Language Or Dialect?

Sir, - Nelson McCausland (February 23rd) would be more persuasive as to the linguistic "respectability" of Ulster-Scots if he…

Sir, - Nelson McCausland (February 23rd) would be more persuasive as to the linguistic "respectability" of Ulster-Scots if he had not translated Director as Heich heid yin, a piece of rustic burlesque quite as daft as any of Kevin Myers's scornful flyting, and well calculated to convince anyone that this "West Germanic language" is no more than a dialect. What on earth is the matter with Director, tout court, as a legitimate Ulster-Scots word? It is, of course, a word of Latin origin, and maybe therefore suspect; but classical Lowland Scots of the 16th-century, from which, I take it, Ulster-Scots immediately derived, was a very Latinate tongue indeed.

To quote no more than the title page of a great Scots renaissance play, dealing (aptly enough) with the affairs of a national parliament: "Ane Satyre of the Thrie Estaits, in commendation of vertew and vituperation of vyce. Maid be Sir David Lindesay of the Mont, alias Lyon King of Armes . . . At Edinburgh printed be Robert Charteris 1602."

Note: Lindesay wrote commendation, not gude speich frae a lustie mou, and vituperation, not ill speich frae a sair wame, or any other such kailyard clatter. If Ulster-Scots is really to become part and parcel of public discourse in and around the Northern Assembly to be used "baith by lawit folk and leirit" (and I'd love to hear it happen), a very careful balance of educated sophistication and demotic abruptness will need to be observed. - Yours, etc.,

John Arden, St Bridget's Place Lower, Galway.