Scotland and me: Val McDermid stands up for the Scots language

It may surprise you to hear that the writing project that’s given me most delight this past year has been the translation of two fairy stories into Scots.

It wis braw.

The single thing that always tells me I am home is when I hear Scots around me — in the street, on the bus, in the shops, in the pubs.

But for most of my life, I’ve been conditioned to believe the way I spoke was not proper English. There was a good reason for that — my birth tongue is Scots, one of the three native languages of Scotland alongside English and Gaelic. It has common roots with English but they grew apart in the Middle Ages and Scots now also has a range of dialects — Lallans and Doric, for example.

My heart rejoiced recently at the news that Scots singer and poet Iona Fyfe persuaded Spotify to recognise Scots as a language. And then I was cast down almost immediately when she revealed that though her singing in Scots provoked no noticeable hostility, when she posted on social media in her natural speech, she was the victim of a troll pile-on. She was called ignorant, a whore and a bitch for using the language that almost a third of Scots reported in the 2011 census that they could speak.

It took me back to my own experiences with language. I spent a lot of time with my maternal grandparents when I was wee, and my grandmother had a rich and varied Scots at her disposal. She would “tak the gait hame fae the kirk”, and be quick to “spier whi wis wrang sin ah wis greetin”. She’d “ayeways red the hoose up” for visitors and send me “oot tae the Store van for the messages”.

It wasn’t just the words that were different. The grammatical constructions were, too. My favourite? “Ah used to could dae that but ah’m ower stechy noo.” (“I used to be able to do that, but I’m insufficiently limber now.”)

At school, we were told off when we slipped into Scots. Dialect words collided with the red pencil if they appeared in our written work and the only time they were permitted in our speech was in January, when we were practising our recitations for Burns Night.

Even our national poet wasn’t immune. Although most of his finest work is written in guid braid Scots, much of his verse is in more formal English. He said himself that his ideas were more barren in English. But Burns had learnt the importance of being bilingual.

Inside the classroom, we tidied up our diction. But outside, I spoke guid braid Fife, ken. I never had trouble making myself understood until I went to university in Oxford.

I’m most frightfully sorry, Miss McDermid. I haven’t understood a word you’ve said

I still recall the hot humiliation of my first tutorial. I’d sweated over my essay on Gerard Manley Hopkins’ “The Wreck of the Deutschland”. (See? Forty-seven years later, I still remember exactly what I was talking about.) I began to read it to my tutor, who frowned. She held up a hand to stop me and said in cut-glass tones, “I’m most frightfully sorry, Miss McDermid. I haven’t understood a word you’ve said. Might you begin again, and a little more slowly this time?”

Mortified, I understood that if I was going to survive three years here, I was going to have to learn to speak English.

Fortunately, I have a musical ear and I quickly managed to mimic what I heard around me. The only person who ever wanted me to speak in my natural voice was the tutor who took our class in linguistics and liked to have an exemplar of exotic dialect.

I can still recall the relief of hearing my own tongue on the train from Edinburgh to Kirkcaldy at the end of my first term. Since then, I’ve switched easily — and without calculation — between what my partner calls “your Radio 4 Scottish accent” and how I speak to my friends at the fitba.

Thankfully, writers are beginning to reclaim their tongue. We drop native words into our English text. We even win the Booker Prize . . . But still, many Scots struggle with the vernacular on the page.

I suspect part of the blame lies with the development of a widespread education system in Scotland. As early as the 17th century, every parish was obliged to have a school where possible. The principle of universal education flourished, though not always its practice. The Scottish universities traditionally drew their student body from a wider social pool than other countries in Europe. But the texts they used were in English. Or Latin. Certainly not Scots.

And so if Scots writers, philosophers, economists and scientists wanted a readership, they knew they had to turn to their second language on the page. We all became simultaneous translators of the voices in our heads.

Maybe not for much longer . . . 

Val McDermid’s latest novel is “Still Life”

Follow @FTMag on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first.