultimately from the other contraction. The German linguist
Manfred Görlach differentiates between the term "Ulster Scots" (the historical spoken variety) and "Ullans" (the revived literary variety).
Hiberno-Scots, unlike "Ulster Scots", refers only to a linguistic tradition; it also mirrors "
Hiberno-English". The novelist
William Carleton refers in his author's preface to the first edition of his
Traits and Stories of the Irish Peasantry (vol. 1, 1st series, Dublin, 1830) to "Scoto-Hibernic jargon". The linguist James Milroy used the term "Hiberno-Scots" as early as the 1980s.
Scots, mainly
Gaelic-speaking, had been settling in Ulster since the
1400s, but large numbers of Scots-speaking Lowlanders, some 200,000, arrived during the
17th century following the 1610
Plantation, with the peak reached during the
1690s. In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.
Literature from shortly before the end of the unselfconscious tradition at the turn of the
19th and
20th centuries is almost identical with contemporary writing from Scotland. W G Lyttle, writing in
Paddy McQuillan's Trip Tae Glesco, uses the typically Scots forms
kent and
begood, now replaced in Ulster by the more mainstream
Anglic forms
knew,
knowed or
knawed and
begun. Many of the modest contemporary differences between Scots as spoken in Scotland and Ulster may be due to dialect levelling and influence from Mid Ulster English brought about through relatively recent demographic change rather than direct
contact with Irish, retention of older features or separate development.
Scots in Ulster has been influenced by contact with
Hiberno-English,
Mid Ulster English and
Irish. Mid Ulster English, the dialect of most people in Ulster, including those in the two main cities, represents a cross-over area between Ulster Scots and Hiberno-English; it is currently encroaching on the Ulster Scots area, especially in the Belfast commuter belt, and may eventually consume it. Ulster Scots should not be confused with
Scottish Gaelic or
Irish, which are
Celtic languages.
Although it is usually treated as a
variety of the
Scots language or, along with all Scots varieties, as a
dialect of
English, some claim it to be a
language in its own right; only the first two views are represented among academic
linguists, although at least one academic has argued for recognition on non-structural, apperceptional grounds. Dr. Caroline Macafee, the editor of
The Concise Ulster Dictionary, has said that "Ulster Scots is [...] clearly a dialect of Central Scots (Mid Scots).", while Aodán Mac Póilin has said that "The case for Ulster-Scots being a distinct language, made at a time when the status of Scots itself was insecure, is so bizarre that it is unlikely to have been a linguistic argument." Using the criteria on
Ausbau languages developed by the German linguist
Heinz Kloss, Ulster Scots could qualify only as a
Spielart or 'national dialect' of Scots (cf. British and American English), since it does not dispose over the
Mindestabstand, or 'minimum divergence' necessary to achieve language status through standardisation and codification. Of the four peripheral varieties of Scots - the others being Insular,
Northern and Southern Scots - Ulster Scots is the only one whose traditional written form is commonly indistinguishable from the main Central Scots variety.
Some confuse English spoken with a very broad Ulster Scottish accent with Scots proper. This is because English-speakers familiar with the
Scottish or Northern Irish
accents of English find Scottish or Ulster English easy to understand and often assume this speech variety to be "broad" Scots.
Ulster Scots is defined in legislation (The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999) as:
the variety of the Scots language which has traditionally been used in parts of Northern Ireland and in Donegal in Ireland [
1].
The declaration made by the United Kingdom Government regarding the
European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages reads as follows:
The United Kingdom declares, in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Charter that it recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language for the purposes of Part II of the Charter [2].
The definition from the North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999 above was used in the 1 July 2005 Second Periodical Report by the United Kingdom to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe outlining how the UK meets its obligations under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.[
3]
The
Good Friday Agreement (which does not refer to Ulster Scots as a "language") also recognises Ulster Scots as
"part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland", and the Implementation Agreement established the cross-border
Ulster-Scots Agency (
Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch), whose mission statement is
to promote the study, conservation, development and use of Ulster Scots as a living language; to encourage and develop the full range of its attendant culture; and to promote an understanding of the history of the Ulster-Scots people.It will be noted that this is slightly different from the organisation's legal remit to promote Ulster Scots as a "variety of the Scots language".
For the status of Scots in general see Scots_language#Status.During the middle of the
20th century, the linguist
R. J. Gregg established the geographical boundaries of Ulster's Scots-speaking areas based on information gathered from native speakers. The 1999 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey found that 2% of Northern Ireland residents claimed to speak Ulster Scots, which would mean a total speech community of approximately 30,000 in the territory, which does not include
County Donegal. Some advocates have claimed that Ulster Scots is spoken by up to 100,000 people, and if the NILTS figure is accurate, their estimate of 100,000 speakers for Ulster as a whole would be dependent on there being 70,000 speakers in Donegal, which is unrealistic. According to the 2001 census, the total number of Northern Ireland residents born in Scotland was 16,772. If there is the same proportion of Scots-speakers among them as believed in Scotland itself by the General Register Office in its 1996 study, i.e. 30%, the number of Scots-born speakers is 5,031. This would make those born in Scotland around 14% of speakers in the jurisdiction, or one in seven.
In the Scots-speaking areas of Ulster there was traditionally a considerable demand for the work of Scottish poets, often in locally printed editions.
Alexander Montgomerie's
The Cherrie and the Slae in
1700, shortly over a decade later an edition of poems by
Sir David Lindsay, nine printings of
Allan Ramsay's
The Gentle shepherd between
1743 and
1793, and an edition of
Robert Burns' poetry in
1787, the same year as the Edinburgh edition, followed by reprints in
1789,
1793 and
1800. Among other Scottish poets published in Ulster were
James Hogg and
Robert Tannahill.
This was complemented by Ulster
rhyming weaver poetry, of which, some 60 to 70 volumes were published between
1750 and
1850, the peak being in the decades
1810 to
1840. These weaver poets looked to Scotland for their cultural and literary models and were not simple imitators but clearly inheritors of the same literary tradition following the same poetic and orthographic practices; it is not always immediately possible to distinguish traditional Scots writing from Scotland and Ulster. Among the
rhyming weavers were
James Campbell (
1758-
1818),
James Orr (
1770-
1816),
Thomas Beggs (
1749-
1847),
David Herbison (
1800-
1880),
Hugh Porter (
1780-
1839) and
Andrew McKenzie (
1780-
1839). Scots was also used in the narrative by Ulster novelists such as
W. G. Lyttle (
1844-
1896). Scots regularly appeared in Ulster newspaper columns.
By the early part of the 20th century the literary tradition was almost extinct. The Ulster Scots revival from the
1980s onwards has moved away from the previous tradition and Modern Scots
orthographic practice, preferring instead to develop Ulster Scots as an autonomous written variety separate from Scots in Scotland, incidentally reducing the language's written comprehensibility to Scots-speakers, including those native to Ulster itself.
Current trends include: adapting the writing system to one based more on the sound values of standard English; often mixing Ulster English and Scots forms; adopting archaic Scots orthographic features; borrowing from phonetic notation; creating independent neologisms; misusing words, or using them in new ways, depending on point of view; and adopting non-standard features of English. Whether this is a sign of vitality or of decay is a matter of sometimes heated debate. Recently the transactional value of publicly commissioned translations has been questioned.
The introduction of standard educational materials in schools for the teaching of Ulster Scots is likely to formalise ongoing discussions about the future direction of language planning.
In recent years a movement has been under way to change the perception of Ulster Scots. Some deride it as "poor English", citing writing in the dialect, modern revivalist examples of which have attracted criticism, although many commentators would be unable to distinguish
eye dialect from genuine phonological differences. The Ulster Scots Agency's website gives its address as "Tha Boord o Ulster-Scotch, Franklin Haw, 5t Flare, 10-12 Brunswick Raa, Bilfawst BT2 7GE." The English version is given as "The Ulster-Scots Agency, Franklin House, 5th Floor, 10-12 Brunswick Street, Belfast BT2 7GE." It will be noted that "haw" means "hall" rather than "house", while "raa" means "row" rather than "street". However, many users still take pride in their speech and in the wider
Ulster-Scots heritage of which it forms part.
Even though Irish, English and Scots have all been mother tongues of both nationalists and unionists in the past, many
Nationalists and
Republicans in Northern Ireland have derided Ulster Scots as a 'DIY language for
Orangemen', arguing that it is a reaction by Unionists and Loyalists to the promotion of the
Irish language in Northern Ireland. Language promotion by the Ulster-Scots Agency is regarded as an attempt to keep funding away from the promotion of the Irish language. While that may be motivation in certain cases, some civil servants may also be using Ulster Scots as a counterbalance allowing them to raise spending per speaker on Irish towards the much higher levels for
Scottish Gaelic and
Welsh while deflecting criticism from Unionists, who have traditionally been hostile to Irish since the
partition of
Ireland. The Belfast-based Irish language newspaper
Lá ran a column in a revivalist version of Ulster Scots that was at least partly tongue-in-cheek.
Arguably, given the already high numbers of Catholic and Nationalist users, a neutral approach to promotion and more representative Ulster-Scots Agency board are indispensable, but no Northern member has ever been nominated by a Nationalist political party, since each agency nomination is set against one to Foras na Gaeilge, leading to complaints that Nationalist Scots-speakers are being punished because of the user profile of another language and that the UK Government is attempting to create a Unionist counterbalance to Irish; indeed, some contend that if the Ulster-Scots movement were somehow being directed by the British Government, its aims might hardly differ, given the way in which Unionist politicians have been encouraged to weigh linguistically doubtful demands for the dialect against the general concerns of their community in multi-party negotiations.
Speaking at a seminar on
9 September 2004, Ian Sloan of the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure (DCAL) accepted that the 1999 Northern Ireland Life and Times Survey "did not significantly indicate that unionists or nationalists were relatively any more or less likely to speak Ulster-Scots, although in absolute terms there were more unionists who spoke Ulster-Scots than nationalists".
*
Scots language*
Ulster *
Ulster-Scots*
Ulster Irish*
Dictionary of the Scots Language*
History of the Scots language*
Languages in the United Kingdom*
listen to Ulster Scots*
The Ulster-Scots Agency (Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch) *
(Language, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland)*
Aw Ae Oo (Scots in Scotland and Ulster)*
Ulster-Scots voices (BBC site)*
Pronunciation of Ulster Scots*
Ullans*
Ulster-Scots Research Council and Ullans-L e-mail list*
Ulster-Scots Online*
The Dictionary of the Scots Language*
Scots Online*
www.Ullans.pro.ie is a website promoting Ullans to the Gaelic community of Ireland.
