Attitudes

This unfinished paper was, as far as I can remember, written in connection with my abortive association with the UHI, and dates to the 1990s or early 2000s. As such, it uses the term 'Shetlandic' which is now - and probably was then - repudiated in Shetland. (See here)

Attitudes to Shetlandic

Shetlandic as Bruck

Some dösna laek wir dialect, an dis is what dey say:

"We ocht ta dö awa wi it - hit’s truly hed its day.

An hit’s no wirt a boddie’s while ta spaek it, onywye:

Hit’s brokken English, brokken Scots, an idder bruk firbye."

Shetlanrie, by Vagaland.

boddie - person

bruk - rubbish

So Vagaland (T.A. Robertson, 1919-1973) represents the low esteem with which Shetlandic is regarded by some of it’s speakers (notice that the denigration of Shetlandic is here represented as being expressed in Shetlandic.) This view of Shetlandic as ‘bruck’, or debased English, was of course compatible with educational assumptions of the past, and justified an attitude to local speech forms which, when not openly hostile, was patronising. Brian Smith quotes W.R. Duncan, in a footnote to his printing of Archibald Barclay’s Unst Letter in the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1836: ‘the common language is fast yielding to a purer English, but well educated men are still much amused at the conversation of the labouring classes in the country.’ Ironically, as Smith points out, a similar view is taken by those Shetlanders whom he describes as ‘Norn fanatics’, who typically regard modern Shetlandic as bad English incorporating the pitiful remains of Norn, which they regard as having been the true Shetlandic language.

Robertson’s argument against this attitude is fairly characteristic of what might be described as a traditional defence of Shetlandic as a legitimate form of speech. The argument starts from etymology, and points out that many of the words used for everyday things are Norn - Robertson cites the parts of the Shetland Model boat (e.g. tilfer, floorboard; stamreen or stammerin, the transom knee at the bow and stern) the paraphernalia of peat-cutting (tushkar, the traditional peat spade; kishie, a carrying basket) and ‘aandooin fir piltiks roond da baas an at da kletts’ (aandoo - to row very slowly; piltiks - young coalfish; baas - underwater rocks; kletts - rocks on the shore. This describes eela fishing - the traditional method of catching coalfish by rowing a boat very slowly while someone sits in the stern with two cane fishing rods or waands each trailing a fly over the surface of the water.) Robertson then, recognising that :

Der little doot da dialect haes loks (lots) o English wirds

goes on to defend the Scots element in the Shetlandic vocabulary:

An if you look fir Scots eens, dan you fin dem dere in mirds (swarms)

An I winder wha could tell me if der onything at’s wrang

Wi wirds at Scott wret mony a time an Robbie Burns sang.

He then points out that Shetlandic is no different from English in having an eclectic etymology:

An as fir brokken English, dey wid laekly less be said

Aboot it if dey tocht what wye da English speech wis med.

What is dis English, onywye? Dey took da wirds dey fan

In Latin, Greek, an idder tungs, an altered every wan.

Der naethin wrang wi dat, you kyin, what sood dey idder dö? (what else should they do?)

Bit if dey altered Latin we can alter English tö.

Robertson then goes on to say that, whereas English is useful when you’re outwith Shetland, ‘here ita da Isles hit’s laek a pair o Sunday shön (shoes)’, not the sort of thing you’d wear for ‘buksin trowe a mire’ (treading with difficulty through a marsh), or ‘rowin oot apo da voe’ (rowing in the bay) or ‘kyerryin fae da byre’ (carrying cow’s dung from the byre, or cowshed). He concludes:

Sae ony een at wants can knap as muckle as dey laek,

Bit lat wis keep da Shetlan wirds at we’re bön wint ta spaek.

Dey’re maybe no perskeet, you kyin, dey’re maybe haem-aboot,

Bit what we’re aalwis hed we widna laek ta dö withoot.

knap - speak English

bön - been

wint - wont, accustomed

perskeet - posh

haem-aboot - local

Robertson thus recognises the integrity of Shetlandic as a speech form in its own right, as opposed to the argument which sees it as defective because of its eclectic etymology. His argument is traditional in that it concentrates exclusively on vocabulary - which has always been perceived as the distinctive feature of Shetlandic - particularly the Norn element, and especially nouns which refer to traditional implements and activities and features of the landscape. The emphasis is thus on Shetlandic as a dialect speech form, intimately associated with the traditional fishing and crofting life to which much of its vocabulary refers; and Robertson characterises it in terms of everyday country life as contrasted with special events (‘Sunday shön’) and the necessity of speaking with ‘uncan folk’ (strangers.) Behind this lies the assumption that Shetland is characterised by its traditional community life, and although Shetlandic is regarded as a dialect of English, this dialect is assumed to be appropriate for all Shetlanders, to the extent that even the person who denigrates Shetlandic does so in Shetlandic. ‘Knappin’, or speaking English, is assumed to be a sign of affectation rather than the natural speech of any Shetlander.

Shetlandic as Heritage

In another poem, Prelude, written (rather paradoxically) in English, Robertson seeks to answer the question of why Shetland writers choose to write in Shetlandic rather than English:

When asked the reason why we should elect

To put our thoughts in Shetland dialect

This he answers by the same three basic strands of argument which he uses to defend the use of spoken Shetlandic. First, he surmises that the Norn vocabulary recalls the Norse era:

We write, perhaps, because we like the speech

Recalling our Heroic Age, the beach

Of Vinland, whither Leif the Lucky sailed,

The words once used by Vikings, helmed and mailed,

The remnants of our ancient Norn tongue...

Then he cites the example of the Scots Makars:

We write because the Scottish Middle Age

Also is part of this, our heritage;

Because King James the First, and Henryson,

William Dunbar, and Makars, many a one,

Made glowing poems with words like ours, the breath

Of pastoral life, the mystery of death -

Thirdly, he regards Shetlandic as expressing continuity with Shetland’s more recent history:

We also write because our words recall

Lore of a half-forgotten time, when all

Who lived here, with the strength of their own hand,

Could wrest from hostile sea and stubborn land

Their food and drink...

The conclusion recognises the relationship between the language and the Shetlandic identity.

Dear to the seabird is her rocky ledge;

Dear to the Islesman is the World’s Edge.

The arguments, like those in Shetlanrie, concentrate mainly on the expressiveness of the eclectic vocabulary, and the relationship of the Shetland tongue to the Shetland heritage.

The oft-quoted poem A Skyinbow o Tammy’s concentrates on the latter aspect. The force of the argument is that many aspects of traditional Shetland life are now gone:

"Dat’s aa geen noo" - Ya, I kyin it;

mony a thing is geen fir aa.

Nooadays der very little

o da aald wyes left ava.

Tinks du, wid da folk be better

if dey cöst da rest awa?

geen fir aa - gone for good

tinks du - do you think?

cöst - cast (pt)

ava - at all

Robertson then focuses on the language as an aspect of Shetlandic tradition which is still alive:

Trowe wir minds wir ain aald language

still keeps rinnin laek a tön;

Laek da laverik ida hömin

sheerlin whin da day is döne

Laek da seich o wind trowe coarn

at da risin o da mön.

laverik - skylark

sheerlin - singing

hömin - twilight

seich (sych) - sigh

Several more verses demonstrate the use of Shetlandic vocabulary to describe the sounds of sea and land - ‘da skriechin o da swaabie’ (shrieking of the greater black-backed gull), ‘da bulder o da watter in aboot da brakkin baa’ (sound of water breaking on an underwater rock), etc. The last verse argues that the traditional way of life is valuable and irreplaceable:

Things at maks dis life wirt livin

dey’re jöst laek da strainin-post;

Whin he’s brokken, hit’s no aesy

gittin new eens - an da cost

Hit’ll shön owergeng da honour

if da aald true wyes is lost.

strainin-post - corner post of a wire fence (‘post’ rhymes with ‘cost’ and ‘lost’).

shön - soon

owergeng - exceed

Robertson’s view of Shetlandic is thus intimately connected with his view of the value of the traditional life which he saw dying out in his lifetime. In his introduction to The Collected Poems of Vagaland, Ernest W. Marwick emphasises this intrinsic connection between the language and the life and community that Robertson knew:

It would not have been possible for him to vindicate his native tongue with such power and conviction if he had not had a deep respect for the people who used it and for the way of life to whose largely unspoken credo he gave utterance. He defended the ‘aald true wyes’ because they were true, not because they were old. As John J. Graham pointed out in "The New Shetlander", ‘His constant passion for maintaining the continuity of local tradition . . . was no mere antiquarian indulgence. It was fired by a real conviction, founded on personal experience, that the past revealed true insights into the art of living; that out of the lives of ordinary folk, engaged in their daily tasks and sustained by the warmth of close community ties, there emerged basic truths about the human situation. And his poems were evocations of that life and affirmations of those truths.

This perception of Shetlandic as intrinsically connected with traditional Shetland raises several questions - most pertinently, whether, since the pattern of life in Shetland - as Robertson himself points out - has changed considerably, the traditional language is still an appropriate medium; or whether, as Robertson’s sceptical character considers, it has ‘truly hed its day’.

This question is often raised in Shetland publications. One view, which is often expressed, follows the traditional emphasis on vocabulary, and concentrates on the fact that many Shetlandic words have become obsolete because the objects and practices which they described are obsolete, or at any rate are not so much an assumed part of the everyday life of Shetlanders as they were in the mid 1900s. To take the examples given by Robertson in Shetlanrie, the Shetland Model boat has now been largely superseded for everyday use by fibre-glass boats which are easier to maintain, and which have neither tilfers nor stammerin, nor any of the other parts - caib, rooth, humblibaands, baands, fastibaands, wairin, shot, owsin-room, even taft (thwart) - which were everyday words twenty years ago. The traditional style of eela fishing has been replaced largely by fishing with a weighted line - though this is also sometimes referred to as eela fishing, and the line also has a Norse name, dorrow - and with this and the general lack of rowing occasioned by ubiquitous outboard motors, there is no longer much need to aandoo, or for that matter shoo (row in reverse). Neither aandooin nor shooin are likely to be particularly necessary in the recently popularised sport of yoal racing. The kishie - which was used mainly to transport loose peats - became obsolete along with motor transport and the availability of peat bags; and now the introduction of mechanised peat cutting threatens to do away with the tushkar, or peat-cutting tool, as well.

On the other hand, the landscape and the wildlife have changed little. The ‘skriechin o da swaabie’ and ‘da bulder o da watter in aboot da brakkin baa’ are the same as ever. What has perhaps changed is that, in a society where more people live in the town of Lerwick and less live in the country, and where interests are driven by the media rather than the exigencies of life on the sea and land, nature, landscape and seascape are themselves of less and less relevance to less and less people; and insofar as children do learn about greater black-backed gulls and underwater rocks, they are perhaps more likely to hear about them through nature lessons in school, via the medium of English, rather than at first hand from their parents, through the medium of Shetlandic.

An anecdote may illustrate this. Walking on a beach in Shetland recently I met a man and a boy - apparently a grandfather and grandson - who had been fishing, and when I asked them if they had caught anything the boy replied ‘a shark’, and he held up a dogfish. I said, ‘Oh, a hoe’ and the older man replied, ‘Yea, a hoe’. The boy had apparently identified the dogfish as the closest species he could recognise from television or other educational or media sources - a shark. There was no indication that the older man had referred to it by its Shetlandic name until I did.

There are thus at least two factors at work here: the fact that some of the Shetlandic vocabulary has become obsolete along with the things and practices which it describes; and the fact that children increasingly learn through English rather than Shetlandic. The situation, however - as Brian Smith says of the death of Norn - is too complex to be dealt with by simple explanations. Firstly, many of the words which are dying out are associated with things or concepts which are neither old fashioned nor associated with country life. The palm of the hand has not evolved significantly in the last fifty years or so, and nor has the kitchen knife. Nevertheless, words like luif (palm of the hand) and tully (kitchen knife) are almost as likely to be absent from the speech of successive generations as words like kishie and swaabie. More fundamentally, perhaps, discussions of the obsolescence or otherwise of Shetlandic tend to concentrate almost exclusively on vocabulary, and to ignore grammar and phonology, which are equally significant elements of Shetlandic seen as a whole.

Minority Views?

One of the problems with assessing attitudes to Shetlandic is that the views which appear in print, or even the views which are expressed in conversation, are minority views almost by definition. They are the views of those who have a special interest in Shetlandic from one point of view or another. With regard to people interviewed for field studies, Gunnel Melchers (‘Knappin’) quotes Saville-Troike: ‘Often the people who make themselves most readily available to an outsider are those who are marginal to the community". This is perhaps likely to be even more true of people who write articles about Shetlandic for local publications. It is thus an open question how far the views about Shetlandic which are expressed in print reflect the opinions of the silent majority; or indeed, whether the silent majority has any views in particular.

In considering this question, it is important to remember that most of those who write about Shetlandic are Shetlandic speakers, who, if they live in Shetland, are likely to speak Shetlandic most of the time. This is in contradistinction to Mainland Scotland, where many of those who write about, and even in, Scots are either not Scots speakers at all, or use it rarely and in very restricted circumstances. It is thus possible that the views expressed in print do have something in common with general perceptions and attitudes. This should not be taken, however, to mean that the enthusiasm for Shetlandic which is often expressed by such writers is a reflection of popular attitudes - a mistake which is often made by observers. On a television programme someone resident in Shetland was heard to comment that there had been fears that the oil industry would have a detrimental effect on the dialect, but in fact exactly the opposite had happened. This statement can scarcely be justified, as there has in fact been a sharp decline in Shetlandic speaking, particularly in the town of Lerwick, since the ‘oil boom’. The likely explanation is that the interviewee had mistaken the upsurge in concern about the decline of Shetlandic, as expressed in print by a vocal minority, as a revival of the speech itself.

Attitudes towards the Decline of Shetlandic

Most articles about Shetlandic which appear in print locally are concerned with its decline. The editorial to The New Shetlander, Yule 1991, asks ‘Is the Dialect Dying?’ and, though remarking that ‘all is not gloomy’ because of the survival of the dialect in ‘the remoter country districts’ and its greater use in formal situations, largely because of the influence of Radio Shetland and a greater sympathy to local speech within the education system, nevertheless concludes that ‘It is inevitable that the dialect, faced daily with the overpowering influence of English through the media and education, should decline, but what is worrying is the present pace’ and ‘Realistically, we must accept that the dialect will continue to dwindle and that, at best, all we can hope for is that the process can be slowed down.’ In ‘Wir Dialect - a Black Ootlook’ (NS, Yule 1996) John A.W. Strachan contradicts the view that the education system is more sympathetic towards Shetlandic:

When I returned to Shetland in 1994 after a 26 year absence I was very surprised at the number of local children I met with English accents. But what really disturbed me were the answers I received on inquiring whether children were taught dialect in school.

‘Oh, we’re not allowed to speak that,’ said one child.

‘We get a row if we use Shetland words,’ explained another, whilst a third said: ‘If I use Shetland dialect words my teacher tells me to speak properly and make myself understood.’

The most shocking was: ‘If I speak with a Shetland accent I get into trouble.’

(It is uncertain what is meant here by ‘English accents’, as most young Lerwegians, although they may speak only standard English, nevertheless speak it with a pronounced Shetland accent.)

This representation of the situation in Shetland schools certainly seems to be at odds with the claim, which is often expressed in educational publications, that the educational system is now more sympathetic towards local speech forms. This disparity between intent and actuality is certainly true of other parts of Scotland. In published articles much is made of a more liberal attitude, and the Kist, or collection of Scots writing which is available for school use, is often cited. However, as a parent with children who attend school in the North East of Scotland - which has a very distinctive local form of Scots - I know that children are likely to be reprimanded for using Scots words and forms in speech. Moreover, while children of an older generation often studied the works of Burns, there appears to be much less study of Scots verse nowadays than formerly - often restricted to recitations around Burns night - and these may be characterised as the dialect of another area (my son once brought home what he described as ‘A Glasgow Poem’ which was actually written in a fairly non-regional form of Scots.) Conversations with primary teachers in the North East usually indicates that they have little or no conception of the difference between traditional Scots forms and general non-standard English ones; (e.g. the use of ‘thaim’ before ‘at’ in the traditional ‘Thaim at lives langest sees maist fairlies’ compared to the non-traditional ‘see thaim books’) or indeed of the difference between characteristics of accent (such as the glottal stop) and other linguistic features such as grammar. They are therefore likely to see all variations from standard English as undesirable.

It is likely that the situation in Shetland is better than it is in Scotland generally. There are certainly some teachers who not only do not condemn local speech forms, but speak Shetlandic in class. In her interviews with children in Shetland, Gunnel Melchers (1985) writes that, although attitudes in education have ostensibly changed, ‘it appears that some rigid attitudes seem to live on, and that certain teachers stick to the old system and rather fight the dialect...On the other hand, about 60% of the children write that it is common for pupils to speak to teachers in broad Shetland, and about 50% find that teachers do not react to this.’

One of the reasons given by children for speaking Shetlandic in some classes rather than others is ‘"Because the teachers don’t speak English." (!)’ The explanation mark which Melchers inserts after this statement is curious, as it obviously implies that some teachers speak in Shetlandic to pupils, and that the pupils therefore find it more natural to speak Shetlandic back.

To judge by Melcher’s findings, then, it would seem that, in spite of claims for universal educational sympathy towards local speech forms, tolerance - let alone encouragement - of Shetlandic speech in schools is perceived by pupils as about 50/50. It is certainly the case that any tolerance would be voluntary, and that any teachers who are not disposed to be sympathetic towards Shetlandic speech would be unlikely to come under any criticism for this.

Even those Shetlanders who are most concerned about the decline of Shetlandic seem reluctant to compare the Shetland situation to the revival or consolidation of forms of language in other parts of the world. A fairly typical view is that of Jack Priest (Some Tochts on da Dialect, NS, Hairst 1992).

‘The Faroese experience is often quoted as an analogy when comparing the language difference. This is unfair. Faroe started their consolidation with a vigorous vibrant spoken language and built a grammatical structure about it. While we have all the written homework we need, the spoken word is but a whisper in the mist.’

This would seem to imply that, where much has been written in and about Shetlandic, the spoken language is all but dead. Yet Priest begins his article with the comment that ‘if this article is to be readable to the majority of people buying this magazine I must use a watered down version of the way I would speak naturally.’ (In fact, the article is written, not in watered down Shetlandic as this statement would seem to imply, but standard English.) ‘A whisper in the mist’ presumably does not refer, then, to Priest’s own speech, but to that of the readers of the New Shetlander, many of whom will speak a much less distinctive form of Shetlandic.

Part of this perception depends on the view that it is too late for anything to be done about the decline of Shetlandic. As Annette Gear comments about Shetlandic in schools, ‘The most common criticism I have heard from the public is that we are too late - the horse has bolted, the dialect has gone.’

This immediately begs the questions of what is meant by ‘the dialect’, and what is meant by the perception that it is ‘gone’. As Jack Priest’s comments about his own speech indicate, traditional Shetlandic is certainly very much alive in country areas. The idea that it has ‘gone’ would seem to mean, not that it has disappeared, but that it is disappearing so fast that it will soon have disappeared altogether. This perception can probably be analysed into two aspects:

1. The loss of vocabulary and other features of traditional Shetlandic.

2. The switch from Shetlandic to English in Lerwick.

However the decline of Shetlandic is perceived, the use of such expressions as ‘gone’ to describe a form of speech which certainly has not disappeared by any objective criteria may be said to be more indicative of attitudes towards it than of its actual situation. The demise of Scots on Mainland Scotland has been predicted for a long time, whereas in fact, where Scots has all but died out in certain areas and social strata, it has remained in others. In other words, while there is as yet no reason to suppose that early predictions of Scots dying out were not justified, it is taking a lot longer than many thought. In Shetland, the situation is likely to be similar, in that Shetlandic is likely to die out in the town of Lerwick (with an accompanying loss of status in Shetland as a whole), but to take longer to die out in country districts. The fact that, in contrast to speakers of Gaelic and Faroese, most Shetlanders seem to regard this state of affairs fatalistically, rather than reacting positively with measures such as those adopted by the Gaels and Faroese, may be cited as a contributory factor in the decline of Shetlandic.

Added to this is an ambivalent attitude by Shetlanders to the status of Shetlandic. Older people in Lerwick may be dismayed that the younger people speak only English - grandparents sometimes complaining that their grandchildren cannot understand them - while parents in the country may (usually unsuccessfully) try to bring up their children to speak English rather than Shetlandic (this tendency, common on the Scottish Mainland, was almost unknown in Shetland until relatively recently).¹ People who speak Shetlandic all the time may be unhappy to hear it used in church or on radio. And whereas on the one hand there is a strong feeling among some that the use of Shetlandic in education should be increased (a recent survey on literature in Shetland conducted by the Shetland Arts Trust received many replies to the effect that something should be done about the decline of Shetlandic) many seem to be indifferent, or opposed. This opposition does not necessarily stem from opposition to Shetlandic as such. One opinion I have come across is that teaching Shetlandic in school would kill it off, because pronunciations vary from district to district and it wouldn’t do, for example, to have a teacher from Burra teaching Burra pronunciations to Whalsay pupils. The example which was cited was the word ‘hill’, which someone from Burra would pronounce with hard ‘i’ and velarised ‘l’ sounds, whereas the Whalsay pronunciaton has soft ‘i’ and palatalised ‘l’.

The perception that alteration of phonetic nuances of local pronunciation would amount to ‘killing’ Shetlandic is closely related to the perception of Shetlandic as ‘dialect’ as opposed to ‘language’. Most people who express concern about the decline of Shetlandic write or talk about ‘saving the dialect’. The presupposition seems to be that the dialect status of Shetlandic is intrinsic to its role in Shetland society, and that ‘saving the dialect’ implies preserving its traditional role as an informal, essentially oral vernacular, with the corollary that English can be used for formal writing (most writers of articles of this sort write in English) as in the past. Concern about the decline of Shetlandic tends, therefore, to be retrospective, contrasting a past where almost all Shetlanders spoke Shetlandic but wrote English, with a future where all Shetlanders may both speak and write only English. The third possibility - of a truly bilingual situation where Shetlandic speakers are fully literate in both English and Shetlandic - is rarely considered; and where it is considered it is usually rejected.

There is no little doubt that, as a whole, the perception of Shetlanders towards their native speech has not improved significantly since Robertson’s comments, and may rather have declined. Recently a Shetlander commented to me that ‘hit’s deein oot - an hit’s laekly no a bad thing.’ Factors which are touted as exemplifying a positive approach towards Shetlandic can usually be seen as representing the attitudes of a few individuals, and to be ineffectual in the long term. The best known example - the use of Shetlandic on the Shetland Radio, for non-traditional uses such as newsreading - is a case in point. Mary Blance, who inaugurated this practice, did so initially in the face of constant complaints from listeners - many Shetlanders are still opposed to it. Even though she persisted, complaints prevailed in some cases such as the weather forecast, which was perceived as being too important to be read in Shetlandic. (‘People may remember the furore locally when I did read the weather forecasts in dialect. That practice ended more than ten years ago.’ Mary Blance, NS Summer 1994, p. 9). Moroeover, this practice has not extended to the independent radio station, where announcements are in Shetland-accented English, and both the more recent announcers on BBC Radio Shetland similarly use Shetland-accented English. Mary Blance’s use of Shetlandic on radio may well turn out to be a short lived experiment.

In these respects, the attitude of Shetlanders towards Shetlandic has more in common with general attitudes towards Scots in Scotland than with the approaches taken towards Gaelic and Faroese by their respective communities. This perception is perhaps most evident in the case of written Shetlandic.

Written Shetlandic

Attitudes towards written Shetlandic are, on the whole, less positive than towards spoken Shetlandic. When the UHI policy on linguistic and cultural identity was published, one former employee of the UHI - who described himself as an ‘enthusiastic dialect native speaker’ - took an essentially negative stance, expressing his discomfort with written Shetlandic ‘outside of poetry and the classic books’ which he professed himself unable to read, and declaring it irrelevant in any other context. Another Shetlander, again a natural Shetlandic speaker and teacher of English, considered that my own translation of Mark’s Gospel, Guid Unkens efter Mark, was difficult to understand in written form, but came alive when I read a section aloud for Radio Shetland. The editor of the Shetland Times was reluctant to publish a book review in Shetlandic, giving the reason that Shetlandic, while all right when spoken, was difficult to read, and decided to publish it only ‘for a change’. Friends in Shetland speak about ‘deciphering’ my occasional letters in Shetlandic to the Shetland press; and many native speakers of Shetlandic say that they are unable to read Shetlandic, or find it very difficult.

In a letter to the editor in The New Shetlander, Voar 1992, Eric Stockton, while suggesting that there should be proper instruction in local language and proper instruction in standard English, is similarly uncomfortable with written Shetlandic:

"What I think is very unhelpful is the practice of writing in ‘dialect’ - usually a merely eccentric spelling of standard English words in the hope of being ‘phonetic’. The pleasure of listening to a genuine local speaker is in stark contrast to the tedious chore of working out what some correspondent is trying to write using idiosyncratic spelling. Hearing John Goodlad during the 1987 election campaign was a pleasure; unscrambling some of the letters in, say, the Shetland Times is something I have long since given up.

"What would people say if I wrote ‘woz’ (simply because that is the way I say it) while some people say ‘wiz’ (rhyming with ‘his’) and some say ‘wuz’ (rhyming with ‘buzz’). I don’t know anyone who says ‘was’ to rhyme with ‘jazz’, but it is simply very convenient to spell it in the standard, admittedly non-phonetic manner."

The question which Stockton does not address here is: how can you have proper instruction in local language if it does not have a written form? Should ‘proper instruction’ in Shetlandic be oral only? Should English spellings be used to represent Shetlandic in writing, even where the pronunciation is different from English, rather as Oreström does; or by writing English with the odd Shetland word here and there, as John Graham does in his novels? Like so many comments made about Shetlandic, the recognition that idiosyncratic spellings are difficult to read merely emphasises a problem, but provides no satisfactory way of addressing it.

Annette Gear, in A Brighter Forecast (New Shetlander, Yule 1996) takes what appears to be a different view. Commenting on views of the future of Shetlandic, she writes:

"One such debate centres on whether the use of a standardised spelling would help to make the written word more accessible; perhaps I would not be using Standard English for this letter if I did not feel slightly embarrassed about exposing my own phonetic spelling to public scrutiny? My feeling on this question is that by standardising the spelling, the variations on pronunciation within the dialect would be jeopardised, ie Central Mainland is to Yell, as English is to Shetlandic, only on a different scale."

This appears to be the opposite view to that of Stockton - considering that Shetlandic should be written in order to emphasise the pronunciation of different districts. However, Gear is reluctant to expose her own practice of this type of spelling to public scrutiny. In effect, then, in rejecting an approach to written Shetlandic which would enable it to be used in writing in the same way as standard English, and advocating an approach which she is reluctant to use in print, Gear is accepting that standard English will be used for almost all writing. In avoiding the use of ‘phonetic’ spelling in print, then, Stockton and Gear could be said to be in agreement. Neither approach, however, answers the question of how Shetlandic should be written, and where - if it is inappropriate in print - it would be appropriate to write it. The practical result of rejecting and recommending ‘phonetic’ spellings appears, then, to be the same - Shetlandic is not written, and English is used instead.

Brian Smith recognises this problem, commenting on ‘...a certain uneasiness Shetlanders still have about accepting their language as a literary language. Verse is all very well, but there is a great dearth of continuous Shetland prose. Shetlanders often find dialect prose difficult to read, and they seem to think that others will have even more difficulty.’

Smith goes on to say that he can understand this fear, but doesn’t take it seriously. He points out that English literature is full of dialect and comments that he has difficulty understanding some of the dialect in Wuthering Heights but that doesn’t stop him reading the book. He also quotes a poet, Tom Paulin, who, when someone complained about dialect words in his poems, said ‘I can see it would be difficult of you thought you had to go off and consult a dictionary, but it can’t be helped.’

Smith’s comments here illustrate the almost universal presupposition that, when writing in Shetlandic is spoken of, only literary writing is meant. Shetlandic is seen in the same category as any other kind of dialect in literature, which is of course used mainly in dialogue and forms of writing closely related to dialogue (e.g. plays - Smith cites D.H. Lawrence’s The Daughter-in Law - or the first person Scots narrative of R.L. Stevenson’s Thrawn Janet). ²

Smith’s comments also illustrate the dilemma which exists with regard to written Shetlandic. On the one hand, the dearth of prose writing is recognised; on the other hand, it is admitted that Shetlanders find continous Shetlandic difficult to read. It is difficult to see how there can ever be continuous prose in a language which hardly any of its speakers can read - who is going to write prose narratives if no-one is going to read them? Moreover, Smith’s reasons for not taking this problem seriously further illustrate the dilemma. The use of dialect in English literature in no way defuses the difficulty experienced by Shetlanders in reading continuous Shetlandic prose, firstly because dialect in literature is rarely used in this way - more often in poetry, drama and dialogue; and secondly, because literature is in any case marginal to the use of written language. Only a small proportion of those who can read English read the sort of literature which habitually uses dialect. The comments of a literary person who is interested in and accustomed to language variety in literature thus represents only a tiny proportion of the population, most of whom would reject any 'dense' dialect in writing. Most people read because they have been taught to read, and that means reading English. Only a small minority have the motivation to teach themselves to read, far less write, Shetlandic, even if it is their native tongue.

This emphasis on the literary use of dialect is arguably the nub of the problem with Shetlandic writing. Even John J. Graham (until recently co-editor of the New Shetlander) who has long been the chief proponent of prose writing in Shetlandic, rarely writes Shetlandic prose. The fact that the editorial of the New Shetlander has always been in English, and the fact that Graham’s novels are narrated in English with interspersed Shetlandic vocabulary, are a recognition that the use of written Shetlandic outwith its traditional use in poetry would not be acceptable to the Shetland readership, and perhaps not to the bodies who sponsor local publications. Written Shetlandic appears only in New Shetlander and Shetland Life. In the Shetland Times it occurs only in the cartoon, and in one or two stock phrases such as ‘Da Voar Redd Up’ and ‘Da Bruck Box’. This state of affairs - where written Shetlandic is used only for literary purposes, never when there are facts to be communicated - reflects the situation of Scots on Mainland Scotland, and is best discussed in that context.

The Scots Background

In the first chapter of his Scott and Scotland, Edwin Muir argues essentially that Scots cannot write great literature because they feel in one language - Scots - and think in another - English. ‘The curse of Scottish literature’ he writes ‘is the lack of a whole language, which finally means the lack of a whole mind’ and ‘When emotion and thought are separated, emotion becomes irresponsible and thought arid.’ This view has been effectively criticised by Alan Massie, who, in the introduction to the 1982 Polygon edition of Muir’s book, points out that there have been many great writers who wrote in a language that was not their mother tongue, and some in more than one language. However, the oft-quoted phrase, ‘Scotsmen feel in one language and think in another’ is not the total of Muir’s argument. There is another aspect to it which Massie’s criticism does not address - that the critic uses one language and the poet another, and that therefore any criticism which is made, in English, of Scots poetry is essentially an external criticism:

‘The greatest passages in English poetry, those in which we no longer seek for the ideas of the feelings expressed, but for something transcending them, could only have been written in a language which was employed for all the purposes of expression; for only by such employment does a language gather the requisite fullness and variety of association which make such feats possible. A language which is used only for poetry is bound to grow poorer, even for poetic purposes, than one which is used for all the ends of discourse. And a language which is not used for all those ends cannot be used critically, for such criticism as it receives is from outside, and is nothing more than an observer’s opinion, of no real use.

‘This, it seems to me, is a fair description of the critical dilemma in Scotland: a dilemma caused by the fact that the critic used one language and the poet another.’

The hypothesis that ‘Scotsmen feel in one language and think in another’ is, then, only part of Muir’s argument. The above aspect of the argument is more demonstrable - it is a fact that most writers use Scots only for poetry or very limited literary prose, and as such it is restricted to certain very limited purposes of expression.

The use of written Scots for poetry alone could be likened to the idea that an athlete could train for a sport simply by competing at that sport without any other type of training - an idea which would not win any races. Moreover, the principle could be extended. If writers are expected to produce good literary Scots or Shetlandic prose, where are they to practice their craft, if there is no tradition of prose writing in Scots, and everything else they read and write is in English?

The practical difficulties which arise can be illustrated from a short story in Scots which was given to me to read, which contained the sentence

"A tak the gate she pynts, but A loss ma nerves whan A keek throu the windae an see aa the fowk."

This sentence - which was intended to be in the historic present tense - did not, however, sound like natural Scots to me. Natural Scots would have been:

‘I taks the gate she pynts, but A losses ma nerves whan A keeks throu the windae an sees aa the fowk.’

The reason that this sounds natural whereas the original sentence did not sound natural is that, in Scots as in Shetlandic, the first person in the historic present tense does not have the endings of the ordinary first person present tense, but the same endings as the third person:

Present tense: I loss, she losses

Historic present: I losses, she losses

The writer of the story replied that, although he would naturally have spoken like the second sentence, it would not have occurred to him to use these forms in writing. Lack of formal recognition of the traditional characteristics of colloquial Scots all too often leads, not to natural Scots, but to the constant intrusion of standard English grammar, resulting in a form of Scots which is stilted and artificial.

This illustrates that prose writing in Scots requires deliberate practice; that familiarity with written English does not provide that practice; and that Scots speakers - let alone those who do not speak Scots - are not necessarily able to transfer the characteristics of spoken Scots to writing without recognising and practicing these characteristics explicitly. In the absence of any tradition of Scots prose writing, those who do so must teach themselves; and in the absence of formal rules for writing Scots, those who wish to write it must either formulate their own rules, or write without them. In a very few cases - such as Lorimer’s translation of the New Testament - the adoption of consistent syntax produces a coherent and viable prose style. More often, Scots prose writing oscillates between the characteristics of several disparate types of language - incorporating, for example, some features of traditional colloquial Scots, some of urban demotic Scots, perhaps some from mediaeval Scots, and some from the norms of standard written English - giving rise to a type of Scots which is neither one style or register nor another.

In Scottish literary circles, it is almost de rigeur to disapprove of regular orthography and ‘prescriptive’ grammar and advocate spontaneity in writing Scots. As James Robertson expresses it:

One argument against a standardisation of Scots spelling is that one of the language’s very strengths lies in its flexibility and its less-than-respectable status: writers turn to it because it offers a refuge for linguistic individualism, anarchism, nomadism and hedonism...William McIlvanney has spoken of Scots as being like English in its underwear, stripped of all pretensions, and in some respects this is very apt.

Realistically, it seems to me, the future for Scots lies in exploiting its close relationship with English, in generating positive, progressive energy from that juxtaposition and the tensions it creates. The ability of people to renew their spoken language by such means is not in doubt; the knock-on effect on written Scots should be equally dynamic.

James Robertson, introduction to A Tongue in yer Heid.

However, as the above example of the historic present shows, ‘spontaneous’ writing does not necessarily produce natural Scots - the influence of written English is too strong. Consequently, whereas the spontaneity principle may work in the traditional roles of Scots - mostly dialogue and poetry - it tends to fall down in continuous narrative. This failure is then cited to prove that Scots is incapable of being used for writing prose.

In his introduction to The Picador Book of Contemporary Scottish Fiction, Peter Kravitz comments on Lorimer’s translation of the New Testament as follows:

‘He uses different forms of Scots to show different authors in the New Testament and when the Old Testament is quoted he uses Old Scots. The book’s raciness and hybridity made the attempts by various writers and academics in the decade before to sort out an agreed form of Scots laughable.’

This might give the impression that the success of Lorimer’s translation is owing to spontaneity, whereas the artificiality of some other forms of Scots writing is owing to prescriptive rules. In fact, however, Lorimer’s translation, though it uses different styles and registers, is almost unique among recent Scots prose in its consistent application of the characteristics of traditional colloquial Scots. Graham Tulloch comments:

Leaving aside the relatively few words which vary in spelling and which perhaps amount to about as many as those distinguishing the two Standard English systems, the British and the American, Lorimer has adopted a consistent orthography. It is very much in the mould of much recent Scots writing which we have already seen reflected in Borrowman .... Scots is thereby presented as a language with traditions, including a spelling tradition, not merely a spoken dialect written down according to the spelling rules of a standard language.

These efforts to differentiate Scots from English carry through to grammar as well. Only Murray in the modern period equals Lorimer in his determination to preserve distinctively Scots grammar. Most notable is Lorimer's consistent use of the s verbal ending, according to the rules discerned by Murray, not only in the third person singular (as in English) but also with plural subjects, either when the pronoun is separated from the verb as in them at gies me orders (Matt. 8:9) and ye at drees hunger (Luke 6:2 1) or when the subject is a plural noun as in John's disciples is ey fastin an prayin, an the Pharisees' disciples dis the same, but your disciples eats an drinks (Luke 5:33). The s form also follows thou as in thou hes (John 17:2) although this inflection is rare in Lorimer since he follows the New English Bible practice of only using thou in direct address to God. Smith ^a had been inconsistent in these usages as he was also in the handling of past participles ending in ate or ute. Here, too, Lorimer is absolutely consistent in usage, never adding an inflection: Him at miscaas faither or mither lat him be execute tae the deid (Mark 7: 1 0), What I wad hae waired on your throubeirin is aa dedicate tae God (Matt. 15:5). Again, like Murray, Lorimer only uses the one relative pronoun, at. On the other hand Lorimer does not follow Murray in differentiating in spelling between present participles and verbal nouns/adjectives: both end with in. Already, in Murray's time, this was only a feature in Southern Scots and was thus unsuitable for the standard form of Scots that Lorimer was creating even though some modern Scots poets have revived the distinction on historical grounds.

By providing Scots with a consistent spelling and grammar (apart from a few clearly specified exceptions) Lorimer was, in every verse of his translation, asserting the independence of Scots from English. Scots becomes a language in its own right with its own rules, not a dialect subject to the constant intrusion of English grammar rules, as Smith had presented it. If a model is sought for a standard modern Scots, then Lorimer has provided it.

^a William Wye Smith, The Four Gospels in Braid Scots

Graham Tulloch, A History of the Scots Bible, p. 82

Tulloch’s careful identification of the features which give Lorimer’s Scots its ‘raciness’ is in stark contrast to the impression given by Kravitz that this is owing to avoidance of standardisation. Lorimer’s Scots is in fact extremely regular - as Tulloch comments, it is in fact more regular than most literary Scots, which tends to oscillate inconsistently between the characteristics of traditional colloquial Scots and those of standard written English. It is obvious, moreover, that Lorimer (who was not a native Scots speaker) has identified these grammatical characteristics of traditional colloquial Scots and applied them deliberately and consistently in a conscious effort to create a literary Scots prose. Conversely, the artificiality of many attempts at Scots narrative prose is not because it is unduly prescriptive but because it continually falls under the influence of written English. It is artificial because it has not applied the natural rules of traditional Scots grammar consistently enough. The impression that it is standardisation which causes this artificiality perhaps owes more to Kravitz’s ideological need to find standardisation laughable than it does to the facts. Unfortunately, the derision of the Scottish literary establishment for any rules in writing Scots does not ensure that only natural Scots is written; rather, it prohibits natural Scots from being written by ensuring that the characteristics of natural Scots are not recognised and taught, and thus that most attempts to write narrative in Scots are doomed to failure. This failure can then be cited by the same figures of the literary establishment to support the view that the appropriate role of Scots in Scottish letters is to express ‘anarchism, nomadism and hedonism’in contrast to standard English. Increasingly, this means the depiction of working class speech by writers who do not, or no longer, speak that way themselves. It is not, by and large, a literature produced by those who speak it, but largely the representation of the orra strynds (odd characteristics) of the speech of one class in the literature of another.

Insofar as the emphasis in written Shetlandic is on literary prose, the Scots literary establishment, with its advocacy of spontaneity and derision of orthographic and grammatical norms, is bound to be influential, as is the constant backdrop of written English. This can be seen in the fact that, whereas more informal Shetland prose writing - such as Kathleen Tait’s Day in the Life of a Shetland Librarian, and the writings of J.W. Leask - tend to show the type of traditional grammatical constructions identified in GUSD ³ , more literary writing - such as Da Peerie Boat, by John Cumming - tends to show the intrusive influence of standard English grammar. It is ironic, in view of the concern expressed by some commentators that children should be introduced to authentic Shetlandic, that books written for children may be more likely to show the influence of standard written English.

Another factor is that some such influence - such as the use of the verb ‘have’ rather than ‘be’ to form the perfect tense - is becoming evident in speech; and under an ideological framework which professes to regard no form of Scots or Shetlandic as better than another (though this position effectively bolsters the predominant position of standard English, which fills the position of esteem by default) it is to be expected that written literary Shetlandic will become, in due course, ‘ordinary English in masquerade’, as Sir James Murray characterised the Scots of those who Anglicise the native idiom. (Tulloch, p. 51). With the adoption of English as a spoken language in Lerwick, it may even be that, as with much Scots prose, literary Shetlandic will come to be written by those who are not themselves speakers of Shetlandic - already there have been instances of English speaking Lerwick schoolchildren winning prizes in Scots Language Society competitions. With neither native feel for idiomatic Shetlandic nor formal tuition to assert and practice its characteristics, literary Shetlandic will then have degenerated into ‘translation Shetlandic’ - written by those who are able to think only in standard English - or ‘Shetlans’.

A major problem with Shetlandic, as with Scots, writing is that it is seen as a problem of literature rather than a problem of literacy. The idea that a community which is illiterate in its own language can nevertheless produce literature in that language is arguably a fantasy which is maintained only by the necessity to pretend that the ideological opposition of the literary establishment to the prerequisites of literacy in Scots are not damaging to literature. In this context, Muir’s view that Scots think in one language and feel in another could be altered to this: the failure of literature in Shetlandic is due to the fact that most Shetlanders think and speak in one language - Shetlandic - and write in another - English.

¹ Since this article was written, this situation has changed, and children in country areas often now speak only standard English.

² Smith's reaction to my use of Shetlandic in an expository context can be seen here and here. His articles on Shetlandic (The Development of the spoken and written Shetland dialect, Shetland’s Northern Links, Language and History, p. 30; and The Development of literature in Shetland, Part two, NS, Voar 1991, p. 18) are both a commentary on and illustration of Shetland attitudes to Shetlandic.

³ Grammar and Usage of the Shetland Dialect by Graham and Robertson