LATEST Clive is appearing at the Edinburgh Festival, 5 August 2024
Scotland’s other national tongue has been misunderstood and (officially) mistreated for centuries. Though weakened by long neglect, Scots stubbornly endures as a rich part of Scotland’s everyday speech and culture. Now belatedly on the verge of official recognition, can Scots be rehabilitated as a “proper” minority language like Gaelic? Dr Clive Young, author of Unlocking Scots: The Secret Life of the Scots Language, believes so and leads you on a quest to unveil the hidden history, surprising linguistic sophistication and feasible future of the language they just couldn’t silence.
Clive’s book Unlocking Scots, published by Luath Press Ltd, about the history, politics and sociolinguistics of the language, was launched on 15 June 2023 at the National Library of Scotland,, Edinburgh. Order directly from Luath, or via Amazon, Waterstones etc. online.
LATEST Clive at the Edinburgh Festival, 5 August 2024
The evening before I joined the great Derrick McClure for a well-attended informal discussion about the book at Aberdeen Central Library.
Article The Times Scotland 11 September 2023 (paywall) https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/speak-up-about-the-scots-language-or-we-ll-lose-it-sw35s9g2n
Article The National 1 October 2023. https://www.thenational.scot/politics/23825262.must-part-revitalise-scots-language/
Extra stuff
Two earlier (free) booklets can be found on scotslanguage.info, a searchable archive I run of Scots news from the press and social media since 2012.
- The Scots Learners’ Grammar, a brief overview of the main features of Scots syntax and
- 550 Scots phrases ye jist canna dae wi’oot.
The video below is a presentation I did in 2021 for schoolkids about the joys of learning languages, and at the beginning explains the Scots language really sparked my interest in languages and linguistics.