A SCOTS language expert has launched an impassioned rant on why the country’s native language is dying out.
Len Pennie is an engagement officer for the Scots Language Centre, and is a firm believer in keeping the language alive through daily ‘word of the day’ videos for her social media followers.
The 23-year-old recently taught followers the Scots word ‘bewave’ – meaning to hide or conceal something – which left one user baffled.
The user asked Len “Are you from Edinburgh? Because I’m from Glasgow and I’ve never heard that word”, which garnered a passionate reply from Len.
In a video response, Len begins: “I get this question at least once a day, and it’s funny because it’s always a different place.
“It’s either ‘Are you from Edinburgh? Because I’m from Glasgow and I’ve never heard of this’ or ‘Are you from Glasgow? Because I’m from Edinburgh and I’ve never heard this word‘.
“‘Are you from Dundee? Because I’m from Inverness and I’ve never heard this word’. ‘Are you from Fife? Because I’m from the Borders and I’ve never heard this word’.
“Those guesses are of course wrong because as the Lord tells us, I was sent from hell as a linguistic witch to poison the minds of English speakers – I’m just kidding.
“In all seriousness, what you are looking at is a partially successful attempted eradication.
“I know you don’t know these words, you weren’t meant to know these words, these words were meant to be beaten out of the children and never spoken of again.
“You take one part punishment, physically for doing something, you take another part cultural and social shaming for doing something and when you bake it all together what you end up with is a generational gap in knowledge.
“And after a few generations of the word your granny used not getting passed on to your mammy and the words your mammy used not getting passed on to you and the words you used are not getting passed onto your weans – you can see why you don’t know some of these words.
“And that’s how you eradicate a language and these words just get relegated to the past, never to be seen, heard or used again. Not on my watch!
“If you see one of my videos and you like the word, feel free to use it. If you don’t like the word, there’s no pressure to use it.
“What I’m aiming to do with the word of the day is not to tell you words that you already know because I did that at the start, you know what I mean?
“I did all the words and phrases that everybody knows, what I’m aiming to do with the Scots word of the day is to create a resource to learn the words that you should have learned.
“The words that we should have used, the words that shouldn’t have been beaten out of children or shamed out of adults.
“These are the words that your granny and your mammy and your wean should feel free to use and to always have used.”
Len’s inspiring clip was uploaded to social media on Wednesday with the caption: “You weren’t meant to know these words.”
The video has since received over 38,000 likes and more than 760 comments from emboldened users.
One user wrote: “In my hoose we use Doric, Scots and English. Got to keep our native tongues (a wee one speaking Doric is cute).”
Another said: “I can never get over the fact that my granda (from Northern Ireland) had to learn Latin in school but not Irish.”
A third joked: “Are you sure you’re from Scotland? Because I’m from the U.S. and I’ve never heard most of these.”
Another replied: “I refuse to be corrected when I speak Scots because it’s not ‘proper English’ that’s the point. I’m not English.”
Speaking today Len, who is based in Fife, said: “Scots has so many varieties, dialects and different ways of saying or spelling things because of a lack of infrastructure and standardisation.
“It’s not a bad thing and it’s to be expected from a minoritised language.
“Sometimes the influences come from other languages, for example Shetland words have Norn influences.
“Other times it’ll be because farming and fishing and mining communities will maintain strong links to words.
“‘Ken’ used to be used in Glasgow, now people regularly comment ‘We’ve never used it here’.
“But with Scots sadly a lot of words fall into a generational gap. Words might not get passed on in some families and within a few generations, the word falls away.”
The earliest records of the Scots language dates all the way back to the 14th Century and it was reported in the 2011 consensus that 1.5 million people can speak Scots.
However in 2021, the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS), advised members to avoid using Scots as it was seen as ‘non-inclusive’ to those from other UK regions and beyond.
