Sir, - How encouraging it was to read your supplement on the links between Scotland and Ireland today (The Irish Times, November 30th). However I must confess to being disappointed that your coverage of language links almost entirely excluded Ulster-Scots, the honourable exception being President McAleese's fine and unprovoked advocacy of this tongue.
Ulster-Scots (recognised as a dialect of the Scots language) is spoken by approximately as many people in Ireland as speak Scots Gaelic in Scotland (which as you point out is mutually comprehensible to a speaker of Irish Gaelic). One of its main heartlands is East Donegal, and the "English" of the rest of that country cannot be studied without reference to the language of Burns, or, closer to home, Thompson or Orr.
When is the Irish Government going to recognise Ulster-Scots as a minority language? And how will they support and encourage the language in the hamekintra of the north-west? After all, the responsibilities of the Belfast Agreement explicitly extend to this issue. - Yours, etc., David Polley,
Gardiner Place, Dublin 1.