There’s just one problem with Ulster Scots. Unlike the Irish language, it doesn’t exist |
Lee Reynolds, Northern Ireland’s new Ulster Scots commissioner, is a thoughtful and intelligent man. Yet even he is wrestling with the fundamental contradiction of his office: the Ulster Scots language does not exist.
A dialect of Scots does exist in parts of Ulster, or at least it did. Scots is often considered a dialect of English. There is truth in the old joke that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, but Ulster Scots does not have an army and a navy. It has public funding and public bodies, of which the commissioner is the latest example. His role is part of a complicated compromise to create an Irish Language Commissioner, agreed under the 2020 New Decade, New Approach deal to restore devolution, although only now being set up.
In an intriguing interview with the Belfast Telegraph on Monday, Reynolds declared Ulster Scots to be a language whose revival and promotion would be at the heart of his work. While it might be assumed he has to say this, Reynolds has been given unique scope to expand his work beyond language. He has previously acknowledged that he and the Irish Language Commissioner, Pól Deeds, do not have “mirror image” roles.
Reynolds’s full job title is the Commissioner for the Ulster Scots and the Ulster British Tradition. Legislation specifies his remit as language, arts and literature.
Does the Ulster Scots in the title refer to a people or a tradition? If the latter, it is part of the........