Users

Other Users and Non-Users

There are obviously large parts of Shetland society which are not covered by concentrating on areas of dialect interest. These are different depending on whether you are talking about spoken or written dialect, and also of how you define dialect.

The spoken dialects (whether or not those are seen as including more recent Lerwick ‘cool dude’ talk containing phrases such as ‘youse wans’, on which a Shetlander of about my age commented ‘Dat’s no richt’) are obviously still used by a large proportion of Shetlanders. However, I would suggest that a very small proportion of Shetlanders could be described as users of ‘dialect’ written material. Needless to say, there is a wide variety of opinions on ‘dialect’ in Shetland, ranging from the commonly-heard one that the demise of dialect will benefit children’s education (‘Hit’s deein oot an hit’s laekly a guid thing’), to strong feelings of identification with the tongue and regret at its demise. However, those who wish it not to die out typically specify that it is ‘dialect’ - that is, speech at the level of local dialect - that they do not wish to see dying out. Dialect as a concept, in other words. It is frequently stated that any standardisation, or even teaching, of dialect will kill it off, meaning kill off local variation. An example that was given to me (most comments I have had from Shetlanders have been negative) is that if you had a teacher from one island teaching dialect in another, this would adversely influence the dialect of that island. Again, demonstrations of the possibility of a common written form which is adaptable to different pronunciations fall on deaf ears. Nowhere is there any desire or felt need to use the Shetland tongue outwith its traditional scope, as far as I am aware. Even the explicit Nornomaniacs (such as the authors of one dictionary which has Norn words printed in blue) seem to write mostly if not only in English and concentrate largely on etymology - probably partly because they regard the living dialect as a corrupt tongue that wouldn’t be suitable for any other purpose anyway, agreeing in this respect with the view of Brian Smith to whom they would ostensibly be diametrically opposed.

Another interesting division in society may be the division between ordinary Shetlanders on the one hand and their official representatives on the other, and the question of whether this corresponds in any way to the division between the traditional Shetland identity and the views of the intelligentsia - the media, etc; not the same group as the official representatives except by coincidence . My efforts in the UHI - at the policy formulation stage - were not only ignored but objected to at this level in Shetland. A letter by me to the relevant council officials about education in Shetland elicited, as far as I could gather at the time, an angry reprimand to the then head of Shetland College, Gordon Dargie, objecting to the UHI trying to get involved in Shetland affairs. And a letter to the head of Scalloway fisheries college, Morgan Goodlad (who later became chief executive of the SIC) elicited a particularly scornful dismissal. It may seem to be ironic that he was the chief executive when ShetlandForWirds received funding from the SIC. But my interpretation of that is that it is worth a small amount of money to fund an organisation which can be relied upon to keep ‘dialect’ squarely in its place. As Atina Nihtinen commented, their approach ‘enjoys support at the official level.’ In my persona as conspiracy theorist, I wouldn’t even be surprised to find that there were stipulations attached. This may seem far fetched, but the suppression of my input by synchronised amnesia exceeded any conspiracy that I could have imagined.