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Ulster Scots, also known as Ullans, generally refers to the varieties of Lowland Scots^[3][4] spoken in parts of the province of Ulster in the north of Ireland. Along with the traditional Scots dialects^[5], Ulster Scots may also include Standard English spoken with an Ulster Scots accent^[6][7], where lexical items have been re-allocated to the phoneme classes that are nearest to the equivalent standard classes^[8], a situation equivalent to that of Lowland Scots and Scottish English^[9]. Ulster Scots has also been influenced by, and has itself influenced, Mid Ulster English and through that Hiberno-English. Hence varieties can be characterised as 'more English' or 'more Scots'^[10].

Ulster Scots is spoken in east Antrim, north Down, north-west County Londonderry, the Laggan area of Donegal, and also in the fishing villages of the Mourne coast.^[11]

[edit] Nomenclature

While once referred to as Scotch-Irish by several researchers, that has now been superseded by the term Ulster Scots^[12]. Native Speakers usually refer to their vernacular as 'Scotch'^[13] or the 'hamely tongue'^[14]. Since the 1980s it has also been called 'Ullans', a portmanteau neologism popularized by the physician, amateur historian and politician Dr Ian Adamson^[15], merging Ulster and Lallans - the Scots for Lowlands^[16]- but also an acronym for "Ulster-Scots language in literature and native speech".^[17] Occasionally the term Hiberno-Scots is used^[18], although it is usually used for the Ethnic group^[19] rather than the vernacular.

[edit] History

Main article: History of the Scots language

Scots, mainly Gaelic-speaking, had been settling in Ulster since the 15th century, 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.^[20] In the core areas of Scots settlement, Scots outnumbered English settlers by five or six to one.^[21]

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.^[22] 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 Mid Ulster English, Hiberno-English and Irish; the relationship has been two-way, with for example craic being a late 20th century gaelicisation. Mid Ulster English, the dialect of most people in Ulster, including those in the two main cities of Belfast and Derry, 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.

[edit] Linguistic status

Among academic linguists, Ulster Scots is treated as a dialect of English, or a variety of the Scots language. 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.

[edit] Speaker Population

Green: Irish Gaelic,
Orange: Ulster Scots,
White: Mid Ulster English,
Light Blue: South Ulster English,
Light Yellow: Hiberno-English^[23]

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^[24]. 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.

[edit] Literature

In Ulster Scots-speaking areas 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.

Poetry by Robert Huddlestone (1814-1887) inscribed in paving in Writers' Square, Belfast

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.

The poet Seamus Heaney indicates the importance of Ulster Scots to his own writing in his poem 'A Birl for Burns':

From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm,

That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them

And stick to still in County Antrim

Was in my ear.

From east of Bann it westered in

On the Derry air.

My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed,

They happed themselves until it thowed,

By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed

And snedded thrissles,

And when the rigs were braked and hoed

They’d wet their whistles....

[edit] Language planning

The brand identity of the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland as shown on this sign is displayed in English, Irish and Ulster Scots^[25]

By the early part of the 20th century the literary tradition was almost extinct.^[20] The Ulster Scots revival from the 1980s onwards has moved away from the traditional Scots orthographic practices, preferring instead to develop Ulster Scots as an autonomous written variety whose “common denominator is to be as different to English, and occasionally Scots, as possible”. This hotchpotch of obsolete words, neologisms, redundant 16th and 17th century spelling conventions and “erratic spelling which sometimes reflects everyday Ulster Scots speech rather than the conventions of either modern or historic Scots”. The resulting pastiche “is also often incomprehensible to the native speaker.”^[26]

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, and there have also been plans for an Ulster-Scots Academy. An Ulster-Scots Agency document^[27] leaked in July 2008 regarding plans for the establishment of an academy accused the implentation group appointed by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure of wrongly promoting the dialect as an autonomous variety, stating that “The implementation group [chaired by the geographer Philip Robinson] seem to be planning to be concerned with a language separate from Scots, which they are calling Ulster-Scots, though this appears to be something distinct from the language variety traditionally spoken in Ulster.”^[28]

[edit] Promotion

In recent years a movement has been under way to change the perception of Ulster Scots. The Ulster Scots Agency promotes Ulster Scots. 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.^{[citation needed]}

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".

[edit] Legal status

Main article: Scots language#Status

Ulster Scots is defined in an Agreement between the Government of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and the Government of Ireland establishing implementation bodies done at Dublin on the 8th day of March 1999 in the following terms:

"Ullans" is to be understood as the variety of the Scots language traditionally found in parts of Northern Ireland and Donegal.

The North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999,^[29] which gave effect to the implementation bodies incorporated the text of the agreement in its Schedule 1.

The declaration made by the United Kingdom Government regarding the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages reads as follows [4]:

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.

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. [5]

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). The legislative remit laid down for the agency by the North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999 is: "the promotion of greater awareness and the use of Ullans and of Ulster-Scots cultural issues, both within Northern Ireland and throughout the island". The agency has adopted a mission statement: 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.

The Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006^[30] amended the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to insert a section (28D) entitled Strategies relating to Irish language and Ulster Scots language etc which inter alia laid on the Executive Committee a duty to "adopt a strategy setting out how it proposes to enhance and develop the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture." This reflects the wording used in the St Andrews Agreement to refer to the enhancement and development of "the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture"^[31]

[edit] Notes

[edit] See also

• Scots language
• Ulster
• Ulster Scots people
• Ulster Irish
• Dictionary of the Scots Language
• History of the Scots language
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• W.F. Marshall
• Mid-Ulster English

[edit] External links

• The Ulster-Scots Language Society
• listen to an Ulster Scots accent
• 'Hover & Hear' Ulster Scots pronunciations, and compare with other accents from the UK and around the World.
• The Ulster-Scots Agency (Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch)
• (Language, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland)
• Aw Ae Oo (Scots in Scotland and Ulster)
• Aw Ae Wey (Written Scots in Scotland and Ulster)
• Ulster Scots voices (BBC site)
• Pronunciation of Ulster Scots
• Ulster-Scots Online
• The Dictionary of the Scots Language
• Scots Online
• website promoting Ullans to the Gaelic community of Ireland.
• essay which discusses some problems of the Ulster-Scots project