Mary Queen of Scots got her head chopped off..

Walking to work this morning past the canal and the sun was just low enough to be cupped in this head of dandelion seeds getting set to drift. When I see dandelions I often think of this childhood chant we would do before popping off their heads. It is also a fantastic play by the current Makar Liz Lochead. This is a work written in Scots, and something happened today which is part of what the play explores, namely the power down South affecting the way things are in Scotland. Let me explain...

In school today a girl was reprimanded for using heid instead of head. She was told that she looked so lovely yet talked so horribly by using the word heid.
When I was a wean in school I was also told off for this, not just at school but at home too. It was deemed "not talking properly", as if there was a correct way to speak our own language. It was seen as "bad English" rather than Scots that had survived generations of educational apartheid when brought off the streets and into the classroom. The words used and the inflections put on words marked you out as a cretin apparently.

That the language has survived this disapproval and still thrives in communities to this day shows how strong it is, but being told off - or even belted- for saying dug instead of dog, or youse instead of you (second person plural) seems sadistic. Worse, when the people telling you to "speak right" actually talk that way themselves then it becomes a very sinister type of self-negation, a way of altering peoples minds to disapprove of the way they communicate and have communicated with one another for generations.

In school we are encouraged to create positive environments for all language brought into school. All language except the Scots, which is still seen by many -today being just one example- as simply speaking English incorrectly. As if English is only the RP version decided by some royal court centuries ago. As if Scots isn't equally a branch of Anglo-Saxon in the same way that English is. The only difference is "English" won. This became the language of where the power lay, and those with the power and the will write the rules. And they are only rules, decided by people; not some divine utterances of the true tongue. It's political.

We will, of course, always be judged by the way we pronounce words and the words we use in our communication with one another. If you say heid you sound thick. Not because you are thick of course, but purely by using that word pronounced a certain way. That Geordie lass of BBC breakfast was complained about as not being bright enough to be the business reporter. Why? Because of the way she spoke. Not her intelligence, merely the inflections she put on her words.

But we will be judged, so this is the lesson to give children about the way they speak. If they go for an interview for a job they will be judged harshly for speaking a certain way. It is in their interests to realise this and tailor the way they speak knowing that they will be assessed on this. We all do this anyway. We talk to our friend differently than we talk to a stranger than we talk to the Doctor than we talk to our Granny than we talk to bank manager than we talk to someone when abroad than when we talk our children.
But let's try and end this instant criticism; knee jerk because it has been slapped into us ourselves over the years, that talking as we do is wrong. How can pronouncing words be "bad", how can it possibly be a qualitative thing?

Language is a living evolving thing. It lives because it is used. How can we put a value judgement on that?