The Blether Region

Parity: Esteem or Outcome?

2012-02-01T10:49:00.000-08:00

Monday saw the first Culture Questions of 2012 at Stormont, featuring an encounter between the current Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure, Carál Ní Chuilín, and a former incumbent, Gregory Campbell.

"Mr Campbell: When the Minister goes down the route of providing strategies for the Irish language and Ulster-Scots language and heritage, will she ensure that Ulster Scots gets proportionate funding so that we see the strategy fully developed with manifest outcomes for people in the Ulster-Scots community? The issue of disproportionate funding arose throughout direct rule, because Ulster Scots received significantly less than the Irish language for many years. It is only in recent years that that has begun to be redressed.

Ms Ní Chuilín: I thank the Member for his question. I am sure that, if he speaks to people from the Ulster-Scots community, he will find that I have been nothing but fair in the way that I have dealt with everyone, particularly on the issue of language, culture and heritage.

I am not going to have one section of the community receiving funding above and beyond what is proportionate and what it is entitled to, regardless of what was there in the recent or distant past. As I said in my previous answer, I anticipate that money for those strategies will come not only from my Department but from my ministerial colleagues. The money will be given out proportionally; it will be done fairly and to meet the needs of the community. That is what is important. It is about meeting people's needs rather than those of politicians."

Speaking in the Northern Ireland Assembly on 18 May 2009, Mr. Campbell had described eliminating the "disparity in funding for Irish and Ulster Scots" as "one of my objectives" since taking up the portfolio, something he suggested would be achieved through a reduction in funding for Irish. That policy now appears to be in the process of being reversed. Like Sinn Féin before it, the DUP is now discovering that for a party to be sure of retaining influence on cultural policy, DCAL must be among its first choices during the d'Hondt procedure.

Electing to Remain Silent

2012-01-20T11:08:00.000-08:00

The Blether Region can reveal that the Northern Ireland Assembly Commission is in the process of agreeing a language policy that does little more than copperfasten its existing discriminatory arrangements. Regular readers will know that Stormont already pays for simultaneous translation for the benefit of the Speaker but refuses to extend the service to ordinary MLAs at the cost of a pair of headsets. The result has been that elected representatives exercising their right to use Irish in the Chamber have only half the time available to English-speaking colleagues — the rest being required for a wholly superfluous consecutive translation.

Commenting on the draft, SDLP spokesman Dominic Bradley complained that "The Assembly Commission's policy totally ignores the fact that Irish is the second most frequently used language in the Assembly chamber and shows little vision around the development of services through the Irish language. In the view of the SDLP the policy falls below the standards flowing from the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, the Belfast Agreement 1998, the St Andrews Agreement 2006, and Human Rights legislation."

Last year Mr. Bradley was himself ejected from the Chamber for perceived tardiness in furnishing just such a pointless translation.

In October 2011 Holywood Irish Society submitted a Freedom of Information request asking whether the Office of the Speaker had "considered the potential for indirect discrimination against groups listed in section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 of requiring Members to translate what they have just said".

That query has yet to receive an answer.

National Bankruptcy

2012-01-17T09:42:00.000-08:00

Further to the ongoing controversy regarding the requirement that Stormont MLAs provide a consecutive translation of what they say in Irish despite the employment of a full-time Assembly interpreter, it appears that the issue is exercising DUP former Culture Minister Gregory Campbell.

"Mr Campbell: On a point of order, Mr Speaker. On a number of occasions, I understand, issues have been raised with you regarding the use of language in the Chamber. On this occasion, I ask you to review the use of language in statements by Ministers. The protocol has been well enough established by the Assembly regarding the use of a language other than English: if another language is used, whether it be Irish, German, Spanish, Portuguese or the language of any other bankrupt nation, what is said should be translated into English. However, the statement by the Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development that will be heard shortly and is already in tabulated form for Members, uses Irish at its start and end but with no English translation provided.

Mr Speaker: Order. The Member is quite right to say that Members have raised the matter with me on a number of occasions. I have continually said to all Members, especially to those who have raised the issue with me, and I say again now to Mr Campbell that, irrespective of the language that Members choose to use, even in ministerial statements, it is important that they then translate into English. I have continually said that, because it is important that it be done. I am not saying that Members should not speak in whatever language they want; it is understandable for them to do that. However, please understand, whether it be ministerial statements or any Member speaking in the House, Members should, as far as possible, then translate into English. That has always been very clear to me as Speaker and, hopefully, to the whole House as well.

Mr McCarthy: Further to that point of order, this is our first day here in the new year, and I am absolutely disgusted to hear that that is all that Gregory Campbell, a man of long experience, has to worry about: which language we speak. That is a disgrace —

Mr Speaker: Order. That is not a point of order. Members know that this is a sensitive issue. [Interruption.] Order. It is a sensitive issue, and I allow Members to raise issues that are sensitive to them and to the House. I think that it is very simple: Members should just translate whatever they say in another language into English. That would be simpler for everybody. Let us move on, please."

Interestingly, when the Minister got as far as reading out her statement, it transpired that the only Irish used was "Go raibh maith agat, a Cheann Comhairle. Tá fáilte romhaibh.", followed by its English equivalent "Thank you, Mr Speaker. I welcome Members to the House". Did Ms O'Neill bow to Unionist pressure and cut the Irish, or was Mr. Campbell, who apparently believes that Germany is a "bankrupt nation", attempting to make a general political statement in less than relevant circumstances?

A League of Their Own

2011-12-13T10:49:00.000-08:00

Yesterday saw the last Culture AQOs of the year at the Northern Ireland Assembly, with questions on both Ulster Scots and Irish under discussion.

The former, which asked if there would be an Ulster-Scots equivalent to the Líofa campaign to promote acquisition of Irish, elicited a somewhat depressing answer from the Minister, Carál Ní Chuilín.

"I am in discussions with the Ulster-Scots Agency about bringing forward a Líofa-type event, although it will be about heritage and culture rather than language. Those discussions are ongoing. It is really important that whatever is forwarded for sponsorship by my Department has consensus and is a response to community need rather than just a response to something that was done for the Irish language, as it may not work for the Ulster-Scots community. I look forward to seeing those proposals early in the new year."

Of course, we all know that the lack of autonomy evident in Ulster-Scots aping of Irish-language initiatives has been problematic from a dialect-maintenance perspective. But does that really mean that the language element should be excised entirely? The campaign outlined by the Minister, which no doubt originated with the Agency board, might even do more damage, since it could descend into the meaningless political shibboleth of self-designation as an "Ulster-Scot".

The Minister also confirmed that there will be a further round of consultation on a revived Irish Language Bill, as well as separate strategies for Irish and Ulster Scots.

Her answer to Dominic Bradley's request for detail could be seen as rather patronising:

"In all seriousness, I am sure that the Member does not expect me to outline the full proposals during a two-minute question. The proposals for the Irish language Act deserve much more time than that. However, as I said to the Member in a previous Question Time, I am happy to meet him or any other Member on this issue. I believe that the Member is sincere about wanting a robust Irish language Act that is based on rights."

It should be obvious to all that Mr. Bradley is "sincere" about Irish for the simple reason he has learnt it — and was recently put out of the Chamber for the crime of using it to an unacceptable degree. Carál Ní Chuilín, on the other hand, is still in the process of making her speech as Gaelic as her name. Moreover, friends of the Blether Region recently heard a member of her party express understanding for Roy Beggs's cavalier treatment of Mr. Bradley.

While it is true that we don't know if a more robust attitude on the part of Sinn Féin to the discriminatory requirement for consecutive translation in the Chamber would have much effect, part of the reason that we don't know is that we have not yet seen it.

And to you!

2011-12-05T12:24:00.000-08:00

UTV reports on the ructions at Belfast City Hall over an Irish-language sign reading "Nollaig Shona Duit", or "Merry Christmas to You".

In this instance, it is probably difficult to divorce Unionists' extreme reaction from the previous week's heated row over the Lord Mayor's reluctance to present a Duke of Edinburgh award to a teenage Army cadet. The Blether Region would have had no problem with the cadet, but might well have balked at appearing to endorse the unproductive xenophobe in whose honour the award was named.

Be that as it may, statements by one councillor, the UUP's David Browne, merit comment:

"I look at the language in the same way as I look at Ulster Scots. It's a foreign language as such like French, German or whatever and if people want to learn how to speak it or want to practice [sic] it — they should pay for it."

In fact, the sign was donated by the Cultúrlann on the Falls Road and represents zero outlay for city ratepayers. Irish-language campaigners have been assiduous in addressing arguments against public use of Irish — something also seen, for example, in the now-shelved plans to have bilingual road signs only in areas where a majority of people support them. The result has of course been to make those who continue to oppose such initiatives look even more unreasonable.

The councillor's comments on Ulster Scots are interesting. Notwithstanding the fact that many people have a genuine interest in the dialect, as a political tool part of its attraction has been its potential to block progress for Irish. Now, it seems, Scots is a "foreign language" — and those many Unionists in County Antrim and elsewhere who speak it presumably foreigners.

UTV further reports that Councillor Browne also termed Irish "gobbledegook". According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word refers to "official, professional, or pretentious verbiage or jargon". Was this a wry comment on the public sector's relationship with Ireland's Celtic tongue? Probably not: it is much more likely that what he meant to say was "gibberish".

The Blether Region has complete understanding for Councillor Browne's wish to concentrate on the lingua franca before attempting Irish or Scots, but need he really enforce that on the rest of us?

Where There's a Will

2011-11-21T12:25:00.000-08:00

In the light of the ongoing refusal on the part of the Northern Ireland Assembly to extend its existing simultaneous translation service to ordinary Members, the Blether Region has thought of a cunning plan. Documentation provided by the Assembly in response to a Freedom of Information request by Holywood Irish Society confirms that the major cost involved is staffing. The additional outlay to provide headsets for Members would be relatively small and non-recurrent. Any moderately wealthy individual could offer to cover it, either in person or through a bequest. Given that there is no possibility of the Assembly Business Committee deciding to extend the service unless it is forced to do so, there would of course be no chance of anyone having to go as far as to pay for it. But, by a process of elimination, it might shed some light on the real reasons behind the Business Committee's refusal.

A Speaker's Tale

2011-11-21T12:19:00.000-08:00

The website of Holywood Irish Society carries a response to a recent Freedom of Information request directed at the Northern Ireland Assembly. Readers will recall that the refusal to extend an existing simultaneous translation facility from the Speaker and Clerk to ordinary Members has been a fraught issue at Stormont for many years. Last month one Member, Dominic Bradley, was even banned from being called to speak for a week after he took too long to provide the consecutive translation required by the Deputy Speaker.

The response and papers supplied by the Assembly make for interesting reading. As the Blether Region suspected, there is no actual rule that says a consecutive translation is required — instead, the Assembly justifies the requirement on the basis of "Rulings, Convention and Practice" as distilled in the "Northern Ireland Assembly Companion".

The bizarre state of affairs that the Assembly pays for simultaneous translation but does not make it available to Members rests on the fact that the interpretation facility was commissioned by the Speaker, while the decision on extending the benefits to Members depends on a decision of the Business Committee. Although Holyrood also requires consecutive translation, that is the case only when no interpreter has been arranged for the language in question (unlike the Assembly, there is no permanent translation service in the Scottish Parliament, since use of Gaelic is much less).

One can infer that the first Speaker of the Assembly, Lord Alderdice, hoped that the Business Committee would indeed approve the extension of the service to Members.

On 20 November 2000 (volume 7 page 201) he stated:

"For Members who wish to have a simultaneous translation, a report showing the costs and other details has been available for over 18 months. It is simply a matter of a proposal to be taken forward by the Business Committee. My ruling is clear: any statements made in a language other than English must be translated fully and accurately."

The last line suggests that the requirement to provide consecutive translation rests essentially on the whim of the Speaker. Likewise, regarding the issue of reasonable adjustment to speaking time in order to allow Members to provide a consecutive translation, the Assembly response states:

"Within their time allocation Members must ensure that any comments that are not in English are fully translated. The Speaker and the Deputy Speakers operate within Standing Orders, rulings and conventions when chairing plenary business. This includes an element of discretion to ensure the smooth flow of business regardless of which language members choose to use."

Does a Speaker or Deputy Speaker therefore have the discretion to allow an Irish-speaking Member longer? What we know for sure is that those choosing to use Irish — overwhelmingly Catholics and Nationalists — have only 50% of the substantive speaking time of those who choose to use English, while use of Irish in the Assembly is probably even less than 50% of what it could be, given the discouraging effect of the requirement for consecutive translation. The question whether the Assembly has considered the potential for indirect discrimination against groups listed in section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 appears not to have been answered in the Assembly's response.

There are some grounds for hope here:

a new Speaker or an existing Deputy Speaker may have the discretion either to end the requirement for consecutive translation or extend the time available to those who choose to use Irish;

there are clear grounds to mount a challenge under section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998 — the legislation that established the Assembly;

although the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages is not justiciable, it has already been argued (albeit unsuccessfully) that another limitation on the use of Irish (in courts) was incompatible with the Charter;

there are grounds for a challenge under the Human Rights Act 1998. In particular, simultaneous interpretation has been a fact for many years at Stormont, and the failure to extend the service to Members with its attendant indirect discrimination could be viewed as perverse (particularly given the relative cost factors concerned). Furthermore, it is clearly unsatisfactory that the realisation of a benefit (and perhaps a right) for individual Irish-speaking Members should rest on, and be construed as, a corporate decision by a largely English-speaking Business Committee to avail itself of a service;

demographic change may play a role. Northern Ireland will almost certainly have a Catholic majority in the medium term. Although Unionists have argued that a substantial number of Catholics would opt to remain in the UK if asked at a referendum, even if that is true, we do know that they have hitherto failed to vote for Unionist parties in any substantial numbers. The Blether Region is unaware under what arrangements the Business Committee functions, but it is likely that at some point Unionists will either lose their majority or, as part of a strategy to retain it, be forced to modify their positions on issues such as that discussed here.

Parallel Lives?

2011-11-18T11:24:00.000-08:00

The Grecian halls of Stormont were abuzz with talk of the new Programme for Government yesterday. Amid the myriad policies discussed — and the considerable relief evident that a programme of any kind has at last been negotiated — the Blether Region was struck by a misinterpretation of the document on the part of Peter Robinson.

The First Minister stated:

"Consistent with the Hillsborough agreement, the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure will bring forward a strategy for the Irish language and Ulster Scots. We look forward to seeing those proposals. I hope that both of those languages can be developed in a way that is apart from political rancour."

Slugger O'Toole's Mick Fealty commented positively on that, apparently taking Mr. Robinson's synopsis at face value. However, a single strategy for Irish and Ulster Scots was in fact the policy of the previous DUP Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Nelson McCausland — one that was roundly criticised in the Committee of Experts' report on the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. The current policy outlined in the draft Programme for Government is for two distinct strategies, one for Irish and one for "Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture". The Hillsborough agreement cited by Mr. Robinson makes no explicit reference to matters linguistic, although it does mention outstanding issues from the St. Andrews agreement (which, as we all know, mentions not an Irish-language strategy but an Act).

The two-strategy approach means that progress on Irish will no longer be held back by the hirplin prick-ma-denty of Ulster Scots, which is good news. However, the inclusion of "heritage and culture" may unfortunately mean that money will continue to be siphoned off from genuine Scots-language initiatives and spent on other projects; and on past form many of those will have a negative effect on the local dialect's ability to garner the Catholic and liberal Unionist support necessary to ensure its survival.

Gaoltacht Irish?

2011-11-15T09:49:00.000-08:00

In the classic 1961 POW comedy Very Important Person, Scots soldier "Jock" Everett (Stanley Baxter) is contemptuously referred to as an "englisches Schwein" by a bullying Nazi prison guard. The unfortunate German could hardly have predicted the response: Jock angrily retorts that he is a "schottisches Schwein".

Almost exactly 50 years later, controversy has broken out about Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford's plans to remove Prison Service emblems. Sole TUV MLA Jim Allister has stated, no doubt correctly, that many Unionists would be "appalled", while First Minister Peter Robinson has even threatened to resign.

The Blether Region is slightly in favour of Mr. Ford's moves towards neutral political symbolism. Why only slightly? Because, as we have seen, its flip side is the Alliance Party's doctrinaire and paternalistic refusal — decades after Wales and Scotland bit the bullet — to countenance bilingual signage, either everywhere, in line with derivation, or, as a compromise, only in those areas where a substantial majority of people have shown themselves to be in favour.

Indeed, the Blether Region is perplexed at the ritualised nonsense surrounding Derry/Londonderry. Surely for cultural nationalists the choice should be between "Doire" and "Doire Cholm Cille".

In that spirit, here's to the inclusion of Irish-langugage signs in the prisons of A Soilse Banríon Ríocht Aontaithe na Breataine Móire agus Thuaisceart Éireann — a compromise that should (in an ideal world) please Unionists and Nationalists alike, even if it displeases Mr. Ford.

Slanging Matches

2011-11-15T09:46:00.000-08:00

The Scotsman reports on a forthcoming updated edition of the Concise Scots Dictionary (a distilled version of the SND and DOST with the citation texts removed). What leaps out at one is the popular conflation of the terms "dialect" and "slang", something particularly noticeable in the appended comments.

And yet, as is clear from the article, it is the actual sociolinguistic status of Scots that has brought that situation about.

Drumming Up Support

2011-11-15T09:41:00.000-08:00

Friends of the Blether Region recently overheard a Loyalist musician comment on the Ulster-Scots Agency funding that his band had secured for musical tuition. As it happened, the tutors were themselves drawn from the band in question, and, if any formal tuition actually took place, it is safe to say that it would have happened anyway. Band members could not believe their good luck at their £1,600 windfall. Ascertaining how often tutors are members of the same band would of course make for an interesting Assembly Question.

Working out what such funding, musical or otherwise, has to do with Scots as a language variety is a matter that might not be so easily resolved.

Something Missing?

2011-11-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

John Dallat of the SDLP has asked an interesting question of the Assembly Commission, "how many times Ulster-Scots was spoken in Assembly plenary sessions over the last twelve months; and to detail the cost of translation for this period."

The Blether Region may be mistaken, but there seems to be have been very little use of Ulster Scots at all in the Assembly since the departure of the redoubtable Jim Shannon for the Mother of Parliaments in mid-2010. Like the simultaneous translation facility for Irish, that for the Ulster variety of Scots is available only to the Speaker and the Clerk. However, unlike Irish, Ulster Scots has probably never been used in the Assembly to an extent that would justify the service, even when both Mr. Shannon and Ian Adamson were Members. Moreover, long before Mr. Shannon's departure, he had abandoned maximally differentiated New Ulster Scots in favour of thin dialect arguably requiring no translation at all.

The service was originally introduced after Ian Paisley Jr., another MLA who has now opted for Westminster, asked then Speaker Lord Alderdice if it might not be discriminatory to have interpretation for Irish but not for Ulster Scots. As ordinary MLAs never got to hear the Irish translation anyway, the merit of Mr. Paisley's argument may have been somewhat moot. Be that as it may, the uncomfortable truth is that having someone on standby for Ulster-Scots simultaneous translation may actually cost more than providing the real existierender service for Irish, since Ulster-Scots translators are not salaried employees but feed consultants working for a generous daily rate.

MSPs in Scotland are required to give prior notice when they use Gaelic to enable the Parliament to arrange simultaneous translation. If there is no Gaelic, no translator is needed, and there is no cost. That stands in marked contrast to the practice of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which pays for full-time simultaneous translation for two varieties but does not let Members listen to the English version of either.

What would the best system for Stormont be? There is no doubt that knowledge of Irish is proportionately much more widespread than knowledge of Gaelic in Scotland, and it would therefore be sensible to retain simultaneous translation for it, which should of course be extended to ordinary Members.

The case of Ulster Scots is less clear. When Scots is used at Holyrood, simultaneous translation is considered unnecessary, and the original Scots text of the speech is incorporated into the Official Report. How to treat Scots is of course an inherently political question, and there is no reason not to have oral and written translation where there is sufficient political demand. Whether it is a sensible use of public resources to have someone on standby all the time is another matter, however, and one that the Assembly has perhaps waited too long to address.

Common Romance

2011-10-31T11:45:00.000-07:00

Data supplied in answer to an Assembly Question last week appear to back up last month's suggestion by the Blether Region that Interlingua should be introduced to controlled secondaries as an alternative to more traditional modern foreign languages. The table supplied in answer to AQW 3578/11-15 shows a steep decline in the number of pupils studying a language to GCSE level since the Labour Government abolished the requirement that they do so back in 2004. Indeed, the figures from 2001 to 2009 show constant decline, from 17,472 to 11,574 total entries, respectively. However, at the same time, there has been a rise in the number of those achieving A* to C grades, from 68.4% to 80.4%. Moreover, the number of those going on to sit a modern foreign language at A Level has remained remarkably constant, with almost identical numbers sitting the exam in 2001 and 2009.

Needless to say, the collapse in the number of those studying languages to GCSE and the apparently improved grades of those who still do so may well be related phenomena. A large cohort of pupils who do not derive great benefit from conventional language teaching have been removed from the statistics, thus artificially boosting the percentages. Indeed, smaller, higher-ability classes at GCSE level may even have had an effect on the statistics for A Level passes, which have also improved.

Effectively, those not gifted linguistically have been disenfranchised twice: first by the requirement that they study a modern foreign language to GCSE level; and secondly by the expectation that they not have any kind of language instruction at all beyond Key Stage 3. In England, the signs are that the coalition Government will reintroduce the language requirement. However, that would amount to resiling from the current unsatisfactory policy in favour of its equally unsatisfactory and discredited predecessor.

Common sense suggests that academically and linguistically gifted pupils — those who already master the communicative element of language learning — should concentrate on accuracy in speech and writing while those not so gifted should concentrate on communication alone. And one need only consult a map of the distribution of Romance varieties to see that Interlingua can facilitate communication with native speakers of foreign languages like nothing else.

Northern Ireland is the largest region in these islands to have retained a grammar-school system. While that system may be failing in other ways, it does provide fertile ground for a reform of the type suggested.

We've Come a Long Way

2011-10-26T10:30:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that Coláiste Feirste has won an important battle in its struggle to force the Department of Education to fund transport to the school from areas outside Belfast with Irish-language primaries but no equivalent provision at post-primary level.

Granting a full judicial review, Mr. Justice Treacy argued that the Department had "failed to comply with a duty under the Education (Northern Ireland) Order 1998 to provide suitable transport to encourage Irish education.", adding that "I do not accept the respondent's contention that this duty is merely aspirational."

The "aspirational" argument is of course relevant to many topics involving minority languages, from the access to TG4 in Northern Ireland first promised in 1998 to the promotion of Scots in Scotland, once memorably termed "voluntarism masquerading as policy" by the academic Robert McColl Millar.

Orchestral Manoeuvres?

2011-10-24T12:16:00.000-07:00

A written answer to an Assembly Question details every project to have received funding from the Ulster-Scots Agency over the past three years.

The Blether Region will leave it to readers what to make of it ...

Gaeilgeoirí Uladh

2011-10-20T11:19:00.000-07:00

Questions to the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure took place on Tuesday. Staff and stakeholders of the Northern Ireland Irish-language groups threatened with closure under Foras na Gaeilge's proposed new funding arrangements have grounds for cautious optimism in the light of the extended consultation period agreed at the recent North/South Ministerial Council meeting in Armagh. Asked about her approach to the way in which the proposals are being implemented, Minister Ní Chuilín stated:

"The direct answer to the Member's question is that I was not happy with the consultation. To that end, at the North/South sectoral meeting, Jimmy Deenihan and I announced that there will be a new consultation in November that needs to be fully inclusive. The core-funded Irish language bodies, like any other group in the community, are arguing for services and facilities for the constituents and people that they represent. The way in which the details of those schemes were brought forward almost made it impossible for people to consult. To that end, we have agreed a 12-week consultation starting in November."

And it was good to see Dominic Bradley back in the House and speaking Irish too.

Alba Nuadh

2011-10-20T11:13:00.000-07:00

The Herald reports that, for the first time, the bard of Am Mòd Nàiseanta is to be a poet from outwith Scotland. Lewis McKinnon hails from Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia, which has retained a Gaelic-speaking minority against the odds, even preserving some dialectal features now extinct in Scotland itself. Despite the Scottish or Irish origins of most Nova Scotians, it is a sad fact that today considerably more French than Gaelic is spoken in the province — the reason being, to put it bluntly, that French-speakers are more willing to stick up for themselves than the Gaels.

The 2006 Canadian census reports 799 mother-tongue speakers of Gaelic in Nova Scotia, or 0.1% of the population, putting it in thirteenth place, behind such languages as Dutch, Greek and Korean.

Once again, however, a tender Gaelic plant has brought forth flowers, and with nurture will do so again.

On a more strategic note, a paragraph appended to the article reads as follows:

"The statutory development body Bord na Gàidhlig is to launch a campaign to promote Gaelic-medium education (GME) and learning next month to meet the aspiration in the National Gaelic Language Plan of doubling the number of children enrolling in P1 GME."

Good news, but we're not out of the woods yet.

Molloy and the Unnameable

2011-10-13T11:21:00.000-07:00

Staying on the subject of the SDLP's Dominic Bradley being banned from speaking in the Assembly for a week for asking a question in Irish without providing an English translation (the strange case of a representative being democratically elected by voters only to be silenced for non-compliance with a non-rule), the Blether Region has discovered that an official Assembly leaflet makes the same unsubstantiated claim about a supposed obligation to translate into English anything said in Irish.

"If called, a Member may speak in the language of his or her choice, but must provide a translation if speaking in a language other than English."

Given that there appears to be no Standing Order to that effect, the question arises of whether this constitutes disinformation. Incidentally, a Liberal-Democrat blog supports the Blether Region's reading of events — and going by its posting of the original Hansard transcript, Dominic Bradley himself imagines that a translation must be provided. There certainly appears to be a good deal of confusion on the question.

Another issue is that, according to the BBC's Mark Devenport, in three years' time or so the Speaker of the Assembly, William Hay, will be stepping down in favour of Sinn Féin's Francie Molloy, who at that time will become the main presence in the Chair — and the person responsible for taking action against recalcitrant Members. Will he continue with the policy of silencing democratically elected representatives who choose to exercise their legal right to speak in a language of their choice? And will he continue to ask Members to provide translations in the absence of any legal basis for the requirement? The Blether Region hopes not.

Goodwill to All Men

2011-10-13T11:16:00.000-07:00

The News Letter reports that a motion from Nationalist members of Belfast City Council in favour of Irish-language Christmas banners has been rejected by 25 votes to 20. Although the initial Sinn Féin proposal only concerned Irish, after an SDLP amendment the plan would also have seen Ulster Scots included. Máirtín Ó Muilleoir's take on events is here.

Apart from the fact that, once again, Unionists have shown their antipathy towards Irish to be greater than their love of Ulster Scots, one is struck by the sheer range of instances where a public presence for the Irish language has now been rejected. The tale is also remarkable for the stance of the Alliance Party, which has sided with the Unionists and in the process underlined Northern Ireland's status as "a place apart". It is, after all, hard to imagine fellow liberals in Scotland, with their strong Highland representation (at least at Westminster) taking a similar hardline attitude towards Scottish Gaelic. Neither, of course, would such a denial of difference be imaginable in bilingual Wales.

The Blether Region has previously reported on the Alliance Party's rejection of DRD proposals for bilingual road signs. Afterwards a Holywood Irish-speaker had a meeting with a local Alliance Party politician on the issue that ended with his admitting that his party's reaction was wrong. However, this latest episode, dealing as it does with signs that are not transactional but intentionally symbolic, appears to be a further step away from feeling able to acknowledge and celebrate diversity.

The dilemma for Alliance, as it extends its support from its traditional base of public employees in mixed marriages around the Belfast commuter belt and picks up votes from the floundering UUP, is that its constitutional and cultural centre of gravity shifts in the process. Whether that change precedes or follows on from such increased support is open to speculation, but the end result may well be that the difference between Alliance and the post-St. Andrews DUP, like that between UUP and DUP before it, ends up being one of class rather than substance.

A Face in the Crowd

2011-10-11T09:34:00.000-07:00

The Blether Region spotted Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure Carál Ní Chuilín at Sunday's annual Cearta agus Ceiliúradh festivities, which took place in St. George's Market in Belfast. The event was intended on the one hand as a demonstration in favour of bringing language legislation in Northern Ireland into line with that in force in Scotland, Wales and the Republic and on the other as a celebration of the strength of Irish at a community level.

Recently Foras na Gaeilge has come in for sustained criticism regarding its plans to end core funding and disqualify NI-only organisations from applying for project-specific funds, with the result that groups such as the cross-community language organisation Ultach Trust and the organisers of Cearta agus Ceiliúradh, Pobal, may soon be forced to shut up shop.

Tomorrow Irish-language organisations will be demonstrating outside the North/South Ministerial Council meeting in Armagh, at which Minister Ní Chuilín is expected to rubber-stamp Foras na Gaeilge's proposals. If she does, Sunday's celebrations may turn out to be the last such event organised by Pobal. Quite apart from the fact that the organisation may soon cease to exist, if the plans are allowed to proceed, the Irish language may have very little to celebrate in the North this time next year.

Gagged for Being a Gael

2011-10-11T09:30:00.000-07:00

The Belfast Telegraph reports that the SDLP's Dominic Bradley has had Assembly speaking rights withdrawn for a week after he refused an order by Deputy Speaker Roy Beggs to sit down for having the temerity to ask a question in Irish. The Speaker himself, the UUP's William Hay, then "took up the issue and wrote directly to Mr Bradley, informing him he will not be called on to speak again for the rest of this week unless he apologises."

The newspaper incorrectly maintains that Members are required to translate into English anything said in Irish. In fact any translations are offered as a courtesy — with the result that those who exercise their right to use Irish have only half the time available to anglophone Members. Assembly Standing Order 78 states only that "Members may speak in the language of their choice."

The case highlights two issues: the fact that Unionist prejudice towards Irish has been carried over into what is the ostensibly neutral office of the Chair; and the deficient knowledge of Standing Orders exhibited not only by a newspaper but by the Speaker of the House and one of his Deputies. Even if one takes the generous view that Mr. Hay's sanction was as a result of Mr. Bradley's challenge rather than the crime of speaking Irish without offering a translation, the fact remains that it was Mr. Bradley rather than Mr. Beggs who correctly interpreted the Standing Orders of the Assembly.

Back in November 2009, the Blether Region reported on a similar incident, also involving Mr. Bradley. It seems that there has been no progress since. The expense of retaining simultaneous interpreters for the sole benefit of the Chair and Clerk continues, with no account being taken of the translation needs of ordinary Members. Meanwhile, those who speak Irish in the Chamber are summarily gagged in contempt of the legal protections offered by Standing Orders.

The truth is that unwritten conventions simply muddy the waters, breeding ignorance and reinforcing prejudice. Surely it is now time to withdraw this "courtesy" entirely.

School for Scandal

2011-10-06T11:24:00.000-07:00

Although the subject of this blog is language in Northern Ireland rather than Scotland, the Blether Region feels compelled to comment on a story in today's Scotsman that quite outrageously singles out the proposed conversion of a derelict public building in Edinburgh to a Gaelic-medium school for an arbitrary dose of fiscal rectitude (what Northern Ireland's Divine Comedy, in a more romantic vein, once referred to as the "certainty of chance"). This despite the rather obvious fact that "costs soared as a result of vandalism and roof and water damage to the empty building" rather than because of the verb coming first in the sentence.

While historically Gaelic (or Middle Irish, to be precise) was at one time the language of almost everywhere in Scotland, the slowness of the language's decline and the historical enmity between Highland and Lowland have meant that Gaelic-speakers are very often viewed as an ethnic minority — and, in a Lowland context, an immigrant one at that. All of which renders the Scotsman's decision to set up an online poll on whether Holyrood should "stump up the cash for the city's new Gaelic school" a somewhat doubtful enterprise.

By coincidence, the Guardian reported this week that the partner of Liberal-Democrat MP Chris Huhne is to sue the Daily Mail for "inciting users of its website to be abusive" to her.

Is the Blether Region alone in thinking that the Scotsman is similarly intent on whipping up a tide of righteous indignation, this time against an entire community? Lawyers for Chris Huhne's partner have argued that all 58 of the readers' comments appended to the Daily Mail article in question were "abusive in character". Comments on the Scotsman article (after moderation) included "Meheedrum muhoodrum ... Nae garlic speakers in Leith!" and "Taxpayers money shouldnt be used to create separation and division". With dreary predictability, there was also an attempt to link the project to the question of state support for Catholic schools.

Indeed, sometimes Scotland can be a delightful place — but only when compared with Northern Ireland, and even then the charm Vorsprung can vary quite considerably in its degree.

Castle in the Air?

2011-10-06T11:19:00.000-07:00

A question scheduled for written answer on 18 October asks the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure "to provide details of the proposed re-classification of £105,000 from resources to the capital budget in the October Monitoring Round for the Ministerial Advisory Group on the development of an Ulster-Scots Academy Strategy."

An interesting parallel occurs to the Blether Region. To quote the veteran Labour politician and ardent opponent of Scottish self-government Tam Dalyell:

"In 1976, when Harold Wilson demitted and Jim Callaghan became prime minister and wanted [the hitherto Eurosceptic] Barbara [Castle] out of his cabinet, it was decided as a sort of consolation prize that she should be the leader of the first Labour delegation to the elected European Parliament," Mr Dalyell said.

"Not within months, but within weeks, she was wanting more powers for the parliament. Why? Because she was bloody well there."

For the redoubtable Mr. Dalyell, this warning from history finds an eery echo in present-day desires for the Scottish Parliament to enjoy an enhanced range of competences (despite the fact that they reflect the overwhelming popular will rather than merely that of those who happen to find themselves elected). Be that as it may, having previously referred to the Ministerial Advisory Group as a "remedial" measure, the Blether Region is struck by this embryonic similarity with the property empire of the Ulster-Scots Agency — to whose failures it was in part conceived as an antidote.

Back to School

2011-09-30T11:59:00.000-07:00

The modern development of international auxiliary languages, which began with Volapük back in 1879, has gone through various stages, with the fashion for constructed languages moving away from highly inflected case-heavy varieties towards simpler ones such as Esperanto (1887), and then to more naturalistic creations such as Giuseppe Peano's Latino Sine Flexione (1903) and Edgar de Wahl's Occidental (1922). Arguably the end-point in the process was reached in 1951 with the publication by the International Auxiliary Language Association of Interlingua, which might almost have been termed "Common Romance". Of course, Interlingua is best suited to the needs of Western Europe and its former colonies. Speakers of Asian languages, or even Finno-Ugric ones, may still find Esperanto easier.

That said, Interlingua has certain advantages that Esperanto cannot offer. One is that many people can read it without any prior study — anyone who is a native speaker of a modern Romance language, and any English-speaker who has a modest smattering of such a language, or of Latin. One of the original uses for which Interlingua was promoted was as a language of abstracts at medical conferences (doctors, with their firm grounding in Latinate technical terms, already having a large enough Romance vocabulary to understand it).

But what use could Interlingua ever be to us? Well, one possible context is bilingual tourism websites. Such sites cannot be translated into the language of every possible visitor to these shores, but if they were in English (for northern Europeans) and Interlingua (for those to the south), they would be likely to find a wide readership.

Another possible use is in schools. Earlier this year the Blether Region discussed the inability of most school-leavers, after many hundreds of hours of language tuition, to hold a natural and unscripted conversation in any language in which they were not already native when they began (with the possible exception of Irish, which has considerable social support and accessible opportunities for immersion).

For controlled schools in Northern Ireland, a region which has retained its grammar schools and, regardless of what happens with the 11-plus, looks set to do so in future, a sensible step would be to teach compulsory Interlingua in secondaries (along with one or two relatively easy elective languages such as Spanish and Dutch), with the grammars concentrating on German, Latin, Greek, Chinese and, if we are to be brutally honest, French. This would enable those at the grammars, if they wished, to go on to study those subjects at a tertiary level, while those learning Interlingua would be able to order a beer on holiday. If the latter group went on to do A-levels, they would not be excluded from reading other Romance languages at university either. All that would be necessary for that would be for third-level institutions to introduce a conversion course; on a less positive note, QUB has already adapted to schools' wishes by dumping German, after the schools failed to produce enough candidates. Of course, those proficient in Interlingua would also be in an enviable position if they wanted to do a crash GCSE in a Latinate tongue in their final year at school.

You may find the above a utopian and obscure suggestion, but at least it keeps the learning of languages compulsory. It is also likely to produce far better results.

On Carál's Watch?

2011-09-16T06:16:00.000-07:00

Next Thursday the Stormont Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure will hear a last-ditch plea by Irish-language organisations that they retain the core funding currently accorded them by Foras na Gaeilge. The Language Body's rationalisation plans have previously been criticised for not taking account of the different legislative context in the North. Indeed, by ending the funding given to — and thereby effectively closing — groups such as Ultach Trust, which tackles misunderstanding by promoting Irish on a cross-community basis, and Pobal, which campaigns for legislative protections to be brought into line with those elsewhere, thus removing the language from the political sphere, there is a very real danger that convergence in the way envisaged will never occur.

There is still a chance for the policy to be changed, however, and we can only hope that Committee Members use what influence they have to do so.

"Strife, Jim, but not as we know it."

2011-09-05T11:11:00.000-07:00

The Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Carál Ní Chuilín, has launched a campaign to create 1,000 more Irish-speakers by 2015.

Adopting a more on-the-ground approach to promoting the language seems like a sensible expedient given the impasse on bringing legislative protections into line with those afforded Celtic languages in Great Britain (not to mention the Irish language in the Republic). One high-profile figure won over to the new campaign — in what seems like a canny move for both sides — is PSNI Deputy Chief Constable Judith Gillespie.

Of course, such a softening of boundaries may shake the odd preconception — and spook those who depend on an absence of normality for their bread and butter. The new initiative has brought a predictable response from the TUV's Jim Allister, who seems to realise neither that bilingualism is a policy grounded in tolerance (and therefore always about the minority) nor that learning and promoting Irish, far from being a complex and labour-intensive means of riling Unionists, may actually reflect a core belief of the language's supporters. On this occasion Mr. Allister's language is particularly bellicose, and after 15 years of relative peace one must doubt its appropriateness.

In November 2009 the TUV was forced to apologise for branding Irish a "leprechaun language".

Belmont

2011-08-16T11:20:00.000-07:00

Ian Adamson has an interesting posting about where the putative Ulster-Scots Academy should be situated, with the former Lord Mayor and long-time advocate of Ulster Scots favouring Belmont Tower in his beloved Victoria ward of East Belfast. The site would of course be easily accessible for those living in Belfast, but also for residents of Scots-speaking parts of Down (it is only a minute or two away from the Upper Newtownards Road).

Belmont would also be a fitting district for a centre of literary and linguistic study, since it takes its name from the former Belmont House, now the site of Campbell College. Ultimately, of course, the name must be a reference to Belmont the home of Portia in Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice. Although definitely situated somewhere on the Italian mainland, its precise identity has been the subject of enduring debate.

Born on a Monday?

2011-08-08T10:45:00.000-07:00

Earlier this year the Blether Region reported on the Royal White Order of King Solomon, a recently established secretive organisation whose supporters are expected to pay substantial sums for apparently paltry benefits. Members of the organisation, whose uniform has been compared in the Daily Star with that of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, are instructed to address each other as "Sir Knight".

"Sir Knight" is also the form of address for members of the Royal Black Preceptory, once memorably described to the Blether Region as an organisation for Orangemen who show signs of interest in religion. However, it might be wrong to read too much into that, since it is also the title used when addressing the Catholic Rotarians of the Knights of Columbus.

A more compelling comparison is with the Knights Templar, whose Latin title was Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici, or Poor Fellow-Soldiers of Christ and of the Temple of Solomon. The Templars, who played an important role in the Crusades, were later bloodily suppressed, but have resurfaced from time to time in popular culture, most recently in Dan Brown's 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code.

However, another, less savoury association is with fascism. In Scotland, one of the few countries where the Templars were not persecuted, there was Sìol nan Gàidheal (Seed of the Gael), a neo-fascist organisation expelled from the SNP in the early 1980s whose members, according to the BBC, "used to march around tooled-up and in Highland dress". The group also explicitly references the Templars.

And then there is Anders Behring Breivik, the Norwegian Christian fanatic who recently claimed 77 victims — mainly young people concerned with social justice. Breivik, who was so obsessed with the Templars that he even visited their former staging-post of Malta, chose the Knights' red-cross design for the cover of his 1,500-page manifesto, along with a Latin name — Pauperes commilitones Christi Templique Solomonici.

He also claimed that he was a member of a Knights Templar organisation founded by individuals who shared his racist aims and were ready to use violence to achieve them.

Wikipedia states:

"According to Breivik, the order was established as an "anti-Jihad crusader-organisation" that "fights" against "Islamic suppression" in London in April 2002 by nine men: two Englishmen, a Frenchman, a German, a Dutchman, a Greek, a Russian, a Norwegian, and a Serb. It has between fifteen and eighty "ordinated knights" besides an unknown number of "civilian members", and Breivik expects the order to take political and military control of Western Europe."

One website has reported that Breivik, who was apparently not anti-Semitic, may in fact have been interested in Nordic Israelism.

The Norwegian atrocities have meant that several right-wing commentators approvingly cited by Breivik have had to defend themselves. Is it going too far to compare the Royal White Order of King Solomon with the intellectual milieu that produced him?

The Belfast Telegraph has already reported that Anders Breivik and Johnny Adair shared a friend in the shape of Paul Ray, who blogs under the name Lionheart. Ray lives on Malta and runs an anti-Islam organisation known as the Ancient Order of the Templar Knights. Something of a pattern here.

Part of the problem with the Royal White Order is that its membership is secret. But what if there turned out to be personal connections with the Loyalist paramilitary group Tara, which espoused similar Doomsday and elitist views, and the British-Israel World Federation, which includes a strong current of white supremacism?

What if?

Pooka Pranks

2011-08-04T11:21:00.000-07:00

Among the apparently most objective methods of gauging the health of a language is ranking it in order of Wikipedia articles. In June 2009 a whopping 22% of all articles were in English, with 56% in other Indo-European languages (although the language family in question includes Hindi/Urdu and most other Indian languages, in practice the overwhelming majority of the articles are in European tongues). Indeed, the only non-European language in the top ten was Chinese, and that only by user count as opposed to the number of articles.

There are also versions of Wikipedia available in minority languages (Cheyenne, Manx and Maori), dialectalised varieties (Alemannic, Piedmontese and Low Saxon), and creoles (Haitian and Papiamento), as well as dead languages such as Latin (a living tongue only in Vatican City, where celibacy may render intergenerational transmission somewhat difficult), Old English, Gothic, and Old Church Slavonic (currently in use only as a liturgical language).

Irish has just under 30,000 articles (96 in the rankings), Scottish Gaelic just over 8,000 (111), and Scots just under 7,000 (117). Sensibly, there is no Ulster Scots; a proposal for a Wikipedia Valencià was rejected earlier this year on the basis that Valencian is a dialect of Catalan.

One of the more bizarre aspects to Wikipedia over recent years has been the massive number of articles (almost 120,000 of them) in Volapük, the first modern constructed auxiliary language. Indeed, by article, Volapük is more popular than Hindi, Thai, Greek or Tagalog.

Volapük was invented in 1879-80 by Johann Martin Schleyer, a Catholic priest from what is now Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany. Very popular in its heyday, it was soon displaced by Zamenhof's Esperanto, which was much easier to learn and use. Indeed, at the third Volapük convention held in Paris in 1889, even the tongue's inventor had trouble speaking it, mainly owing to its bewildering array of agglutinative affixes.

When enthusiasts complained about this, and other quirks such as the tongue's complex, German-based case system and the disconcerting effect of excising the letter r from familiar roots, the system's great discoverer, or "Dat(r)uval", took offence and refused all proposals for reform.

While its successor has itself been subject to criticism, albeit considerably less damning — and arguably better systems such as Ido (an offshoot originally named Esperantido) and in particular Interlingua exist — Esperanto's reasonable functionality and critical mass of supporters have meant that it has not been displaced in the same manner. However, its imperfections, and the rival systems thereby engendered, have almost certainly placed a cap on its development. This is of course similar to the case of traditional Scots vs. "Ullans" or "New Ulster Scots"; any linguistic advantage likely to be gained through even sensitive separate development is dwarfed by the loss of utility.

As for Volapük, as a 2007 debate over closing the Wikipedia portal, which has only one contributor, shows, most of its articles are in fact "bot-generated", i.e. the product of machine translation from other Wikipedias. In the event, it was decided to keep it open, a victory for the wilfully obscure eccentric behind it but also for linguistic diversity in general. As such, we can be grateful.

A Side Elevation

2011-07-26T11:41:00.000-07:00

Slugger O'Toole has an interesting discussion about Lee Reynolds, who is to be co-opted to Belfast City Council to replace former DUP councillor Ian Crozier (pictured), recently appointed as chief executive of the Ulster-Scots Agency.

Although in recent years he has been more strongly associated with backroom politics, of the two men Mr. Reynolds has by far the more established interest in Scots, and not only because he hails from the Coleraine area and is a son of the well-known rhymer Charlie.

Mr. Crozier, on the other hand, comes not from the north coast but from north Belfast.

Gaelscéal had the following to say about the new appointee:

"Cé go bhfuil 'staidéar, caomhnú, forbairt agus úsáid Albainis Uladh mar theanga bheo' luaite go sonrach i sainchúram an eagrais, áfach, is mó a dhíríonn obair na Gníomhaireachta ar chultúr ginearálta na hAlbainise — damhsa, ceol agus stair go príomha — seachas ar an chanúint féin. Tá an bhéim sin le feiceáil sa cheapachán is déanaí seo a chuireann duine nach bhfuil líofacht Albainise aige i mbun obair na heagraíochta."

Translation:

"Although the "study, conservation, development and use of Ulster-Scots as a living language" is specifically mentioned in the organisation's remit, however, the Agency's work focuses more on the general culture of Scots — dance, music and history for the most part — instead of on the dialect itself. That emphasis can be seen in this latest appointment, which places a person who is not fluent in Scots in charge of the organisation's work."

In fact the quote "study, conservation, development and use of Ulster-Scots as a living language" comes not from the organisation's legal remit but from its mission statement; the reference to Ulster Scots as "a living language" explicitly contradicts the legislation under which the agency was established, which refers to "Ullans" as a "variety of the Scots language", i.e. a dialect of Scots. Thus, regardless of the status of Scots as a whole, it is always incorrect as a matter of law to refer to "Ullans" as a language in its own right. One might have thought that any CEO worth his salt would bring that simple fact to the board's attention.

For that reason, it is disappointing to see Mr. Crozier cite the status of Ulster Scots under Part II of the European Charter in defence of the rather silly practice of terming it a language. The Ulster-Scots Agency is a cross-border body set up under Irish as well as British law, and the UK Government has no power unilaterally to amend that parallel legislation, which has the status of an international treaty (the European Charter, for all its moral importance, is a non-justiciable list of aspirations).

About time the Ulster-Scots Agency was asked to respect the will of Tithe an Oireachtais.

List Mania

2011-07-21T12:52:00.000-07:00

Again on the BBC website, the Blether Region spotted this list of 50 Americanisms. There's no better guarantee of raising the ire of true-blood Britons — particularly the right-wing variety — than drawing attention to the aberrant linguistic habits of their cousins in the New World, and the article has already attracted over 1,000 comments.

At its best the "Americanisms" discourse can be a source of exquisite satire, as in the repeated use of the word "acreage" in Rev. Glenworthy's creaking monotone towards the end of The Loved One — underlining the number-crunching, hypocritical venality of "spiritual" mid-60s California. More often than not, however, it is the complainants who seem ripe for satire.

Looking through the list, it's difficult not to come to the conclusion that most of the examples are entirely innocuous modernisms rather than linguistic usages that separate those on the two sides of the Atlantic. Others, such as to "wait on", while perhaps not current in London, will be well known to residents of Northern Ireland, aptly illustrating a tendency towards the parochial among those at the centre of things. Indeed, one contributor even takes umbrage at the term "Scotch-Irish", apparently believing, as Queen Victoria did of "lesbianism", that it describes a physical impossibility.

Perhaps it's time the Ulster-Scots Agency sent a delegation to England.

A Site for Sore Eyes

2011-07-21T12:41:00.000-07:00

The BBC has an interesting article dealing with the cost of language errors on websites, which, it is claimed, take a heavy toll in lost sales.

The Blether Region itself can testify to the effect of such worries, having bought cut-price software for educational use from the website http://www.software4students.co.uk/.

Not surprisingly, since the site's offers sound almost too good to be true, many potential customers think that it might be a scam, with one complaining that the website is "littered with grammatical errors and spelling mistakes".

In fact, it's not a scam, although you do have to become a parent to qualify — itself a weighty and irreversible financial decision.

And it's not only spelling mistakes that can affect one's opinion of websites. Some time ago the author of this blog decided to order a bespoke mug bearing a picture taken from an uploaded jpeg file. One of the websites surveyed had a very tempting offer, but unfortunately also sported the slogan "If it ain't from Yorkshire, it's shite". While the Blether Region is an avowed fan of the undoubted queen of English counties, even possessing a book entitled White Rose Garland — and, indeed, has been known to use the odd phrase of similar pithiness in conversation — the lack of seriousness that the slogan implied caused us to take our custom elsewhere.

An area of particular trickiness is, of course, translation. Perhaps the most famous example of its importance was in 1914, when German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, using the diplomatic lingua franca of the day, referred to the 1839 Treaty of London that guaranteed Belgian neutrality as a chiffon de papier, a phrase translated into English as 'scrap of paper'. The resulting fury led to a British declaration of war and the deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of young men. However, that particular translation couldn't have been all that bad, since Google Translate offers the same phrasing today, and some of the alternative meanings of chiffon are probably worse.

Never let anything get in the way of a nice story.

"Will they never learn?"

2011-07-04T10:55:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that the new chief executive of the Ulster-Scots Agency is to be Ian Crozier, a DUP member of Belfast City Council since 2001. Mr. Crozier, who has called for the abolition of the Parades Commission, is on record as saying that "he can understand why hard-line loyalist protesters picketed Cemetery Sunday at Carnmoney graveyard".

As another observer of the third-rate telenovela that is the agency put it to the Blether Region recently, "Will they never learn?"

Those Unemployable Classicists

2011-07-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday saw an illuminating encounter between incoming Sinn Féin Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Carál Ní Chuilín, and the TUV's Jim Allister during ministerial Questions.

The occasion arose when the UUP's Sandra Overend asked the Minister whether she would continue with Nelson McCausland's tactic of pursuing a joint regional languages strategy for Irish and Ulster Scots. Regular readers will know that the result of Mr. McCausland's attempt to introduce real existierende parity between the two speech varieties has been a three-legged race in which progress has (at most) been only as fast as the slower of the two partners. No strategy is yet in place for either.

Ms Overend posed an interesting follow-up question:

"I thank the Minister for her answer. Does she agree that the St Andrews Agreement called for a regional minority language strategy and not solely an Irish language strategy?"

The ministerial response elicited was equally interesting:

"I am clear as to what the St Andrews Agreement means. It is also provided for in the agreement that I can take the strategies separately, and that is what I intend to do."

In fact the text of the agreement reads as follows:

"The Government will introduce an Irish Language Act reflecting on the experience of Wales and Ireland and work with the incoming Executive to enhance and protect the development of the Irish language.

The Government firmly believes in the need to enhance and develop the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture and will support the incoming Executive in taking this forward."

From that one can deduce that it is Westminster rather than Stormont that has promised to introduce an Irish language Act. Indeed, the mention of Wales and Ireland rather than Scotland suggests some fairly strong, rights-based legal protections — probably more than might be expected to get past the Executive veto and cross-community voting of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The situation regarding the language strategies is not quite so clear, since interpretation depends on inference, but it seems reasonable to suggest that a package of measures amounting to a strategy is mandated in each case. Since the Irish language strategy appears intended to dovetail with Westminster legislation, and since the case of Ulster Scots covers not only language but "heritage and culture", it would also seem far more sensible in administrative terms to tackle them separately.

At this point Mr. Allister asked a question:

"No later than this morning, during the corporation tax debate, the Minister's colleague Mr Flanagan regaled the House with the benefits of the English language as an attraction for inward investment. Why, therefore, does the Minister want to waste valuable resources on promoting a language that will disadvantage young people in seeking employment in these hard economic times, instead of better equipping them to be more proficient in English?"

Obviously the TUV Member for North Antrim has some reading to do about the benefits of bilingualism. What is perhaps more telling is that, although he does not name the "language that will disadvantage young people in seeking employment", the Minister automatically, and rightly, assumes that he is referring to Irish rather than Ulster Scots. Since successfully learning a language is a sign of a trained mind, it is difficult to think of a single example — Latin, Hebrew, Swahili, even Volapük — that might make it more difficult for someone to find a job. Unless, that is, one assumes that such people will be discriminated against because of non-linguistic factors and, rather than tackling such discrimination, accepts it as "just the way it is".

Small wonder that the Minister answered:

"I suspect that economic development and well-being are not really what the Member is hinting at. I hope that that has answered whatever sort of question he had."

Ogling Erin

2011-06-23T11:12:00.000-07:00

Last summer the Blether Region was in Armagh City enjoying the sights of Ireland's attractively bijou ecclesiastical capital. In the shadow of its understated grandeur, it was clear that all was not well politically, with fly posters promoting the interests of Republican dissidents and, on a telegraph pole just behind the Anglican cathedral, the letters ONH in the colours of the tricolour.

Now, as most of you will know, ONH stands for Óglaigh na hÉireann or 'Warriors of Ireland' — the official title of the Republic's army and a name that various paramilitary groups have arrogated to themselves over the years. Nowadays the tag is somewhat generously attached to one of the many dissident splinter groups.

Earlier this year there was a flurry of reports about just that group, more than a few of which misspelt said Óglaigh na hÉireann. Of course, Irish-speakers are well used to having their names misspelt in the press, most commonly when pesky accents are dropped or changed into apostrophes as they are in equivalent English versions, or when letters representing mutations at the beginning of proper names are incorrectly capitalised. But that doesn't mean that such thoroughgoing thoughtlessness should not be challenged, and in one major UK newspaper (admittedly with something of a reputation for spelling errors) Óglaigh na hÉireann was given an extra letter. Over and over again.

So it was that the Blether Region sent two e-mails complaining about the incorrect Irish, openly and from a public e-mail address. Eventually the spelling was rectified, but the newspaper didn't see fit to respond to the original e-mails. Although one can speculate as to the reason why, one explanation, probably the most plausible, is that it assumed the Blether Region was a supporter of anti-Agreement Republicans.

That is hardly the case. In fact, this blog shares the view of 99% of the Northern Ireland population that such dissidents should decommission and disappear.

But why should an ostensibly liberal newspaper assume a link between Irish and terror where none exists?

Postscript, 4 July 2011:

It seems as if the Blether Region may have exhibited premature optimism regarding the newspaper's ability to take advice as well as answer e-mails, since the risible "Oghlaigh naEireann" of the linked article demonstrates, if anything, regression.

But I suppose it was the Grauniad ...

The Backroom Boys

2011-06-15T10:42:00.000-07:00

An Assembly research paper presented to the Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure details considerable progress made by the Ulster-Scots Agency in reducing the percentage of its spending on staff and administration costs, the latter apparently including such promotional activities as the handout of Santa hats at rugby matches and publication of the Ulster-Scot, the "chauvinistic and naïve" newspaper fast taking on the character of a bizarre public subsidy to the News Letter with which it is distributed.

In 2007-8 administration costs were a massive 65.17%. In 2008-9 the figure had fallen to 60.1% and a year later to 52.55%. Admittedly, that is still higher than the equivalent proportion for Foras na Gaeilge, which remained remarkably constant in the 42% to 46% range over the period, but it shows just what can be done where there is a will.

In December 2009 the BBC revealed that a DCAL civil servant had been imposed by a "livid" Nelson McCausland to take the organisation in hand, surely one instance where the former DCAL Minister's penchant for micro-management has borne fruit. The Blether Region reported on 9 March of the following year that the agency's 2010 budget envisaged a further reduction in overheads, to 36%.

One figure not contained in the Assembly researcher's report, and which not everyone on the DCAL committee will see as relevant, is the percentage of spending to go on language.

Surely, if that figure is not at least 50% of the combined total for grant and capital expenditure, the agency should not be part of An Foras Teanga.

The News in Scots

2011-06-15T10:32:00.000-07:00

While BBC Scotland has yet to achieve the scale of its Northern Ireland sister organisation's web offering, it is obviously following fast in its footsteps. A prime example is this short snippet of Catriona Shearer reading the news in Scots. Of course, this isn't the first time that the like has been attempted: Mary Marquis did the same thing at rather greater length in the detailed 1986 documentary series The Story of English. But the latest clip shows just how natural use of Scots in high registers can be — something that should definitely be considered for any new digital channel with a more home-grown and democratic remit.

Scots: our authoritative, precise and just a little sexy national tongue.

No Ulster-Scots Academy

2011-06-14T13:03:00.000-07:00

Representatives from DCAL and the Ministerial Advisory Group for the Ulster-Scots Academy were at Stormont last Thursday to give evidence to the Committee for Culture, Arts and Leisure.

Surprisingly, DCAL Director of Culture Arthur Scott was unable to provide the committee with a figure for spending on the academy project to date (surely a rather obvious and easily anticipated question), and was instead reduced to promising a written response. We do know, however, that an annual £1 million has been allocated during the four-year Ministerial Advisory Group project.

The big news to come out of the evidence session (aka the elephant in the room) was that there is unlikely to be an Ulster-Scots Academy during this Stormont mandate, with the emphasis instead likely to be on smaller, free-standing research projects considered on merit. The key exchange was as follows:

Dominic Bradley: It has been quite a long time in the making, the academy, and I notice that, even at this stage, there is no certainty that there will be an academy. Your briefing paper says that a decision on setting up a formal academy will be considered at a later stage. How long more will we have to wait until the actual academy is established?

Arthur Scott: In the assessment of the business case by the project steering group there was an issue around affordability, and in the particular financial circumstances which are likely to prevail for this CSR period of four years — you know, unless there is a significant change over the four-year period — it may not be considered, but it is something that can be considered in future if there is a change. The other, of course, development may well be that the work that the Ministerial Advisory Group does in terms of bringing leadership to the sector and co-ordinating the efforts of the sector [means that] the nature of what people were thinking about in the past about an academy, what they were thinking about in the business case, could change over time, and there may be other ways, other options for doing it which may be more affordable.

Is the Blether Region alone in suspecting that the Ministerial Advisory Group, which counts several distinguished academics among its members, and which, as its chairman, the equally distinguished Dr. Bill Smith, reports, "aspire[s] to be the proto-board for an academy", is taking remedial action to counter the omissions of the Ulster-Scots Agency? If its task is to clear up others' mess, would that mess not be better tackled at source? And if the Schnapsidee of standardising Ulster Scots separately from Scots in Scotland has been put to rest, why persist with the name "academy"?

Only time will tell.

Chicken and Egg

2011-06-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

Much comment has surrounded the naming of Mary McArdle as special adviser to the new Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Carál Ní Chuilín. Ms McArdle served a prison sentence for her role in the death of a judge's daughter in a botched assassination attempt during the Troubles; her engagement has understandably been heavily criticised by Unionists.

While one can no doubt argue for and against the role of ex-prisoners in Northern Ireland politics generally, if one's central and overriding concern is the benefit of Irish Gaelic, it is difficult to see this specific appointment as anything other than ill advised, as it will render much more difficult the sort of diplomacy necessary to persuade Unionists to embrace the language and, one hopes, a language Act.

Reviewing an Alex Kane article published in the News Letter, Brian Walker comments that "Alex can't resist trying to hurt Sinn Fein back, a very human reaction to callous behaviour.", later stating that "Alex's reaction to the appointments is psychologically authentic on the unionist side."

As matters stand, therefore, it is likely that the best we can expect for Irish is half a policy, with one Minister's initiative thwarted or undone by another sitting at the same Executive table, and a stop-start game of musical chairs every four years as d'Hondt is run.

Interestingly, Alex Kane's article explicitly addresses the issue of language legislation.

"Caral Ni Chuilin, newly appointed to Culture, Arts and Leisure, says, "we are in a post-conflict situation and that's it," and then appoints convicted murderer Mary McArdle to help her push through an agenda which includes a more determined promotion of an Irish Language Act."

It is not too difficult to infer from the above that Mr. Kane views a language Act as part of the problem rather than the solution.

That it is surely the latter is shown by an article in today's Irish Independent, which quotes from a leaked cable detailing a private conversation between Gerry Adams and a senior American diplomat in April 2009.

"Adams warned that the lack of political progress on issues such as Irish language and education reform was angering the republican grassroots and could lead to more support for dissident activity."

Commenting on the special adviser's appointment, Brian Walker says:

"It is easy to make too much of Sinn Fein's strategic ability. They probably feel under some threat from the dissident appeal despite their electoral successes […]"

So Sinn Féin has given a special advisory role to Mary McArdle partly in order to placate grassroots anger at its lack of progress in achieving an Irish Language Act, despite the fact that her appointment will considerably reduce the chances of any legislation being passed. Leaving aside the obvious riposte that there is no guarantee that any diplomacy on the part of Nationalists or Republicans could ever persuade Unionists to accept a law protecting Irish, it is difficult not to feel despondent at this sectarian game of chicken and egg.

From modest beginnings, almost as a form of internal exile in the face of political frustration, the North's language movement has grown dramatically. Over the next few years it will be moving centre-stage as a Catholic majority draws ever closer. Unionist parties, including the civic Unionists of the Alliance, are mistaken if they believe that employment and housing legislation or a more representative police force have eliminated Nationalist grievances. To put it bluntly, that view is about 40 years out of date, and any arguments against a vastly enhanced role for the language have already been lost — not in the halls of Stormont but in Holyrood and Cardiff Bay. Promoting Irish should be much more acceptable to Unionists than promoting Mary McArdle; bizarrely, many people seem to believe that the two should offend, or enthuse, them equally.

Grotesquo's Ghost

2011-05-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

The BBC reports that a rare manuscript by the poet, philosopher and anti-slavery campaigner James Beattie (1735-1803) has been discovered during cataloguing of Sir Walter Scott's library at Abbotsford in the Borders.

Beattie hailed from the Mearns (Kincardineshire), the same region that was later to produce Lewis Grassic Gibbon. The text of the 9,000-word poem the Grotesquiad had been thought lost.

Minister for Scots

2011-05-24T12:03:00.000-07:00

The Scots Language Centre has reported on the appointment of Dr. Alasdair Allan MSP as Minister for Scots. Back in 1998, Allan made history by being awarded a PhD for a thesis — New founs fae auld larachs: leid-plannin for Scots — written not only about the language, but in it. What's more, the new Minister — born in Selkirk, in the Southern Scots dialect region of Hugh MacDiarmid — is, like the great poet before him, also an enthusiastic supporter of Scottish Gaelic.

Allan represents Na h-Eileanan an Iar in the Scottish Parliament and previously worked as a Gaelic journalist. No surprise, then, that his portfolio also includes responsibility for that language.

It is clear that the new Scottish Government, no longer constrained by minority rule, means business with regard to the nation's autochthonous languages.

All this forms a marked contrast to the stasis currently affecting the Ulster dialect of Scots, while, until the recent departure of Nelson McCausland, the development of Irish seemed to have been put into reverse.

Regardless of what the future holds with regard to Scotland's indigenous languages, the Blether Region is willing to bet that, even with the same Minister in charge of both Scots and Gaelic, he will not introduce exactly the same policies for them, nor aim to keep their budgets equal, nor attempt to undo the progress made by one until the other catches up. In short, he will act pragmatically rather than ideologically — and achieve more for both in the process.

—

Another good-news story with regard to Gaelic is that BBC Alba, the TV station formerly limited to satellite and cable, is to go live on Freeview channel 8 in Scotland from 8 June. How long must we wait for TG4 to be made available on Freeview in Northern Ireland?

In Praise of Ulster-Scots Poetry

2011-05-19T07:24:00.000-07:00

It would be wrong to say that the Ulster-Scots Agency has not engaged in republishing the dialect's poetic tradition. Not only was it the ultimate funder of Frank Ferguson's huge anthology of Ulster-Scots Writing, it also produced under its own auspices a volume collecting the verse of the tragically short-lived Donegal poet Sarah Leech. Prior to its establishment, there also appeared the three-volume Folk Poets of Ulster series, co-edited by future board member Philip Robinson and published by current board member Ian Adamson.

Excellent as these volumes are, they do not amount to an exhaustive effort at republication — a great shame, since there are only around 70 volumes of such verse. The absence of such an effort poses a set of problems and challenges that those who care for Ulster Scots might do well to address.

First, owing to the continued marginality of Ulster Scots ten years after the inception of the agency, there are, even today, those who make the astonishing claim that the variety does not exist. Many others, because of diglossia, wrongly believe it to be Mid Ulster English spoken with an Ulster-Scots accent.

Secondly, the relative unavailability of the oeuvre in question renders it almost impossible to codify Ulster Scots on the basis of its traditional literature. The later prose tradition often first published in newspapers, whose exponents included W. G. Lyttle, has strong elements of eye dialect that were quite obviously never intended to supply a written standard. Yet such literature may be easier to access nowadays, and, judging by the work of many of those who have tried their hand at writing Ulster Scots, has ironically achieved greater influence.

Thirdly, a recovered Ulster-Scots poetic tradition would act as a catalyst for research, whether the aim of that research be corpus linguistics or literary appreciation. Making the Ulster-Scots poetic tradition freely available on the Internet would herald a new birth for the variety, with researchers from across the world taking an interest and producing academic articles and monographs. It would also make it much easier for home-grown writers to reference and build upon a tradition from which they have been cut off by history.

Rather than press on with daft plans for an Ulster-Scots Academy, whose only supporters, apart from politicians, are the activists who look forward to employment within it, the new DCAL Minister should establish a time-bound commission to recover and digitise the full corpus of Ulster-Scots texts. As such an exercise would sensibly constitute almost the entire work of the early years of any Ulster-Scots Academy, those who advocate an additional Ulster-Scots body would have no reasonable cause for complaint, and would remain free to pursue their plans after the next Assembly election in five years' time. When the work of the commission came to an end, the digitised works would pass into the control of the Ulster-Scots Agency, which would be given the statutory duty to ensure their dissemination — probably through maintaining a website with downloads and an electronic corpus, and perhaps also through the production of an annual popular or academic volume.

It is a queer and tragic come-tae-pass that hundreds of thousands of pounds that might have been spent on recovery were instead wasted on a dead-end strategy for an academy — but it is not too late to inject a note of sense into plans for the future.

Ministering to the Unconverted

2011-05-16T11:01:00.000-07:00

It's official: there will be Sinn Féin Ministers at both the Department of Education and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, good news for the Irish language over the next five years.

While insiders had tipped the party's first choice to be Enterprise, Trade and Investment, that is now shown to have been disinformation. It may be the case that allowing the spread of false rumours enabled the party to take the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure, which has hitherto always gone to one of the Unionist parties to act as a counterbalance to Sinn Féin's control of Education. However, Culture was the eighth available Department, and the fact that it went to Sinn Féin may simply reflect the fact that no party wanted Health — and the DUP may have been keen to get rid of Culture and its maverick British-Israelite Minister's unpopular plans to close libraries while pressing ahead with a white-elephant Ulster-Scots Academy.

Be that as it may, the Irish language will at least be able to look forward to a reasonably secure period. However, that security will be short lived if an unduly combative approach is adopted. That Sinn Féin was able to retain Education is down to a quirk of the d'Hondt system; the party was entitled to nominate second, and it is a commonplace of the d'Hondt procedure that the largest party takes Finance and Personnel in order to gain control of the public purse-strings. The aim for a Sinn Féin Minister now, while protecting Irish in the short term, must be to persuade Unionists to agree to a language Act, putting the protection of the language and the rights of its speakers on a statutory basis while removing the language, as far as possible, from the political arena. Regardless of the rights and wrongs of Caitríona Ruane's public pillorying, putting such a hate figure in charge of the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure would have been the wrong move for Irish, since it would both decrease the chances of a language Act and increase the chances of a reactive return to Unionist control after the next Assembly election. Yet choosing the former prisoner Carál Ní Chuilín — who, according to Nuacht 24, despite her Irish name speaks only "beagán Gaeilge" — could well have the same effect before the new Minister has uttered a word or signed a document. One cannot help thinking that Barry McElduff, a committed Gaeilgeoir who chaired the DCAL committee in the last Assembly, would have made a better choice.

With regard to Scots, the Blether Region has come to believe in recent months that a Nationalist Minister would be more likely to introduce an Ulster-Scots Academy. Unionists would still get the blame, and a Nationalist going along with the former's pet project would hope to establish cross-community goodwill and, eventually, garner support for a language Act (both initiatives form part of the St. Andrews Agreement).

Of course, the current academy plans are flawed at their most fundamental level, since they would:

split the Scots language by pre-empting joint standardisation with Scotland;
split the Ulster-Scots dialect community by making no provision for any representation (or any legal vires) with regard to Scots in Donegal;
further alienate vital Catholic and Nationalist speakers by including "history" and "culture" in the academy's remit;
waste yet more money on the abovementioned "history" and "culture" that could be spent on language;
duplicate and undermine the work of the existing cross-border Ulster-Scots Agency; and
allow activists who are not good theoretical or practical linguists to enforce their writ riding on the coat-tails of genuine academics — possibly reducing those coat-tails to rags in the process.

Though one might expect some of these issues to be dealt with by a Nationalist Minister, the first and most basic issue of splitting Scots for frivolous political reasons remains.

For that reason, perhaps a combative Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure willing to scrap plans for an academy and redirect money towards Irish for short-term gain would be better after all. There is no guarantee that Unionists could ever be persuaded of the merits of a language Act, while the creation of an academy might well do permanent or even fatal damage to the local variety of Scots.

After the Bun-fight — Who Gets the Sweeties?

2011-05-12T11:27:00.000-07:00

The question of whether the Alliance Party will be able to build on David Ford's tenure at the Department of Justice by taking an Executive seat under the d'Hondt mechanism now appears to have been settled. Yet how many people have considered the corollary that the party will also be entitled to nominate to the cross-border bodies, one of them being An Foras Teanga?

The Alliance will now be able to send a representative either to the Ulster-Scots Agency, whose promotion of "the Ulster-Scots language" is, we suggest, in dire need of a little of its trademark confessional neutrality, or Foras na Gaeilge — having a party nominee on the latter's board would be a PR coup for the party, which will be keen to shake off the "yellow Unionist" tag.

Indeed, as the DUP has failed to make any nomination to Foras na Gaeilge in the past, the Alliance might conceivably pick up an extra board position there even if it nominates first to the Ulster-Scots Agency.

One does hope, though, that the UUP's Ian Adamson, who narrowly lost his seat on Belfast City Council, will be able to continue his work with the agency. A moderate and well-liked man with a passion for languages, Dr. Adamson was, along with Ivan Herbison, among the very first of the present crop of thinkers to suggest that Scots in Ulster — in his words "a purer form of Lallans than that spoken in Scotland itself" — deserved wider appreciation and protection.

If he goes, he will be missed.

Attic Attitudes

2011-05-12T11:20:00.000-07:00

The Scotsman has reported on the speech varieties chosen by the new intake of MSPs to swear allegiance to the monarch, displaying a degree of bewilderment at their departure from "the more conventional English".

With disengagement often comes ignorance, and it comes as no surprise that the newspaper appears to believe that Doric is a language separate from Scots, despite any phonological differences from the main Central variety being regular.

In academic circles, "Doric" is of course better known as "Northern Scots", while aficionados will be aware that the eighteenth-century poet and anthologist Allan Ramsay used the term to refer to the Scots of Edinburgh.

Admittedly, Northern Scots has a better claim to linguistic independence than the Southern or Ulster dialects — and less of a claim than the Insular Scots of Orkney and Shetland.

"Language", as thoughtful observers will by now have deduced, is nowadays a term applied to any minimally distinctive or geographically separate dialect. Shorn of any taxonomic significance, its debased currency is doled out as a form of casual courtesy to the marginalised or uppity, a practice in which Northern Ireland officialdom has attained a dubious pre-eminence.

Time the Scotsman was gently shepherded in the direction of linguistic common sense.

All Change

2011-05-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

With only a few days to go before the Stormont election, the DUP has stated explicitly in the Belfast Telegraph "that the Education ministry would be its second choice — after Finance".

The revelation will raise the pressure on Sinn Féin to take the Department as its first choice when the d'Hondt system is next run. Irish-speakers, already disillusioned by the failure to secure a language Act and the havoc wreaked at DCAL by Nelson McCausland, will not take kindly to the party passing up the opportunity to defend what may be a much more important portfolio for the language.

Jim Allister, on his part, believes that Sinn Féin will indeed take Education again, calling the confirmation that his old party will once again opt for Finance "a shameful indictment of the DUP". Barring the unlikely event of Sinn Féin becoming the biggest party, we shall know soon enough.

Less high-profile but equally important, the d'Hondt system will also be run for nominations to the cross-border bodies, including An Foras Teanga, the umbrella body for Foras na Gaeilge and the Ulster-Scots Agency. The "mandatory coalition" of the two speech varieties has meant that candidates are assigned to one or other side only after their nomination, with the result that there has never been any Northern representation for the Catholic or Nationalist third of Ulster's Scots-speakers on the board of the Ulster-Scots Agency. Unionist representation on boards of Foras na Gaeilge has been patchy and in some cases non-existent.

While it might be excessively optimistic to expect Sinn Féin to nominate to the Ulster-Scots Agency, the SDLP has a very distinguished Scots-speaker in the shape of Liam Logan, the former presenter of BBC Radio Ulster's Kist o' Wurds and the party's current MLA candidate in North Down. Though the Blether Region wishes Mr. Logan well in the coming election, it cannot help but think that he would make an excellent and effective nominee to the Ulster-Scots Agency if unsuccessful.

James Boswell — Scots Dictionary Pioneer

2011-05-04T10:50:00.000-07:00

Hot on the heels of the rare Burns manuscript whose existence was made public to coincide with the poet's birthday this year, Scotland on Sunday has revealed that James Boswell's draft of a prototype Scots dictionary has been identified in the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The specimen had fallen into its hands along with the papers of the great lexicographer John Jamieson, whose Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language (1808), through various editions and updates, remained the standard work for well over 100 years until the advent of the Scottish National Dictionary (begun in 1931 but completed only in 1976).

Boswell is of course best known as the biographer of Samuel Johnson, many of whose researchers were also Scots, leading to the negotiation of such classic definitions as that for oats. Intriguingly, the article relates that Johnson encouraged Boswell to produce "a dictionary of words peculiar to Scotland", thus copper-fastening the auld leid's status as a dialect of English. A comprehensive dictionary of Lowland language today would exclude much of what is distinctive and colourful about Modern Scots, which is either recessive or dead. As so often in this context, after the initial elation of discovery, the overwhelming sentiment is of "whit micht hae been".

White is the Colour

2011-04-18T11:21:00.000-07:00

John Coulter of the Daily Star reports on "The Royal White Order of King Solomon", a newly founded evangelical fraternal organisation.

The Star informs us that "Solomon was the wisest of all the Old Testament Israelite kings, and the Biblical book named after him, The Song of Solomon, is compulsive reading for any Christian".

Could the Star really be unaware of the book's erotic content, or is it subtly problematising a Christian obsession with sex at the expense of more pressing social concerns? Whatever the truth, the Blether Region shares Coulter's bewilderment at the organisation's ceremonial robes.

"But the all-white dress code of this modern bunch makes them look like another sinister organisation, the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan — probably the world's oldest racist group.

Women are also allowed to join this ultra secret White Order, but they must adhere to a strict dress code, too — formal or evening gown, choker and elbow-length gloves! Sounds like a right kinky club has been formed!"

One woman, Angela Chillingham (a pseudonym?) has been promoting the organisation on the Internet. Chillingham Castle is in Northumberland, an afternoon's drive away from the headquarters of the British-Israel World Federation at Bishop Auckland.

The order's aims cover a host of right-wing shibboleths, some widespread, some specific to Northern Ireland, one of which is a "Return to National Greatness". Given the fact that Britain is, despite everything, still among the richest countries in the world and therefore already quite great enough by any reputable benchmark, one is unsure how to take this. Other goals include "Strict Immigration & Asylum Policies, Withdrawal from the EU & UN, The Security of the Protestant People of Ulster, Conservatism, Femininity & Womanhood, Creation Science, Obedience to the Rule of Law, Return of the Death Penalty, [and] The Security of the State of Israel" (although one suspects not its demographic security).

Quite apart from the Ku Klux Klan, another comparison that one might make based on the group's website is with the Scientologists. While active members pay £100 per annum, "friends" are divided into four levels, with the highest, "premier class" expected to stump up £1,000. Each class receives its own monthly "bulletin". But what information could it possibly contain to justify such a hefty subscription?

One Internet commentator, calling himself "Lew", has said that "I think they probably plan to give each other jobs. Yuck …" also stating "I might be wrong, but to me it's got Nelson McCausland written all over it."

In view of the Royal White Order's exhortation to voters that they back the TUV and UKIP, the Blether Region believes it unlikely that a sitting DUP Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure would be a member; that would be a sackable offence, after all. However, the affair underlines the inadequacy of the current Register of Members' Interests at Stormont, in the latest version of which the Minister once again lists his membership of the Linenhall Library but not of LOL 688, whose newsletter has bragged of its brethren's domination of the Ulster-Scots world.

All elected representatives need to understand that avoiding the appearance of nepotism is nowadays as important as avoiding its reality.

However, the really disturbing aspect is that, even without Nelson McCausland, there is almost certainly a link to the Ulster-Scots movement.

Fair Play to Them — but what is it?

2011-04-14T12:57:00.000-07:00

The Guardian reports on the sad fate of an indigenous Mexican language whose two remaining speakers do not get on, a reminder that many speech varieties are worse off than the Celtic languages, without the same user numbers, interest or resources.

Be that as it may, what the Blether Region found more interesting was the readers' comments section, a glance at which confirms that hard-line "utilitarian" views on language maintenance are by no means confined to Northern Ireland. What is different, however, is that, among educated Britons at least, such views serve to put one in a distinct minority. Nor are they — as is largely the case in Northern Ireland — the preserve of a discrete faith community.

In Scotland, whose nationalism is based mainly on institutions rather than language, there are also many individuals who do not "get" the value of Gaelic or Scots. And yet Scottish Gaelic — and, nowadays, Scots — is promoted nonetheless, with the enthusiastic backing of the Scottish Government, including in the public sphere.

What is the lesson for Northern Ireland? Well, one could simply back Irish according to demand. Since there is much more interest in Irish in Northern Ireland than there is in Scottish Gaelic in Scotland — evidenced, for example, in the number of learners — that would likely result in rather better provision. Or one could take into account the opposition of Unionists, do a quick sum, and halve the provision. Either way of thinking would probably lead to better treatment of Irish than is currently the case.

However, the problem with the second approach is that it lends credence to the zero-sum argument that promotion of Irish somehow disadvantages Unionists. If one accepts that, it is a small step to rejecting Irish provision entirely on the same argument — as in fact happened a few years ago when an attempt was made to introduce dual-language signs at Queen's University. Indeed, some people have even claimed that there should be no bilingual signage until the number of Irish-speakers has reached more than 50% of the Northern Ireland population (one could argue with the logic of that, since the starting point of monolingual English-language signage might well suggest monolingual Irish-language provision at that stage).

Bilingualism is, of course, always about the linguistic minority. Much has been made recently of the extent to which changes to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement might help to alter the sectarian dynamic of Northern Ireland politics. At the moment vetoes exist in the Executive and, through "petitions of concern", in the Assembly. But why allow sectarianism to extend its sphere of influence into questions that have nothing to do with it? Why allow reform of the policy on grammar-school admissions, whose chief beneficiaries will be working-class Protestants, to be blocked as if it were an attempt to introduce official flag days for the tricolour? Should such extravagant claims not be subjected to a test?

Similarly, it is time to recognise that bilingualism disadvantages no one, something that any truly impartial arbiter — perhaps one of those educated Britons — would accept reflexively.

Dayset or Daydaw?

2011-04-13T10:56:00.000-07:00

Ian Adamson has given his view of Nelson McCausland's nominations to the Ministerial Advisory Group for the Ulster-Scots Academy.

The main thrust of his argument is that the Minister "has excluded native speakers". The Blether Region of course tries to advocate an academic approach to Ulster Scots, which is why it promotes its actual, structural status as a dialect of Scots over any apperceptional one. With that in mind, while native speakers may help garner social support, they bring with them no particular advantage when it comes to codifying language. A single native speaker brings a single, subjective view, usually without the requisite reading or analysis. An academic, on the other hand, is aware of the need to base decisions on evidence, be that diachronic (the literary tradition) or synchronic (the wishes of those who use the dialect). Including academics thus ensures that the views of many more native users, living and dead, are taken into account.

It is also uncharitable to say that there are no native speakers on board. Anyone, like Ivan Herbison, who grew up in a Scots-speaking area and was acquent with the traditional literature would have an equivalent — if not superior — level of knowledge. Ulster Scots is not Irish.

Ivan Herbison has of course been a pioneering and learned voice in the study of the variety. And there are others among the ministerial nominations, such as Carol Baraniuk and John Erskine, who are more than qualified to serve.

In fact, were it not for the notion of an academy being so obviously and fundamentally flawed, the Blether Region might be quite pleased. An academy will, after all, weaken Ulster Scots — probably to the point of death — by deliberately and artificially splitting it from its parent dialects. It will also duplicate functions of the Ulster-Scots Agency while at the same time needlessly politicising the dialect by infusing it with the agency's trademark blend of "history, heritage and culture" (none of which, at the risk of stating the obvious, is linguistic).

The Minister's nominations are in fact not all that unreasonable and, more than anything else, support the Blether Region's view that the DCAL portfolio may well change hands after the election. The priority here is not to satisfy Mr. McCausland's various theological and political constituencies but to create a problem for any Nationalist Minister who might be tempted not to press ahead with what is an expensive white elephant.

Ironically, a Nationalist Minister has much more chance of establishing an academy. Unionists doing so would have to face the ire of the most implacable opponents of spending on Ulster Scots: ordinary Unionist voters. A Nationalist would have no such difficulty, since everyone knows that Unionist politicians are the ones agitating in favour. Another attraction is the political linkage between Ulster Scots and Irish that was born in the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement and took on much more clearly defined form at St. Andrews, the reasoning being that a fillip for the former in the shape of an academy will bolster the chances of a language Act for the latter. A fiscally responsible Nationalist Minister would therefore experience something of a dilemma.

The Blether Region suggests tabling a motion in the Assembly and abstaining. If Unionists want an academy, let them put their necks on the line and vote for it — publicly.

A Grumphie's Gub

2011-04-02T03:29:00.000-07:00

Irish-speakers across Northern Ireland have been wrestling with the question of whether to fill out their census form in English or to stick to their principles and do so in Irish, thus risking a hefty fine.

Some readers will no doubt have assumed that there is no such dilemma. After all, Irish and Ulster-Scots versions of the form are available on request. However, those are merely "shadow" forms, ostensibly intended to aid comprehension (on the same basis as Polish, Punjabi and Urdu forms). Indeed, the Blether Region even heard of one Irish-speaker being offered an interpreter to help her fill out the English questionnaire.

Irish-speakers are of course bilingual and perfectly capable of filling out the form provided. But they believe it to be their human right to do it in Irish. As completing the census questionnaire is for the most part a matter of ticking boxes and inserting numbers, with the forms read by computer, and as the form has already been translated, they have something of a point.

Speakers of Scottish Gaelic and Welsh are spared the soul-searching, since their right to fill out versions of their census form in their respective Celtic language is officially recognised, regardless of their assumed degree of proficiency in English. It is, after all, an axiom of practical linguistics that, when it comes to speaking a language, it is often a matter of "use it or lose it".

Nor is that the only double standard, since the Scots and the Welsh have bilingual signs on the roads, at train stations, and on ferries, simultaneous translation in their elected assemblies, and publicly funded radio and television stations. They also have legislation to protect their languages, with public bodies required to produce plans on how they intend to promote them.

One wag in last month's edition of An tUltach offered the following opinion on the matter.

"tuigeann madraí na sráide gur mó an seans atá ag práta i mbéal muice ná Acht na Gaeilge tacaíocht an Aire Chultúir, Nelson McCausland, a fháil."

Or as we might say in Scots:

"the dugs in the street unnerstaunds that a tattie haes mair chance in a grumphie's gub nor the Cultur Meenister, Nelson McCausland, haes o haudin haund tae an Erse Leid Act."

Nelson McCausland may or may not be on the way out, but the question of how to resolve the considerable disjuncture in the treatment of indigenous Celtic languages between Northern Ireland and the rest of the United Kingdom remains.

Mandarin — is it an Orange thing?

2011-03-26T12:29:00.000-07:00

Lindy McDowell in the Belfast Telegraph has an opinion piece on Caitríona Ruane's tenure at the Department of Education. The latest episode in the saga is largely what we have come to expect, i.e. with a focus ostensibly on the abolition of the 11-plus but expressed with a peculiarly unwarranted vehemence that suggests the subtext may be power-sharing itself. Like more than one such article, McDowell's piece gives marks to Caitríona: a rhetorical flourish or wishful thinking? After all, one might point out, on the issue of grammar schools the Sinn Féin Minister is only attempting to bring Northern Ireland into line with Great Britain — or indeed, not even that, since her avowed target is the blunt instrument of the transfer test rather than the existence of more academically focused second-level institutions.

Recent coverage of Ruane in the Belfast Telegraph has bordered on the neuralgic, with screaming headlines about children — presumably Protestant — learning Irish, as if they would all turn into Catholic pumpkins at midnight if they started learning a little about the history and place-names of their native province. At its most basic level, such cheap reporting exploits atavistic fears. It may also reinforce them.

The Blether Region was struck by one line in an editorial, stating that the Bel-Tel "believes in a system which rewards merit". (Note to editor: the argument that the "reward" of a better education than might otherwise be gained goes to those who display "merit" by learning to the transfer test is an argument of those who oppose the 11-plus. Those who support it, on the other hand, argue that it is a sensitive gauge of the most suitable education for a child).

Be that as it may. Lindy McDowell's piece includes the following comment on the Minister's plans to give more Protestant children the chance to learn Gaelic.

"Not that there is anything wrong with Irish (although Mandarin might perhaps be more useful. Or even a sound vocational training)."

One really does wonder how many children could ever become fluent in a radically different language such as Chinese (an aside: surely the Cantonese dialect would be easier to pick up in Northern Ireland). If anyone has ever read the manual of a Chinese electrical product, then it should have alerted them to how Europeans probably sound in Chinese. However, if any children do manage to learn it, the Blether Region will bet that it is not the first foreign language that they have attempted.

Does Ms McDowell genuinely believe that those who learn Mandarin will be language virgins? It is, after all, a commonplace among practical linguists that, having mastered one language, of whatever type, an individual will find it easier to learn another. A reasonably different tongue such as Irish would provide both a grounding in language learning and an indication of language aptitude — a sort of 11-plus, in fact, only more relevant.

And anyone who has ever attended a course at Oideas Gael will know that, far from being the sole concern of ideologues or dreamers, Irish is in fact big business; its teaching attracts many foreign students. Making money from Chinese, on the other hand, would be likely to presuppose a resurgence in manufacturing, probably of machine tools, a rather big ask.

An obsession with Mandarin at the expense of Irish displays a failure of entrepreneurial imagination but also a reflexive assumption that what is native is without value — and a projection of that mindset onto a world that may think quite differently.

The Ballot Box and the Grammar Book

2011-03-25T12:35:00.000-07:00

Purdah began yesterday in Northern Ireland, and, contrary to the spin, it looks like there will be no big announcement from Nelson McCausland regarding an Ulster-Scots Academy. As readers will be able to gauge from press articles, radio phone-ins or general conversation, the notion of an academy is very unpopular with ordinary Unionists, so the Minister always had something of a tightrope to walk vis-à-vis pleasing an important activist constituency and not bringing his party into disrepute with the voters. He was a very skilled prevaricator when it came to delaying the promised languages strategy too, behaviour that will for many people have served to confirm their suspicions that the Minister's antipathy towards Irish easily trumped any desire on his part to do something for Ulster Scots.

There will clearly be great pressure on Sinn Féin to take the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure after the Assembly election, pressure that will be all the stronger if the party loses control of Education, which is probably of more importance to Irish. However, that scenario seems unlikely, since it is generally accepted that the largest party will most likely wish to take Finance as its first choice under the d'Hondt system, and, recent speculation notwithstanding, that largest party is still likely to be the DUP. If the DUP takes Finance as its first choice, then Sinn Féin, likely to be the second-placed party, will be able to take Education. Given the controversy surrounding the abolition of the 11-plus, however, it would definitely need to choose the Department at the first available opportunity.

While theoretically a DUP Finance Minister could neuter any attempts to promote Irish more vigorously through DCAL, in practical terms, to win the support of the Assembly, he or she would still need to offer a reasonable settlement to the largest Nationalist party. Readers will recall that, last time around, DUP and Sinn Féin Departments did well, while the SDLP and UUP felt the squeeze, with the latter's Health Minister Michael McGimpsey in a particularly difficult position.

Among the bigger reasons the DUP might have for ditching Culture is, strangely enough, that proposed Ulster-Scots Academy. As stated here before, if Nelson McCausland were to remain Minister for Culture, Arts and Leisure after May and attempt a U-turn on an academy, he would instantly lose all credibility. Better for him and for the party to avoid any uncomfortable dilemmas by bailing out now.

Of course, back in the first Assembly, the UUP took Culture, partly to balance against the effect of Education then being in the hands of Martin McGuinness. Could that scenario arise this time around? Well, given that Culture was such a late pick on the last occasion the d'Hondt procedure was run, it could theoretically go to any party — although the Irish-language community would be likely to experience extreme disillusionment at Sinn Féin, the only party in the Assembly with an Irish name, were it not to take the Department at an early stage.

That said, barring an attempt by the UUP to "out-right" (in James Molyneux's words) the DUP, any party's candidate would be better as Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure than the present incumbent.

Tally of the Bally

2011-03-10T11:24:00.000-08:00

Census day 2011 will soon be upon us, with forms due to be delivered to households across Northern Ireland over the next two weeks or so.

The Blether Region predicts another increase in the numbers of those able to understand, speak, read and write Irish. It further predicts that Unionist elected representatives will claim that people have exaggerated their ability in the language for political reasons. It is to be hoped that such claims can be dispelled, or at least heavily qualified, by a proper follow-up study.

Meanwhile, for the first time, a question on ability in Scots is to be included.

Predictably, census organisers have bowed to the politicised construction that is "Ulster-Scots", ignoring speakers of other Scots dialects resident in Northern Ireland. The Blether Region will be taking a rather angry pen to that part of the census form in an attempt to disabuse the demographers of their ignorance and recommends that other Scots-speakers who lack an Ulster accent do the same. If they try to put us in prison for it, the publicity can only advance our cause.

In Scotland, an attractive new website has been launched to help people determine whether they speak Scots. Strangely enough, the Blether Region suspects that many speakers of "Ulster-Scots" can speak Scots too.

That's because it's the same language.

When Two Tribes Go to Words

2011-02-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

Last year saw the publication of A Word of Ulster Scots, a 66-page reworking of Liam Logan's columns from the News Letter, funded by the Ulster-Scots Agency. The Blether Region could quote the ISBN number of the volume, but those reading this post might not benefit greatly from their increased knowledge, since up to now only members of the Agency board have received a copy. Yet this is no hungry poet's individually numbered work hand-cranked from a ramshackle old photostat machine. On the contrary, it is a crisp, attractive, mass-produced tome. Indeed, for five months now boxes brimful of books have been in storage at the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure awaiting distribution. Why, then, has it not managed to reach a wider audience?

Readers will remember Liam Logan as the presenter of BBC Radio Ulster's Kist o' Wurds programme. He is also a supporter of the Ullans Academy, a former health service administrator, a keen golfer, and, together with Irish-speaking Unionist Ian Malcolm, a counter-cultural ambassador to schools.

Liam Logan is also an SDLP politician.

A Mormon Besom

2011-02-23T10:34:00.000-08:00

2011 marks the four-hundredth anniversary of the King James Bible, which, along with the works of Shakespeare, played an important role in the codification of early Modern English.

We sometimes encounter Bible pastiche as satire, but by far the longest and most influential example of the genre is Joseph Smith Jr.'s Book of Mormon (The Blether Region assumes here that most readers are not themselves latter-day saints and hopes that terming the work "pastiche" will not cause offence). Smith claimed he had translated the work from the "Reformed Egyptian" language of antique plates that he had discovered — they subsequently disappeared — and that the third testament to which they amounted was a literal historical record of a part of the Jewish people that had found their way to the New World. Critics have pointed out that no trace of the civilisation that they describe has ever been uncovered in America, and the book also mentions a host of animals either never present there or recently introduced by European settlers.

Be that as it may, Smith's literary achievement in the Book of Mormon is immense, so much so that Penguin Classics even publishes an edition. Consider the following from the First Book of Nephi, chapter 1, verses 140-1:

140 And it came to pass that Zoram did take courage at the words which I spake.
141 Now Zoram was the name of the servant; and he promised that he would go down into the wilderness unto our father.

Just as happens in the King James Version, there is a belletristic non sequitur (they obviously had different literary standards in the Bronze Age). First a character — with a convincingly Hebrew-sounding name — is mentioned as if we already know him, then we are told who he is, but he is referred to with the definite article.

The Blether Region previously posted on the word besom, which is used in the King James Version. It also appears in the Second Book of Nephi, chapter 10, verse 45:

45 I will also make it a possession for the bittern, and pools of water: and I will sweep it with the besom of destruction, saith the Lord of hosts.

This is word for word what appears in Isaiah, chapter 14, verse 23. No surprise there, readers will say; if Smith did not copy the verse directly, he had probably learnt it by heart as part of Bible study. More intriguingly, exactly as in the King James Version, in the Book of Mormon the word besom appears exactly once. Smith could have had access to Cruden's Concordance, but the Blether Region likes to think that he was a sufficiently good scholar of the King James Version to know himself.

Of course, if one takes Communism to be one of the world's great religions, as some have claimed, then Karl Marx's Das Kapital must have been a more influential "Bible" than the Book of Mormon. In 2011, however, with Communism discredited, it looks like Mormonism has the brighter future — a faith with 14 million adherents that looks set to gain many more.

Literature in Scots

2011-02-21T11:21:00.000-08:00

Hot on the heels of the revelation that an undiscovered letter by Robert Burns had been found — complete with an early version of "On Seeing a Wounded Hare" — comes the news that the Arts and Humanities Research Council is to provide £1 million of funding to Glasgow University produce the definitive multi-volume academic edition of the poet's works.

Here's to more of the same, and not just for such obvious figures as Scott or Stevenson but also for those unjustly confined to the middle ranks of literary fame such as John Galt and James Hogg. The truth is that the more one knows of Scottish vernacular literature, the higher one's opinion of it becomes.

And it's not just Scotland. Last week the Blether Region featured Robert Huddleston, hundreds of whose unpublished works are held in the archive of the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum. If only 10% are any good, Huddleston is clearly a poet who deserves to be read, and, as a first step, it would surely be fitting for the museum to receive a grant to digitise his works and make them freely available on the Internet.

Robert Huddleston

2011-02-16T10:40:00.000-08:00

The Blether region has been enjoying the poetry of Robert Huddleston (1814-1887), the Bard of Moneyreagh, two volumes of whose poems have been made available by the Ulster Poetry Project. The following lyric is of limited linguistic interest, being in more or less standard English, but it is one of the best to appear in his first volume, A Collection of Poems and Songs on Rural Subjects (1844), and surely ripe for recording by traditional musicians. Other highlights include Doddery Willowaim, his own lengthy satirical take on Burns's Tam o' Shanter.

THE MAID OF TULLYQUILLY.

Loveliest maid — of Tullyquilly,
Fairest flower of virgin Spring;
Bend thine ear my bloomin' lily,
Hark a youthful poet sing.

CHORUS.

Bonnie lass o' Tullyquilly,
Fairest lassie e'er I've seen;
Condescend to smile on Willie —
Willie smiles on "beauty's queen."

Blossoms deck the blooming summer,
Nature laughs on every lea;
All around is mirth and humour —
Wanting thee there's none for me.
Bonnie lass o' Tullyquilly, &c.

Attracting gaze through fashion wheeling,
Luring wealth may frolic gay —
Such the hawk through blue air stealing,
Oft th' goldfinch makes its prey.
Bonnie lass o' Tullyquilly, &c.

View the swan with pride and pleasure,
Not a love but one he'll own;
Like the dove a faithful lover,
I but sigh for one alone,
Bonnie lass o' Tullyquilly, &c.

Was not mother Eve so pretty,
Blythe with Adam in a screen;
Could not you and I be happy,
In a cot tho' e'er so mean?
Bonnie lass o' Tullyquilly, &c.

Taking Dictation

2011-02-15T09:39:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports that £20,000 has been spent on an unpublished Ulster-Scots "dictionary" prepared by the defunct Ulster-Scots Academy Implementation Group, whose grandiose plans for the dialect came to nought after the civil servant supervising it reported that it had failed to reach agreement. The confirmation, which came in a written answer from the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Nelson McCausland, provides further evidence that the group, only some of whose members were academic linguists, spent generously on projects that pre-empted the work of an academy.

Intriguingly, the Minister added that "Discussion with the Ulster-Scots community is continuing with a view to publication as soon as possible." Is the Blether Region alone in suspecting more disagreement and delay? The Minister’s promised "languages" strategy has been held up, apparently interminably, with remarkably similar justification.

Perhaps he will be out of office before either the dictionary or the strategy appears.

The Ulster-Scots dictionary has long been controversial. As one response to a public consultation on the academy concept put it: "It is in my view regrettable that work on several projects has already started, without proper consultation, planning, assessment or even apparently much thought."

Another respondent expressed more fundamental concerns: "Why should there be a separate Scots dictionary for Ulster in the first place? Resources may be more efficiently allocated helping to improve the extant Scots dictionaries." After all, most people access the two historical dictionaries of Scots, DOST and the SND, via the Internet nowadays. It would be perfectly possible to exclude words not used in Ulster, and even to provide a separate website drawing on the SLD database for that purpose.

Although one can infer from the BBC report that £20,000 is considered a large sum for a dictionary, it is surely only in the context of co-operation with Scotland that such a modest price tag for a reputable reference work could even be contemplated.

On the other hand, if what one gets is unpublished activist Diktat not based on attested usage and rejected by ordinary users, perhaps £20,000 is a lot of money after all.

Constitutional Means

2011-02-10T11:54:00.000-08:00

The Irish Examiner has printed a letter from Pádraig Mac Fhearghusa, editor of Feasta and current President of Conradh na Gaeilge, and Éamonn Mac Niallais of Guth na Gaeltachta, on Enda Kenny's controversial plans to make Irish an optional subject for the leaving certificate.

There is no doubt that the language will suffer greatly if the proposed change is introduced. The greatest obstacle to the revival of Irish has not been the fact that children are being made to learn it but that successive Governments have failed to provide Irish-medium services, in which context the 1970s abolition of the Irish requirement for entry to the Civil Service that the letter-writers mention is of some relevance.

Even in those days, of course, Ireland was failing to meet its obligations to the first national language. That being so, the language requirement was quite rightly seen as a pointless — and hypocritical — impediment to open recruitment. Rather than making Irish more relevant to the Civil Service by providing increased services through the language, however, the response was to abolish the requirement.

Thirty-seven years later, the language has still not been made useful enough to ensure intergenerational transmission. And instead of taking steps to make it so, the probable future Taoiseach is set on repeating the mistake made when the Civil Service requirement was abolished.

In a Northern context, it could be argued that the segregated school system's denial to Unionist children of a chance to learn Irish is a mild form of child abuse, involving as it does the excision of a part of their identity and probably permanent damage to their ability to appreciate basic aspects of the world around them such as history, toponymy, personal names and native literature. Even in the South, however, there is no guaranteeing that students will not terminate their study of the language prematurely, many for frivolous reasons, and with many regretting their choice as adults. After all, a large body of research tells us that adolescents learn languages more easily and with more chance of the knowledge actually sticking.

The other parties oppose Kenny's plans. Back in 1995, the then Government raised eyebrows when it wrote into the Constitution the exact arrangements under which divorce would be tolerated. In practice, this meant that it would be very difficult for any subsequent Government to reduce the four to five years of legal separation that would be required before a divorce could be granted — an ignorant intrusion into people's private lives, perhaps, but most likely a long-lasting one.

Some readers may be aware that the Spanish Constitution stipulates a right to learn regional languages but a duty to learn Castilian — an instance of the same tactic being used against the Basque and Catalan Administrations, which might otherwise very easily make the "national" language optional.

But what if those in favour of Irish were to follow suit here? A right to learn English and a duty to learn Irish would be entirely in keeping with the languages' respective positions in Bunreacht na hÉireann, and while one could argue that those currently commencing university studies already have an adequate command of the language, obviating the need for universal provision, that is hardly true of schoolchildren.

The Blether Region believes that such a constitutional amendment in favour of Irish would also be likely to attract the support of the people.

Putting the Dog Out in Irish

2011-02-09T10:54:00.000-08:00

Yesterday saw a brace of language-related articles.

BBC Northern Ireland reports on the response to an Assembly question about money spent on the Department for Regional Development's Irish-language classes, informing us that the Minister had "sparked controversy" by introducing them. Yet the sum of money in question turns out to have been a measly £2,284. Once again, it seems, the cost of exposing — and reporting on — language spending threatens to be greater than the extent of the spending itself.

It has become drearily apparent that the dudgeon worked up over "wasting public money" in this context is out of all proportion to the financial implications — although it is entirely in line with febrile Unionist attitudes to Irish. For the purposes of comparison, way back in 2006 the Guardian had the following to say about the spending priorities of a certain poll-tax-funded corporation:

"The BBC today unveiled the first eight idents at a cost of £150,000 each, and given that BBC1 aims to produce as many as 15 over the life of the new range of promotional clips, the total cost could rise to as much as £2.25m."

The "idents", to which the article refers are the self-promotional snippets that we see between programmes (they currently do a nice one with hippos). Perhaps the BBC is being impartial when it chooses to humour rather than challenge Unionist play-acting in this context. On the other hand, the phrase "pot calling kettle black" might also spring to mind — were it not for the fact that the kettle itself seems remarkably shiny in this case.

Also on broadcasting, the Belfast Telegraph covers the £1 million going on the Ulster-Scots broadcasting fund — an odd focus, given the £20 million for Irish mentioned later in the article, albeit to 2015 rather than this year. As the Blether Region has warned before, spending money on "Ulster Scots" but then diluting it by additionally covering heritage and culture may not be the best use of public funds when it comes to promoting minority languages, although it has considerable history in the form of the Ulster-Scots Agency.

Moreover, in this case it could have the unintended effect of skewing broadcasting output towards one community in a way that language alone does only for those who cling to the black-and-white notion that Scots is only for Protestants and Irish only for Catholics.

On a related topic, last year the Blether Region attended a cross-community event in Downpatrick at which one of the speakers was an Northern Anglican clergyman who had translated the Book of Common Prayer into Irish. Asked by a member of the audience whether Irish was widely spoken in his Southern parish, he replied, "Sure, them boys couldn't put the dog out in Irish," after a pause adding, "And if they did, they wouldn't get it back in."

Mammie Weer All Crazee Noo

2011-02-04T12:31:00.000-08:00

Applications have been invited from potential chairs and members of a Ministerial Advisory Group on the Ulster-Scots Academy.

The package available — £400 a day for the chair and £100 for each board member — is an extremely generous one and means that the Department has budgeted at least £800 per full day worked by the group (secretariat not included). Doubtless the Department's largesse would suit many a semi-retired Ulster-Scots activist.

In the past, academic linguists too have been tempted to sit on similar "implementation" or "steering" groups. Their reasons will have been personal and complex, but among them may well have been a desire to moderate the excesses of the more overtly political actors.

The academy concept is, of course, a curate's egg. Alongside the incredibly damaging notion that the tiny and only moderately differentiated Ulster dialect is not, and could survive without, Scots, there are exciting plans for surveys, libraries, recovery and dissemination — areas in which the Ulster-Scots Agency, some would argue, might have shown greater interest. Engaging with the ministerial plans, such academics may reckon, could ensure both that those initiatives are realised and that the dialect is standardised on the basis of its traditional poetry. After all, surely the aim of any newly codified orthography would be to equip the modern descendants and inheritors of Ulster-Scots culture with the tools to access their authentic history and literature. And it goes without saying that, were that to happen, it would be obvious to everyone — not only to cryptologists — that Ulster Scots is Scots, perhaps even a sub-dialect of the main Central Scots variety.

Past academic interventions have seemingly succeeded in banishing a-umlaut from modern attempts at transcribing Ulster Scots. True, they replaced it with i-umlaut, but that could hardly be expected to find broad appeal among ordinary users, so that the ultimate result will be that a simple "i" rather than a simple "a" is used.

What remains, unfortunately, is eye dialect. Up until the late nineteenth century, Scots everywhere was written with what was once memorably characterised as a "spray of apostrophes". In the main that was because the Presbyterians who wrote Scots had high levels of ability in English owing to their reading of the Bible, and Scots was thus associated with literacy. After the advent of mass education in spoken book English, however, Scots — left outside the classroom — became associated with the opposite, and attempts at fixing the language, mainly in kailyard dialogue and newspaper columns, were marked by deliberate, unjustified respellings such as wuz for wis and sez for says. Indeed, with some exponents of Glaswegian sociolectal writing, the device has led to poetry (it would be unsustainable in descriptive prose) that is almost reminiscent of the song titles of 70s rockers Slade.

It would be a shame if such eye dialect were to remain while the other eccentricities of the revived Ulster Scots fell by the wayside.

Those Helplines — an Alternative View

2011-01-31T12:10:00.000-08:00

While the Blether Region's take on Nelson McCausland's recent bizarre radio comments had the rather obvious focus of Irish, Ian James Parsley's more nuanced blog referred to a "U-turn" when it came to the Minister's views on Scots. It is of course beyond dispute that Parsley's linguistic utilitarianism — here seemingly echoed by the MLA most associated with Ulster-Scots activism — is a far better approximation of thinking among ordinary Unionists than the academy-touting McCausland we are used to. So was there a U-turn, or did a mask slip?

Perhaps the Minister is simply yet to internalise the linguistic diversity discourse, as one might infer, given the fact that he seemingly applies it only to one half of the equation — and that in a manner as likely to kill the dialect as save it. What is of course absolutely true is that the Irish-language helpline is not currently doing much for Irish. One surmises that it is there because, among the menu of measures that forms the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, a certain number of which the UK Government is obliged to implement, setting it up stood out as an easy and inexpensive option. Were another Minister to take on the Culture portfolio, one might imagine that alternative, more meaningful measures might be considered for the language. If, at that stage, the telephone helpline were not done away with, it would illustrate the limits of Nationalist thinking, just as Mr. McCausland, some would argue, so arrestingly illustrates those on the Unionist side.

That does not answer the question of why the Ulster-Scots helpline is there. By all accounts it is used even less than that for Irish. Perhaps it too exists in order to tick a box for the Charter. Or perhaps it is there simply because Irish has a helpline. One of the greatest problems facing Ulster-Scots language-planners is their seeming lack of autonomy. In blunt terms, if Irish has something, it seems that Ulster Scots must have it too — a cross-border agency, a helpline, even language status.

As for Mr. McCausland, speculating that his comments on the Charter were his "real" views is an idle pastime, although that might become less so were he to stay on as Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure after May and fail to implement his promised academy. Even if the real culprit were Sammy Wilson's fiscal rectitude, McCausland could hardly remain in office with honour.

It does seem odd, however, that when asked about helplines for users of both speech varieties, he chose to vent his ire on the only one with even moderate numbers of callers. On second thoughts, perhaps it wasn't so odd after all. Sometimes Nelson does do what people expect of him.

Here and there in Belfast English: a short elicitation from John Kirk

2011-01-28T05:20:00.000-08:00

Readers of the Blether Region may be familiar with the following expressions in Belfast English:

1) This here book is good.
2) That there magazine is rubbish.

We may refer to 'this here' and 'that there' as deictically reinforced demonstratives.

The first point is whether the following sentences are acceptable and equivalent (do they mean the same thing?):

3) This book here is good.
4) This here book here is good.

5) That magazine there is rubbish.
6) That there magazine there is rubbish.

If (4) and (6) are acceptable, do the two occurrences of 'here' and 'there' have the same function? And what is that function? Which occurrence is the deictic reinforcer?

Now consider the following sets:

7a) Put this here book here.
7b) Put this book here here.
7c) Put this here here.

8a) Put that there magazine there.
8b) Put that magazine there there.
8c) Put that there there.

Which of the three versions in each set are acceptable?

If you find 7c and 8c unacceptable, would the following be acceptable:

7d) Put this here ... um ... here
8d) Put that there ... um ... there

i.e. between the seemingly identical items there is an audibly filled pause, rendered here as ... um ...

Any views? I have been asked for an opinion. I feel that all are possible except (4) and (6). The first 'here'/'there' is the deictic reinforcer; the second occurrence esopecially after 'put' is adverbial, functioning as the locative complement of the verb 'put'.

When the identical items are side by side, they are contrasted phonologically by a change in pitch, possibly after a short pause, but that only serves to contrast their separate functions.

Any thoughts?

John Kirk may be contacted at j.m.kirk@qub.ac.uk

Rare Burns Letter Discovered

2011-01-27T08:31:00.000-08:00

The Scotsman reports that a letter penned by Robert Burns and previously unknown to researchers has been discovered in the private archive of Floors Castle, Kelso, in the Scottish borders. Addressed to James Gregory, Professor of Medicine at Edinburgh University, and dated 13 May 1789, it contains an early draft of "On Seeing a Wounded Hare", including a verse that Burns later deleted.

"Twenty people use the Irish language"

2011-01-21T12:39:00.000-08:00

Listeners to this morning's Nolan Show on BBC Radio Ulster (at around 9.30 a.m.) heard some astonishing claims from the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure, Nelson McCausland. The last caller to the show, UUP Councillor David Browne, asked Mr. McCausland about spending on Irish and Ulster Scots, querying the cost of the telephone helplines made available for their speakers. The shocking answer was as follows:

"That is a requirement that was imposed on Northern Ireland and on other devolved Assemblies, Wales and Scotland, by the United Kingdom Government when they signed up to the European Charter for [Regional or] Minority Languages. That was a commitment — a requirement that we have to fulfil and we have to report on. There are certain things we have to do. The cost of that is around a few thousand pounds a year, and in terms of the sort of thing we are talking about here, £50 million, it really is a minuscule amount. What I have to say: I would concur with his comment that these things are — it is ridiculous that we are required to do these things, because 20 people use the Irish language. We are told that there is a huge, burgeoning community, and I think about 20 people use it half a dozen [times] a year. That has been the situation for a number of years."

Is there really no limit to what the Minister may justify as his sincerely held belief — even belief backed up by evidence?

According to the 2001 census, 167,487 people in Northern Ireland had some knowledge of Irish, including 75,125 in the highest skills category, "Speaks, reads, writes and understands".

What's in a Name?

2011-01-19T10:34:00.000-08:00

The Blether Region is intrigued by a blog entry made last month by Councillor Dr. Ian Adamson OBE:

"Nelson McCausland, our Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure in the Stormont Assembly, does not share our views on Ulster-Scots, which is fair enough, and issues the occasional directive to the Ulster-Scots Agency about the use of the term Ullans, to keep them in order."

Ulster-Scots aficionados will recall that the cross-border legislation setting up the Ulster-Scots Agency refers to "Ullans", which is defined as a "variety of the Scots language", i.e. a dialect of Scots. The UK's declaration on the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, on the other hand, reads as follows:

"b) 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 above has been taken by the more radical Ulster-Scots activists as meaning that Ulster Scots is now to be treated as a language separate from Scots (although, as "regional or minority language" is in the singular, that is far from certain).

What is certain, however, is that, if Ulster Scots is indeed being defined as a language in the Charter declaration, it is clearly not the same language as Ullans. After all, if both the names (Ullans and Ulster Scots) and the definitions (dialect and language) vary, one is obviously dealing with two separate things.

One wonders how one is to interpret Dr. Adamson's comments. One possibility is that the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure is attempting to direct the agency not to use the term "Ullans" on the basis that it has been superseded by "Ulster Scots". But on what basis? Quite apart from the fact that "Ullans" and "Ulster Scots" are, by the Minister's own interpretation of the Charter declaration, incompatible, the Charter is non-justiciable and the declaration regarding it national in character, while the framework for the agency is legislative, cross-border and has the status of an international treaty, incapable of amendment without parallel legislation passing through the Houses of the Oireachtas in Dublin.

It is clear that the only strictly legal terms that the agency may use are "Ullans" and — the Blether Region's preference — "Scots".

Twinned with Nashville

2011-01-19T10:23:00.000-08:00

In what is, one hopes, to be the Blether Region's last comment on the Alliance Party for a time, we present two quotations, the first of which is one of the final posts from the late Horseman.

"Alliance is a party of a particular group – middle-class and suburban, both Protestant and Catholic, in the Greater Belfast area. Its failure to appeal either to working class people in Belfast or elsewhere, or to rural and small-town people, is an indication of its own limitations. As a party of the Belfast middle-class – probably primarily those employed in the public sector – it cannot truly understand the needs or wants of those who are not well-employed, pensionable, educated and urbane. In a large country such a self-limiting party may carve out a niche, but in a small region like Northern Ireland – and restricted to an even smaller part of that region by its own lack of appeal – the party will have to struggle to remain relevant."

The second comes from Belfast Media this week:

"The word inclusion means nothing if it means including only those things that pass the Alliance Party's 'what would North Down say?' test. True inclusion means tolerating, if not embracing, those things that are alien to a person’s own culture and experience."

In addition to recognising others' rights, linguistic and cultural, that means not caving in to the seductive simplicity of benevolent despotism and instead adhering to some basic principles of local democracy, such as the right of local councils to decide on their own welcome signs. One might have thought that, of all parties, one with only sub-regional appeal would have realised that, but apparently not.

To paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, one almost wishes that the Alliance Party would dissolve the people and elect another. Unfortunately, the Alliance Party seems to think that too, ignoring the running sore of the blatant double standard vis-à-vis Scotland and Wales in favour of the comforting mantras of "dreary steeples" exceptionalism.

To speak of "fiscal responsibility" when the signs in question will cost at most a few million pounds spread across 26 local authorities is extravagant rhetoric indeed. It is also a peculiarly ironic phrase to use, given that, until the recent decision to implement a modest levy on plastic bags, the only layer of Government raising even a part of its own revenue in Northern Ireland was local government. And those elected to district councils have no d'Hondt system to ensure quasi-permanent access to power when they fail.

It is time to give local authorities the freedom to acknowledge the cultural concerns of their communities. If they waste money on signs, if they wilfully and continually plant them where they end up being destroyed, if they abuse them in a manner that is political rather than cultural, let people vote them out — locally, for their local peccadilloes. There are, after all, two Nationalist and two Unionist parties, and it could be that the end result of the exercise will be that everyone adopts the Alliance Party policy, democratically. One imagines that it would be news, and a quite justified cause for anger, if spending on such signs ever reached a penny in the pound of rates revenue.

Among the sample road signs included in the Department for Regional Development's consultation document was one for Belfast. With the Gaelic etymon suppressed, one is left with a bland injunction to drive carefully, and the bizarre information that the city is twinned with Nashville, Tennessee. So it is that, as citizens, we can be trusted with the information that the wage-slaves of the provincial capital lap up syrupy kitsch made by white folks a few thousand miles away across the Atlantic — but not that their home was founded at the mouth of a tributary of the Lagan, the poor little Farset, which meanders unseen across the city, encased in a tunnel under High Street but still there.

Digging for Victory?

2011-01-15T13:13:00.000-08:00

What is the Alliance playing at with its resistance to bilingual signage? After the vehement reaction from liberal Irish-language enthusiasts, one might have thought that its representatives would have stopped digging, yet the party shows no sign of moderating its opposition.

Some political commentators have suggested that the consultation recently launched by Conor Murphy is a ploy to distract attention from manifest failures over water; others that he is seeking to steal a trick on his fellow Nationalists in the SDLP in the forthcoming Assembly elections.

Of course, if one thinks about it, it becomes obvious that the consultation process on Irish and Scots signage must have been in gestation long before the Christmas water stoppages. The latter theory is more plausible, but ignores the fact that the Nationalist parties' reactions to Anna Lo's comments on the issue have been virtually identical. No surprise there, as the SDLP also introduced a language Bill in the Assembly.

If anything, it seems that it is the Alliance that is in election mode, planning to capitalise on the trickle of softish Unionists from the UUP in the hope that some at least of their voters will follow. That is short-sighted, since the party's doctrinaire opposition to any visible acknowledgement of existing diversity is just as likely to scare people off. Gaeilgeoirí are a notoriously dedicated bunch — known, for example, for deliberately choosing partners from among their own ranks in order to raise their children through the medium of the language. Needless to say, there was no way that someone who rated the Irish language as very or extremely important could have voted for the anti-Gaelic DUP or UUP. Sadly, the Alliance's foray into linguistic Gleichschaltung seems to narrowed their choices yet further.

Although the differences between them are much less important than in previous decades, the conventional narrative has it that there are two sorts of Nationalists in Northern Ireland. Part of the Alliance's argument against English-Irish signage is that it will reflexively be associated with one sort. Unfortunately, the party seems to have missed the reason why. Sinn Féin means 'Ourselves', i.e. that group of people who, if they don't get what they want, will go off and do their own thing anyway. At a time when Northern Ireland has more Gaelic-speakers than three-times-larger Scotland, when there are more children in Irish-medium education than ever before, and when those who acknowledge an Irish ethnic tradition are a majority in every age cohort under 30, if the state cannot even allow a transparently Irish name to appear in its original spelling on a road sign, no wonder the language is associated with that unilateral, DIY ethos.

Regrettably, it seems that the Alliance has decided to re-position itself as a secular Unionist party. Arguing that a piecemeal approach to English-Irish road signs will lead to ghettoisation is perfectly valid. But failing to back it up by arguing for universal bilingual signage means that it is not an argument, but a subterfuge.

Bilingual Traffic Signs Consultation

2011-01-13T12:47:00.000-08:00

Submissions may be made on the Department of Regional Development's consultation on bilingual traffic signs until 11 March.

An Original Development

2011-01-12T10:37:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports that the Department for Regional Development is considering a framework for the introduction of bilingual traffic signs combining either English and Irish or English and Ulster Scots.

Despite the fact that the proposals envisage no additional costs being borne by the Department, they have attracted criticism from the various Unionist parties, with the TUV's Jim Allister lambasting their concomitant erosion of "Northern Ireland's Britishness", something that would presumably apply regardless of the regime under which they were erected and any exceptions to it.

Meanwhile, the Alliance Party's Anna Lo criticised the plans for not allowing for trilingual signs combining English, Irish and Ulster Scots, an omission that she said would lead to "clear tribal demarcations" (although it may well have been frowned upon for safety reasons).

And UUP leader Tom Elliott criticised the possible consultation costs.

One can only assume that the issues raised by Mr. Elliott and Ms. Lo could be adequately dealt with by not having any consultation and simply erecting Irish signs everywhere. After all, a very large proportion — perhaps most — of Northern Ireland's place-names are of Irish origin, and it is difficult to think of a single English transliteration of a Gaelic name that accords it much dignity (the photo above being a good example). Of course, that would hardly deal with Mr. Allister's point, but one can never please everyone.

On a more serious note, it is clear that the Minister for Regional Development, Conor Murphy, is bending over backwards in order to please Unionists. Were he being bloody-minded about matters, he would have insisted on bilingual — or, indeed, monolingual — Irish signage everywhere, have made no provision for Ulster Scots and have made the taxpayer pick up the tab. As it is, he plans none of those things — and has been attacked by Anna Lo. You're damned if you do, and damned if you don't.

Those reading this blog from outside Northern Ireland may not be aware that there is a surefire way of spotting a Catholic church here: it is invariably the one without a board outside it proclaiming its denomination, since in many parts of the province any such board would, sooner or later, be defaced by bigots. Members of the Alliance Party would no doubt condemn that; yet when it comes to bilingual signage, one of the strongest physical embodiments of a shared future, they line up not with the minority but with the paint-bombers who are out to get them.

"Reasonable" stances are too often, the world over, the product of triangulation rather than philosophical commitment and, as such, the victims of the societies that produce them. In this case, the Blether Region is forced to come to the conclusion that "some of those liberals urnae much liberals".

The Old Testament in Scots

2011-01-12T10:08:00.000-08:00

Kenneth Fraser, long-time author of the Lallans column in the monthly Scots Independent, is appealing for help in bringing to publication an almost complete Scots translation of the Old Testament by his late friend, the Rev. James Marshall.

Rev. Marshall left a typescript that he had intended as a first draft, but was unable to complete a planned revision before his death. At present his magnum opus is unpublished and difficult for the public to access, having been deposited in St. Andrews University Library.

If you can help, Mr. Fraser can be contacted at kenneth@kcfraser.plus.com.

Townland Names

2010-12-22T07:00:00.000-08:00

The News Letter had an interesting editorial on townland names recently, which shows how supportive even staunch Unionists can be.

In it, the fact that the vast majority of such names are of Gaelic origin is neatly skirted around. Instead, we are told that "A townland, or bally — in Ulster language — is a small division of land used in rural parts of the British Isles". "Bally" is of course the Irish baile, used in all provinces of the island. Moreover, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, "townland" in Great Britain has very different meanings, in Anglo-Saxon England referring to the land forming a tún or manor and in Scotland to the enclosed or infield land belonging to a ferm toun — hardly direct equivalents. Nevertheless, the Blether Region welcomes the interest shown and is consequently reluctant to criticise.

Where criticism is warranted, on the other hand, is the Minister of Culture, Arts and Leisure's decision to axe the Northern Ireland Place-Name Project at Queen's University, surely an example of the sort of initiative that can attract unembarrassed support from Unionists and play a diplomatic role for the Irish language as a whole.

The more cynical will conclude that it was for just that reason that it had to go.

Freeview for the Gaels

2010-12-22T01:36:00.000-08:00

The Scottish media report that BBC Alba, the Gaelic-language television service hitherto limited to satellite and Internet broadcasting, is to appear on Freeview from May or June next year, replacing a bundle of BBC digital radio stations during broadcasting hours.

Unfortunately, that spectacularly misnamed anti-Scottish newspaper the Scotsman headlined its coverage "BBC ALBA television knocks radio stations off Freeview". Unlike its rival the Herald, it did not even bother to report when the change would occur, from which one might infer that it believes none of its readers would be interested in watching (odd for a newspaper that — fair play to it — carries a Gaelic column).

The news follows hot on the heels of confirmation that TG4 would be carried on Freeview in Northern Ireland "ahead of 2012" (the Irish News reads this as being 2011). No doubt pressure will follow for BBC Irish-language programming to switch too, a move that would effectively create the first cross-border television station.

A Tongue All His Own

2010-12-20T10:30:00.000-08:00

Brian Walker gives an interesting mention to John Laird's new autobiography over at Slugger O'Toole.

While conceding that Laird is "beyond caricature to some" (the comments following his post contain the obligatory "buffoon"), Walker believes that he "captures the essence of a neglected cause".

There is the odd liberal barb to his equanimity, however, as when he reports Laird's belief that the Ulster Scots are "still quite distinct from the Irish after 400 years". A further, perhaps more pertinent question might be whether that people, who once existed, could have remained separate from their fellow Protestants among the Ulster English for such a time. If not, then current attempts to rediscover Ulster-Scots identity begin to look more like an elective interest on the part of a Unionist fringe, with the only common denominators not blood or ethnic tradition but not-an-inch politics and loopy evangelicalism (Laird self-identifies with neither). Perhaps it is partly for this reason that "in the wider unionist community the claims of the Scottish tradition have limited appeal".

The peer caused a good deal of controversy during his convenership (to use a suitable Scots word) of the Ulster-Scots Agency, a time when taxpayers North and South were expected to pick up the tab for long-distance taxi fares, including one from Belfast to Dublin. His later resignation came when he put his own money into a musical also in receipt of a grant from the agency, apparently not as an investment but in a well-intentioned attempt to ensure that it went ahead. Both these episodes show that Laird, who had enjoyed a successful career with his eponymous PR firm, struggled to adapt to the necessity of keeping public and private separate. At times his silly-season pronouncements on Northern Ireland language politics seemed like examples of the philosophy that "all publicity is good publicity"; his expenses claims evoked the suspicion that Ulster Scots was merely "our own gibberish", a flag of convenience, a confessional cash cow. At the time, one friend of the Blether Region working to promote Irish even theorised that, while a conventional minority-languages development curve might lead from activism through diplomacy to career, Ulster Scots had cut out the middle part.

Laird also used his bad-good publicity to attack Irish, which sowed more doubts. At huge cost to the taxpayer, he asked "hundreds of trivial parliamentary questions". Ten years ago, some people thought that he was doing it in order to effect a change of personnel (and consequently religion) among the senior civil servants at the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure with whom the agency had to work.

The philosophical renewal implicit in Laird's journey from taxi passenger to musical impresario, high-class sponger to social entrepreneur, shows that, by the end of his tenure at the Ulster-Scots Agency, he had internalised his own Ulster-Scots PR. But it came late in the day.

Only time will tell for what he will be remembered.

Whistling Dixie

2010-12-16T12:37:00.000-08:00

Squinter of the Andersonstown News has an interesting take on Belfast City Council's penchant for funding travel to Nashville, Tennessee as part of the burgeoning Ulster-Scots industry. The writer quite reasonably points out that there are far more people in the United States, Nashville included, who acknowledge an Irish ethnic tradition than an Ulster-Scots one.

That doesn't mean that the Ulster Scots were never there, of course — just that they no longer exist as a recognisable group. As the academic Patrick R. Ireland states in a study available on the Web, "none of the three case countries, the U.S. included, bears witness to a coherent, identifiable Irish Protestant political legacy".

And there are obvious similarities, for example, the brand of evangelicalism prevalent in the United States and Northern Ireland, something that serves to delineate both polities from Europe — including, nowadays, Scotland. As one liberal Northern Ireland politician put it to the Blether Region: "People in America are even nicer than people in Northern Ireland, and even madder too."

Just as professional Ulster Scots are doing their best to soup up the three-wheeled wagon of the traditional dialect into a fully fledged language, they have enthusiastically embraced the paradigm of an evangelical nation spanning the Atlantic. One case in question is the Southron Liberation Media News Network. Its website reports in detail on the work of David Kerr, who as well as for a time being the Northern Ireland face of the National Front is an Ulster nationalist and the former pastor of LOL 1303, the British Israelite lodge founded by Tara's William McGrath and of which Clifford Smyth was a prominent member.

While the contemporary United States, Northern Ireland, British Israelism, the Orange Order, Ulster nationalism and Ulster Scots may be difficult to connect for the academic, for the biographer it can be easy enough.

Ministerial Working Group on Scots

2010-12-12T09:12:00.000-08:00

The report of the Ministerial Working Group on the Scots Language to which so many of us have been looking forward is now available, and it contains many good things. Unfortunately, however, the only mention of "Ulster" in its 29 pages is an erroneous reference to "BBC Ulster" (i.e. BBC Northern Ireland). There is no talk of shared linguistic heritage, nor of economies of scale. While it is true that activism on this side of the Sheuch has taken a bizarre path linguistically, and one often tinged with a sectarian politics that Scotland — which has its own, much smaller problem — rightly wishes to avoid, it is sad that there is no discussion of east-west links.

However, the report's authors have more to worry about than that, since it has already been the subject of attack from the English Tory press in the form of the Daily Telegraph. Bizarrely, one of the Torygraph's quibbles is the wish expressed in the report to promote Scots alongside Gaelic and English as one of three indigenous languages of Scotland. The journalist appears oblivious to how tolerant that position is. After all, if Scots is a language, English is hardly indigenous.

Nelson's Cronies

2010-12-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

In response to a Freedom of Information request from North Down SDLP politician and Scots-speaker Liam Logan, the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure has revealed the membership of the Ulster-Scots Academy Steering Group appointed by the Minister, Nelson McCausland. The six members of the group, which is chaired by former civil servant Wilfie Hamilton, are:

Keith Gamble, a board member of the Ulster-Scots Community Network formerly chaired by the Minister;

Dr. Ivan Herbison, a retired lecturer at the School of English, QUB;

Lee Reynolds, a prominent DUP member;

Dr. William Roulston of the Ulster Historical Foundation and former board member of the Ulster-Scots Agency;

Anne Smyth, an Ulster-Scots activist, wife of Dr. Clifford Smyth (guest speaker at the LOL 688 lodge dinner held at Rockmount Golf Club in November 2008, at which Anne played accordion), and mother of Alan Smyth, a member of the same lodge;

Mark Thompson, former Chairman of the Ulster-Scots Agency and a member of LOL 688.

This means that, while the group boasts a single academic linguist, it includes two people with links to the Minister's own Loyal Orange Lodge, the Cross of Saint Patrick. Furthermore, the fact that as much weight has been accorded to doctoral non-linguists as to doctoral linguists suggests that the Minister intends the academy to duplicate the functions of the Ulster-Scots Agency, while lacking its cross-border membership.

The choice of nominees also underlines the exclusion of the more moderate activists of the Ullans Academy in the ambit of Dr. Ian Adamson, as well as Scots and, unless the Blether Region is very much mistaken, Catholics. As the DCAL official answering the information request states, the appointments "do not need to go through the normal board appointment processes and are not subject to the merit principle".

That's us told, then.

Signs of the Times

2010-12-10T12:06:00.000-08:00

The Belfast Telegraph has an interesting online exhibition of political posters at the moment, one of which is this gem. Clicking on the image will reveal a larger version, at the bottom of which one sees that the definite article has been respelt as "tha". On the poster itself, that innovation has been reversed. Obviously either too much for the politicians or too confusing for the printers.

But enough of the carping. Can anyone think of Scots being used in this way in Scotland?

Grade Inflation

2010-12-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

The BBC reports that Ian Paisley Junior has called for Ballymena to become a city to mark the Queen's sixtieth anniversary on the throne in 2012. In 2002, readers will recall, five cities across the UK were granted city status to mark her Golden Jubilee, one each in England, Scotland and Wales, and two in Northern Ireland, one Protestant (Lisburn) and one Catholic (Newry).

The creation of two cities in Northern Ireland was particularly controversial because there were absolutely no obvious candidates. It should be patent to most folk that, in the common understanding of the term "city" (as in the German Großstadt) — i.e., cathedrals and universities notwithstanding — there is only one city in Northern Ireland: Belfast, and a middling one at that. It would have been far more sensible to remove the title of city from Derry/Londonderry, which is merely a large town; such a step would have had the useful side-effect of neutering the raucous disagreements about its name.

Historically, such hubris has not been limited to the granting of city status. When, in the 1920s, Westminster decided to gift the old Unionist-dominated Parliament of Northern Ireland a permanent home, the local Government enthusiastically took up the offer. The fact that the money ran out before the original plans could be realised is nowadays memorialised in the application of the plural term "Parliament Buildings" to a single edifice, albeit an incongruously grand one.

And, of course, in the field of linguistics there is "the Ulster-Scots language", although local activists are only partly to blame for that. Their Scottish counterparts rightly viewed treating Scots as a language as the first step in its becoming one (again). Unfortunately, the subtleties of language planning eluded that nation's civil servants, who saw the official recognition of Scots as a language as a cost-free alternative to having a policy on it. Eventually, their Northern Ireland counterparts followed suit, in the erroneous understanding that terming Ulster Scots a language was equally plausible, despite the fact of its being barely distinguishable from mainstream Scots in Scotland.

That fatal mistake has set the scene for the continuing failures in public policy on the dialect, to which one might compare attempting to build a spanking neo-classical building such as Stormont on top of foundations that, quite apart from urgently needing to be secured, are only a small fraction of the required size.

Far better if we all came clean on Ulster Scots and set to work researching, collecting, transcribing and recording what there is of it. At one estimate there are 70 volumes of weaver poetry, yet 11 years after the creation of the Ulster-Scots Agency they are still not available in Internet transcription. And the huffing and puffing about language status continues.

It is time that we paid less attention to altering perceptions — and more to altering objective reality.

Tony Blair on "Ullans"

2010-12-02T13:13:00.000-08:00

A friend of the Blether Region kindly typed in Tony Blair's comments on Ulster Scots from his autobiography, which we here reproduce. The action, as if we needed reminding, takes place during the negotiations leading to the Good Friday/Belfast Agreement.

"Now you might think that co-operation on these two issues [trade protection and the Irish language] would be relatively uncontentious. In fact the Unionists screeched to a halt. It turned out there was some obscure language called Ullans, a Scottish dialect spoken in some parts of Ulster which was the Unionists' equivalent of the Irish Langauge. By this time nothing surprised me. They could have suggested siting the Assembly on Mars and I would have started to draft options.

Everyone was now tired and fractious. I had an awful meeting with Bertie [Ahern] and David Trimble, in which Bertie did not take quite the same relaxed view of the importance of Ullans as I did, suggesting that maybe David would like to speak some of the 'fecking thing' so we could hear what it sounded like; and David taking umbrage at the idea that the dialect was a Unionist invention, explaining solemnly and at length the Scottish roots of Ullans with all the sensitivity of a landowner talking to a village idiot."

The book then details how Alastair Campbell made clear to his boss "if I thought he was now going to tell the world's media that contrary to what he had told them earlier, we had failed to secure an agreement after all because of a Scottish dialect called Ullans, and so the war in Northern Ireland would go on, such an announcement, on his part, was more than a tad unlikely."

Make it so, as they say on Star Trek.

Questionable Practices

2010-12-02T13:00:00.000-08:00

Yesterday the BBC reported the results of DUP MLA Trevor Clarke's probing into the translation costs of Northern Ireland's devolved Departments: a combined total of less than £200,000 over the last three years for Irish and Scots.

Given that Irish has had Part III status under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages since 1999, one could be forgiven for asking why this figure isn't much higher. Part of the reason is that Caitríona Ruane (whom the BBC Scotticises as Catriona) took the sensible step of employing two in-house translators, mainly to cater for the growing Gaelscoil sector.

As far as Ulster Scots goes, translations of public documents might not be where academic language planners would start, and there are still considerable questions regarding quality, authenticity, demand and communicative value, but it would be difficult to argue that there is no case whatsoever to be made for the very modest level of official translation taking place.

Needless to say, that is not the attitude expressed by the DUP Assemblyman who tabled the question, although even he admits that the amount is "small, in terms of the total budget" (in fact, according to Northern Bank analysts, the Northern Ireland block grant is currently in the region of £9.3 billion).

Another comparison that one could make is with the cost of asking Assembly Questions about departmental translations. Each Assembly Question costs in the region of £500 to answer. Mr. Clarke's information about the Department of Education, for example, came from two questions, AQW 2079/11, which asked about costs only, and AQW 2082/11, which requested a list of documents translated. If he asked the same two questions of each of the 12 Northern Ireland Departments, the total bill could be as high as £12,000 (2 x 12 x £500), which would cover half a year's salary for one of Caitríona Ruane's Irish-language staff officers.

Nor is Mr. Clarke the only MLA tabling such questions. Indeed, it is perfectly conceivable that, for some Departments and some years, the cost of answering questions about translation will actually be higher than the cost of translating and publishing the documents that forms the questions' subject-matter.

Which brings us to an interesting conclusion. Since commentators are agreed that there are too many MLAs at Stormont, and since there is no real prospect of agreement on reducing their number, one way in which taxpayers' money might be saved is by the imposition of a limit on the number of questions that an MLA might ask. That limit would of course be set generously high, perhaps as a multiple of the average among Assembly Members. And there would be nothing to prevent MLAs pooling their ration; they already co-operate by sharing backroom services and pairing with opposite numbers for votes. Such a policy might actually work to the benefit of some of the less active Members.

The ultimate aim, however, would be to curtail vexatious enquiries of this kind.

As for Mr. Clarke's questions, the Blether Region hopes that they go on to form part of a dossier of evidence in support of a language Act. In the face of such prejudice, which thinks nothing of wasting scarce public resources in an attempt to damage Irish (and undo the UK's settled will in the form of its European Charter declaration), it is becoming ever clearer that the oldest autochthonous language of Northern Ireland needs legislative protection.