illandancient.bsky.social

Are there many bots on SubStack, who just go around liking articles but without actually having a human behind them driving, or writing their own articles?

These questions have been asked, but not by high-profile National Geographic writers.

And the answers provided have consistently been paper-thin nonsense, from people who don't understand the issue and don't care.

The National Geographic article is kind enough to interview a handful of Scots language activists - but they refrained from asking the people who make the linguistic choices, the newspaper editors, the BBC directors, the chief librarians, the chiefs of NHS Education for Scotland.

What does it take to get NHS Scotland to provide healthcare in Scots rather than in Standard English?

Is 30% of people ticking the boxes in the census not enough?

Is 30% of people speaking Scots in the street and classrooms not enough?

What does it take to persuade newspapers and magazines to provide articles and reportage written in Scots?

What doe sit take to get Education Scotland to teach in Scots, and to teach Scots as a modern language?

Those 30% of people in Scotland who ticked the box in the census - did they not tick the box hard enough?

What more should they do? What does it take to change public library purchasing decisions?

What does it take to change BBC TV show commissioning decisions?

Its possibly the smallest proportion of speakers, but that's a different matter.

The problem with Scots is English linguistic imperialism, a boot on the neck of Scots speakers.

The number of Scots speakers has remained remarkable stable over the last thirty years, at around 1.5 million. This probably represents a peak in the number of speakers.

Its difficult to find a time when there were more Scots speakers in the entire history of Scotland.

I don't want to pish on the Scots language, and this article should be widely shared to raise the profile of the Scots language.

But I do disagree on the angle.

In "The Lost City..." the writer also mentions some of the academics who poured scorn on the article, describing it as either wrong or sensationalising the matter. These academics were kind of painted as like the bad guys in the story.

He writes about how when the first article was published it meant huge global interest in that specific archaeological site, hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't otherwise know about it, suddenly knew of its existence.

This National Geographic article about Scots could do the same thing.

The other week I finished reading "The Lost City of the Monkey God" which is a National Geographic writer's account of exploring an abandoned city in Honduras with a bunch of archaeologists.

www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-City-Mo...

I find emailing the Chief Exec (and the rest of the board) does in fact get problems resolved really quickly.

Can social media resurrect the Scots language? Inside the decidedly modern campaign to revitalize a lost language (that some say isn’t truly a language).

Pios inntinneach mu aiseirigh na Scots anns na meadhanan sòisealta.

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

Agus bho seo a-mach tha mi a' dol a chleachdadh "wha stole yer scone" san dà chànan! Cò ghoid do sgona-sa!

The English language is in crisis, most people who claim they can speak it don't even know what "filipendulous" or "jentacular" mean.

This language is dying.

The number of Scots speakers has been remarkable stable for the last 30 years.

We might be seeing more of it on social media, but the number of Scots speakers in Scotland isn't changing.

We're not seeing more of it in newspapers, or on TV or in libraries.

Another aspect about the "resurgence" in the Scots language is that it never went away.

In the 2022 census about 1.5 million people reported they spoke Scots.
In the 2011 census about 1.5 million people reported they spoke Scots
in the 1997 GRO(S) report about 1.5 million people spoke Scots.

This is not because people aren't using the word "hurkle-durkle" enough.

Scots is a complete modern language, its not just a handful of entertaining obscure words that can be used in otherwise entirely English sentences.

There are no Scots medium schools, no school textbooks written in Scots. Children are still told off for writing in Scots and not English.

Scots-speakers disproportionately drop out of school with lower qualifications than non-Scots speakers, instinctive recognising it isn't a place for them.

The in public libraries of Scotland, only 0.06% of books are written in Scots. Among new acquisitions of books by those public libraries, only 0.06% of books are written in Scots, paid for by taxpayers where 29% consider themselves Scots speakers.

And yet four years after this census, we should note that the Scottish NHS doesn't provide services in Scots. Indeed Scots speakers report worse general health than non-Scots speakers, and worse mental health than non-Scots speakers.

The census website clearly states "The answers people give to census questions help build up a picture of the population. Government and other service providers rely on census data to make important decisions."

The data isn't there for service providers to ignore or to argue with.

Back in the 2022 Scottish census, 1.5 million people ticked the box indicating that they considered themselves able to speak Scots, about 28% of the population - and furthermore, because it was the census, they explicitly wished the state to count them as Scots speakers.

Whilst "hurkle-durkle" is a great word, and it would be neat to hear it more in modern Scots conversation, is it really the sort of word that a learner should spend time memorising, if most native Scots writers have refrained from using it?

If you were teaching someone to speak or read Scots as a complete, normal, modern language, you'd probably start with the most common used words - function words like TAE, DAE, YE, OOT, DINNAE, CANNAE.

The word “hurkle-durkle" is not in the top 1,000 most frequently used words in Scots, nor is it in the top 10,000 most frequently used words in Scots, nor is it in the top 100,000 most common words.

Over the past six years I've been pulling together a corpus of 21st century Scots writing, three and a half million words from over 600 modern Scots writers.

Among this 3.5 million words are about 140,000 distinct unique words spellings, and not one writer used the word "hurkle-durkle".

Its "hurkle-durkle", whilst its correct that “is not a word that most people in Scotland are going to know,” this is not because it is a Scots word, its because its an obscure word.

The census reports that 1.7 million people speak or read Scots, this is not a dead language being brought back.

Can social media resurrect the Scots language? Inside the decidedly modern campaign to revitalize a lost language (that some say isn’t truly a language).

I feel the need to comment about this article about the resurgence of the Scots language on social media.

Its a relatively comprehensive roundup of the field, speaking to many Scots social media luminaries, but there's something I feel is a bit off.

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/arti...

Why would such people then freely decide to get into a plane piloted by someone they a) have just fired and b) hate?

Were they not worried that he would simply crash the plane and kill the lot of them?