#ulster-scots

[scotianostra]

On December 17th 1907 William Thomson, Lord Kelvin died.

Kelvin is best known today for inventing the international system of absolute temperature that bears his name. He made important contributions to electricity, magnetism, thermodynamics, hydrodynamics, geophysics and several other fields.

As an engineer, he was responsible for laying the first Atlantic telegraph cable, solving many technical problems along the way. He made his fortune designing and manufacturing instruments for the new electrical industries and the Royal Navy.

Kelvin was also a pioneer of international standardization, an interest that stemmed from his deep involvement in the scientific and practical aspects of electrical engineering. His work was fundamental in the development of today's electrical units and standards. In 1906, he became the first President of theInternational Electrotechnical Commission {IEC.}

Given Kelvin’s many accomplishments, it is no wonder that his one of his biographers, Alexander Russell, wrote, ��His work lives and will continue to live. To him it has been given to make history which will live so long as intelligent man survives on earth. As the years roll on our indebtedness to him increases.”

Why then is he largely unheralded today? A few years ago, the recipient of an IEC Thomas Edison Award joked that he was glad not to have won the more prestigious IEC Kelvin Award because all his friends had heard of Edison.

This is reflected in popular culture. According to the Movie Database, there are at least 22 films that involve Albert Einstein in some capacity. There are only two films that refer to Kelvin.

The first is the 2004 version of Around the World in 80 Days. It portrays Kelvin as a sociopath, who throws his enemies out of upstairs windows, and arch conservative who despises innovation and ambition in equal measure. In the film, Kelvin is determined by hook or by crook to thwart the hero’s quest to circumnavigate the globe in record time. This is somewhat ironic for a man who was “not just a titan of science but also a pioneer of harnessing innovation and applying it successfully in business”.

When Kelvin is remembered, more often than not it is for the apparent hubris he displayed in dismissing some of the scientific discoveries of his time. He really did say, “X-rays are a hoax”. That is only part of the story, however. When Wilhelm Röntgen sent Kelvin a copy of his manuscript and x-ray photographs, Kelvin immediately changed his mind. "I need not tell you that when I read the paper I was very much astonished and delighted,” we wrote back “I can say no more now than to congratulate you warmly on the great discovery you have made.

Alongside the half-truths are one or two outright fibs, such as the notorious quote regularly misattributed to Kelvin: “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement”. There ishowever no record of Kelvin ever said any such thing.

His contemporaries held him in such high esteem that when he died, in 1907, they laid him to rest next to Sir Isaac Newton, in Westminster Abbey.

[penis-flytrap]

@lovely-lady-fox I meant to publish this a few days ago, but forgot... It's been sitting in my drafts folder instead 😅

I thought maybe seeing Healers-era Johnny in full gypsy mode might help lift your blahhhh moods a little bit? 😉 So here's some videos of him performing and singing with his childhood hero, Scottish folk musician Bert Jansch:

[jewish-sideblog]

So who used to live in Ireland until Irish people invaded the country and ethnically-cleansed the non-Irish people so that they can now be the new majority in their ethno-state?

The Fir Bolg and the Tuatha Dé Danann, obviously

[victusinveritas]

[arctic-hands]

Related to my tags on the Irish American reblog, how long have bastardized "Celtic" crosses been neo-Nazi symbols? I wasn't aware of this stupid use until I was an adult and my father was equally unaware until I learned about it, and in our Celtic (American) Pride we often used Celtic cross imagery in decor and accessories. Granted these usually did resemble actually woven/knotted crosses (which by no means meant they were authentic. At best a few came from local Celtic Pride fests–which as I said in those tags was plagued by Confederate and Nazi imagery), but most of them came from like JoAnn's or Michael's or Walmart whenever Saint Paddy's Day rolled around. That said, the woven pattern of a Celtic cross is a bitch to draw especially when you have yet to nurture or be nurtured in any art skills, so when my borderline-Gothic ass would doodle graveyards in my school notebooks I would often doodle simplified Celtic crosses as grave markers, which unfortunately just meant a simple cross with a simple circle in it, unfortunately reminiscent of the neo-Nazi symbol.

Me and my family were staunchly Indiana liberals (to be fair that wasn't that shocking in our democrat enclave city) and have only become more leftist as time goes on, so those who knew me well would know I didn't mean anything by it, but like I have to wonder/worry that those who didn't know me well (like most of my classmates. I was pretty lonely in high school) or people who would briefly visit my home or come across us while we were wearing Celtic pins that day or something came away with the wrong impression. I'm especially dismayed at the thought that the kids I knew to be actual neo-Nazis might thought I was one of them

For the record I left school in like twenty eleven and had been doodling graveyards for years and wearing Celtic imagery for even longer. I can't really find out when the "Celtic" cross became a dogwhistle

[breitzbachbea]

girl you ship scotwales?

crying because Kat and Riva are engwales shippers. I know a scoteng shipper and I'm a ScotIre shipper.

shipping the whole uk together,

YES, big fan, but specifically with my OC version! My Wales, called Tristan Mattock, is less of an uwu bean and more like. The sporty, friendly, if also dead tired UK brother. I wanna redesign him to give him more of a rugby player build, too.

Also, he has three mini pet dragons in the hetaverse and three cats in LFLS, who're called Rhew, Ulef and Poki.

[terfywho]

i think they should do all of logans funeral in doric. just for a laugh.

[prairie-tales]

Reference, info, etc.

Acc. to Grant, between 1713 and 1775 more than a quarter of a million Ulster Scots and their kinfolk from the Scottish Lowlands migrated to America and became known as the Scotch-Irish. (p. 121).

[tyrannuspitch]

the bbc is like for the sake of the incredibly hard-won peace in northern ireland we have a legal and moral duty to represent the scots language on television. this is very important. sacred even. we are the bbc and if we could marry supposedly unbiased journalism with a significant bias towards britishness we would. and then you look at their "scots" tv shows and they are still not in fact representing the scots language on television

[arctic-hands]

[Image Description: first image: stock photo of three black t-shirts. The first one says on top "Irish By Blood American By Birth" followed by the American flag (thirteen horizontal stripes alternating between red and white, a blue box in the upper left corner containing fifty white stars) merging with the Irish flag (three vertical stripes of green, white, and orange), with the bottom text saying "Patriot By Choice". The second shirt has a fading out Thin Blue Line flag used by American police (a vertical American flag with the red replaced by black, usually with the third white stripe from the right replaced with a blue line, but on this shirt the blue line has been replaced with green, followed by a white stripe and then an orange stripe). The third flag has a somewhat transparent police badge superimposed over the Irish flag, with the word "Irish" up top in big letters, and smaller letters I can't make out on the bottom. Second image: a screenshot of D.W. from the cartoon Arthur (an anthropomorphic animal nominally called an aardvark but lacking the long nose, leaving a flat, tanned fur face and with darker human-like hair in a bob), looking at someone/thing offscreen with a look of disbelief and/or disgust on her face. End I.D.]

Irish people, I NEED to know: What do you think of these weird shirts that rednecks in my home town wear?

[scotianostra]

Anne Louise McIlroy, was born on 11th November 1874 in County Antrim.

Usually known as Louise McIlroy, she may not be Scottish, but she was heavily involved in our history. Her father, Dr James McIlroy, was a medical practitioner in Ballycastle. She shared her father's enthusiasm for Medicine and came to Glasgow University in 1894 to do a medical degree. She was one of the first women medical graduates, winning class prizes in both medicine and pathology before obtaining her Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery followed by an MD in 1900.

After further postgraduate work throughout Europe specialising in Gynaecology and Obstetrics she was appointed Gynaecological Surgeon at the Victoria Infirmary in Glasgow, a post she held from 1906 to 1910.

At the outbreak of the First World War she and other female medical graduates, including Elsie Inglis, offered their services to the government. They were declined on grounds of the battlefield being no place for women. Undeterred and determined to help with the war effort this brave group of women applied to the French government and, on being accepted, set up the Scottish Women's Hospital for Foreign Service. Dame McIlroy commanded a unit of the hospital at Troyes in France before being posted to Serbia and three years later Salonika.

During her time in Salonika she established a nurses training school for Serbian girls and oversaw the establishment of the only orthopaedic centre in the Eastern Army. She finished her war service as a Surgeon at a Royal Army Medical Corps hospital in Constantinople. She won many awards in recognition of her services during the war including a French M daille des Epidemies, French Croix de Guerre avec palme, Serbian Order of St Sava and the Serbian Red Cross. In 1920 she was appointed to the Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE).

A contemporary of Dr McIlroy's later noted that she "is one of a little band of notable women chief medical officers who made the name of the Scottish Women's Hospitals synonymous with surgical brilliance... on three fronts during the war."

After the war Dr McIlroy worked with the army, as assistant surgeon at the 82nd General Hospital in Constantinople. In 1921 she became the first woman chosen for a professorship in the London School of Medicine for Women. Her salary, £2,000, was the highest paid to a woman for university work.

Louise became Dame McIlroy in 1929, and helped to organise medical services for the Second World War. She and Jane retired to Girvan. Dame Louise died in 1968.

[tmarshconnors]

Happy 12th July 2024!

And here's to King William of glorious fame And the Protestant Boys who rejoice in his name And here's to the Lodges of Orange and Blue For they are the boys that are loyal and true NO SURRENDER! Happy Orange Day! On this date, July 12, in 1690, Protestant William of Orange, a Dutchman, defeated Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland. William became King William III of England, Scotland and Ireland, nicknamed as 'King Billy, ensuring that the British monarch would always be a Protestant.

[arctic-hands]

My French mother who was adopted by an American Navy officer who ended up with PTSD from the Vietnam war, and grew up on American military bases around the world, who would end up marrying one American man and another after that–the second of whom was extremely liberal for Indiana, raised three children in America over the course of like thirty years–one of whom was severely sick and disabled and then came out as queer at age eleven, then moved to the U.K. on her French passport before Brexit,

Ended up being an English monarchy-loving centrist who was of the opinion that neo-Nazis had the same right to free-speech as everyone else, and it took my making her cry by pointing out after a Pride event was confronted by armed neo-Nazis that the Nazis wanted and still want people like me (and other communities as well) dead and eradicated before she finally got over that last opinion

[irish-dress-history]

Truth.

Like, I want to be able to write about the Dungiven outfit, but I'm afraid that the things I say will be taken as support for a particular side in the Unionist vs Republican conflict or construed as invalidating as one or more ethnic groups currently living in Northern Ireland. Which is. freaking. ridiculous.

It is well-established fact that there were Scottish, Irish, and English people living in Ulster in the 17th century. The cultural affiliation of one set of 17th c. clothes belonging to one person should not legitimize or delegitimize any of the groups living in 21st c. Northern Ireland.

But unfortunately, the cultural identity of the Dungiven outfit has already been politicized more than once.

Really cool how in the context of northern irish history people have been blowing each other up over their conceptualisation of history for literally hundreds of years but also comparatively few people want to engage with northern irish history as history rather than politics because [atq stewart voice] in northern ireland all history is applied history. the sea monster

[anarchotolkienist]

you’re attacking that neopagan kind of birthstone post about druid plants, but could you please elaborate or at least clarify the explicit trope that is being used that has been historically weaponized?

I used to spend about a good third of my time on this godforsaken website attacking that idea, but sure, I'll do it again. This will be a bit of an effortpost, so I'll stick it under the readmore

There is a notion of 'celts' or Gaels as being magicial and somehow deeply in touch with nature and connected to pre-Christian worldviews that the people who decided to make up the "Celtic tree astrology" used. This is also why Buffy used Irish Gaelic as the language of the demons, why Warhammer uses Gaelic as Elvish, why garbled Scottish Gaelic is used by Wiccans as the basis for their new religious construct, why people call themselves Druids to go an say chants in bad Welsh in Stonehenge, or Tursachan Chalanais, or wherever, etc etc. This stuff is everywhere in popular culture today, by far the dominant view of Celtic language speaking peoples. Made up neopagan nonsense is the only thing you find if you go looking for Gaelic folklore, unless you know where to look, and so on and so on. I could multiply examples Endless, and in fact have throughout the lifespan of this blog, and probably will continue to.

To make a long history extremely brief (you can ask me for sources on specifics, or ask me to expand if you're interested), this is directly rooted in a mediaeval legalistic discussion in Catholic justifications for the expansionist policies of the Normans, especially in Ireland, who against the vigourous protestation of the Church in Ireland claimed that the Gaelic Irish were practically Pagan in practice and that conquest against fellow Christians was justified to bring them in like with the Church. That this was nonsense I hope I don't need to state. Similar discourses about the Gaels in Scotland exist at the same time, as is clear from the earliest sources we have postdating the Gaelic kingdom of Alba becoming Scotland discussing the 'coastal Scots' - who speak Ynglis (early Scots) and are civilised - and the 'forest Scots' (who speak 'Scottis' (Middle Gaelic) and have all the hallmarks of barbarity. This discourse of Gaelic savagery remains in place fairly unchanged as the Scottish and then British crowns try various methods for integrating Gaeldom under the developing early state, provoking constant conflict and unrest, support certain clans and chiefs against others and generally massively upset and destabilise life among the Gaels both in Scotland and Ireland. This campaign, which is material in root but has a superstructure of Gaelic savagery and threat justifying it develops through attempts at assimilation, more or less failed colonial schemes in Leòdhas and Ìle, the splitting of the Gaelic Irish from the Gaelic Scots through legal means and the genocide of the Irish Gaels in Ulster, eventually culminates in the total ban on Gaelic culture, ethnic cleansing and permanent military occupation of large swathes of Northern Scotland, and the destruction of the clan system and therefore of Gaelic independence from the Scottish and British state, following the last rising in 1745-6.

What's relevant here is that the attitude of Gaelic barbarity, standing lower on the civilisational ladder than the Anglo Saxons of the Lowlands and of England, was continuously present as a justification for all these things. This package included associations with the natural world, with paganisms, with emotion, and etc. This set of things then become picked up on by the developing antiquarian movement and early national romantics of the 18th century, when the Gaels stop being a serious military threat to the comfortable lives of the Anglo nobility and developing bourgeoise who ran the state following the ethnic cleansing after Culloden and permanent occupation of the Highlands (again, ongoing to this day). They could then, as happened with other colonised peoples, be picked up on and romanticised instead, made into a noble savage, these perceived traits which before had made them undesirable now making them a sad but romantic relic of an inexorably disappearing past. It is no surprise that Sir Walter Scott (a curse upon him and all his kin) could make Gaels the romantic leads of his pseudohistorical epics at the exact same time that Gaels were being driven from their traditional lands in their millions and lost all traditional land rights. These moves are related. This tradition is what's picked up on by Gardner when he decides to use mangled versions of Gaelic Catholic practice (primarily) as collected by the Gaelic folklorist Alasdair MacIlleMhìcheil as the coating for Wicca, the most influential neo-pagan "religion" to claim a 'Celtic' root and the base of a lot of oncoming nonsense like that Celtic Tree Astrology horseshit that started this whole thing, and give it a pagan coat of paint while also adding some half-understood Dharmic concepts (three-fold law anyone?) and a spice of deeply racist Western Esotericism to the mix. That's why shit like that is directly harmful, not just historically but in the present total blotting out of actually existing culture of Celtic language speakers and their extremely precarious communities today.

If you want to read more, I especially recommend Dr. Silke Stroh's work Gaelic Scotland in the Colonial Imaginary, Dr. Aonghas MacCoinnich's book Plantation and Civility in the North-Atlantic World, the edited collection Mio-rún Mór nan Gall on Lowland-Highland divide, the Gaelic writer known in English as Ian Crichton Smith's essay A real people in a real place on these impacts on Gaelic speaking communities in the 20th century, Dr. Donnchadh Sneddons essay on Gaelic racial ideas present in Howard and Lovecrafts writings, and Dr. James Hunter's The Making of the Crofting Community for a focus on the clearings of Gaels after the land thefts of the late 18th and early 19th century.

@grimdr an do chaill mi dad cudromach, an canadh tu?

[meichenxi]

UK accent bias, discrimination, minority languages and the question of the 'default, normal' english speaker

today I came across something overtly that is usually a covert problem, and I wanted to take a chance to talk about the questions it raises about what it means to be 'normal' and speak 'normal english' in an anglocentric, global world.

let's start at the beginning. I was aimlessly googling around and came across this article, discussing ergodic literature:

I hope that you will see what angered me right away, but if not:

brogue? inaccessible, insufferable brogue? that is so difficult to read you might want to relieve your frustrations by harming a housepet, or striking a loved one?

what????? the fuck??????

my dearly beloathed. this is not a made up sci-fi language. this was not written for your convenience.

this is the glaswegian dialect.

this is how it is written. scots, which is very similar to this, is a language whose speakers have been systematically taught to change and hide and modify their speech, to not speak it in the classroom, to conform. this is NOT comparable to any of the made-up dialects or ways of writing in cloud atlas or any other specularative fiction. the suggestion of ir is deeply insulting.

(the line between various 'dialects' and 'languages' I speak about here is by definition sometimes political, sometimes arbitrary, and often very thin. what goes for the glaswegian dialect here in terms of discrimination goes for scots in general - which is, in fact, even more 'inaccessible' than glaswegian because it has a greater quantity of non-english and therefore non-'familiar' words. speakers of different englishes will face more or less discrimination in different circumstances. caveat over.)

you can find it on twitter, in books, in poetry; and more than that, on the streets and in living rooms, in places that this kind of england-first discrimination hasn't totally eradicated.

an imporant note - this book in question is called Naw Much of a Talker, and it was written originally in Swiss-German and then translated into Glaswegian to preserve similar themes and questions of language and identity. rather than detracting from anything I'm saying, I think the fact this is a translated piece of fiction adds to it - it has literally been translated so it is more accessible, and the article writer did not even realise. it also highlights the fact as well that these are questions which exist across the globe, across multiple languages, of the constant tension everywhere between the 'correct' high language and the 'incorrect, backward' 'low' language or dialect. these are all interesting questions, and someone else can tackle them about german and swiss german -

but I am going to talk today about scots and english, because that is how the writer of this article engaged with this piece and that is the basis upon which they called it 'insufferable brogue', the prejudice they have revealed about scots is what I want to address.

so here, today, in this post: let's talk about it. what is 'normal' english, why is that a political question, and why should we care?

as we begin, so we're all on the same page, I would like to remind everyone that england is not the only country in the united kingdom, and that the native languages of the united kingdom do not only include english, but also:

scots

ulster scots (thank you @la-galaxie-langblr for the correction here!!)

scottish gaelic

welsh

british sign language

irish

anglo-romani

cornish

shelta

irish sign language

manx

northern ireland sign language

and others I have likely forgotten

there are also countless rich, beautiful dialects (the distinction between dialect and language is entirely political, so take this description with a pinch of salt if you're outside of these speaker communities), all with their own words and histories and all of them, yes all of them, are deserving of respect.

and there are hundreds and thousands of common immigrant languages, of languages from the empire, and of englishes across the globe that might sound 'funny' to you, but I want you to fucking think before you mock the man from the call centre: why does india speak english in the first place? before mocking him, think about that.

because it's political. it's ALL political. it's historical, and it's rooted in empire and colonialism and all you need to do is take one look at how we talk about Black language or languages of a colonised country to see that, AAVE or in the UK, multi-cultural london english, or further afield - the englishes of jamaica, kenya, india. all vestiges of empire, and all marked and prejudiced against as 'unintelligent' or lesser in some way.

and closer to home - the systematic eradication and 'englishification' of the celtic languages. how many people scottish gaelic now? cornish? manx? how many people speak welsh? and even within 'english' itself - how many people from a country or rural or very urban or immigrant or working class or queer background are discriminated against, because of their english? why do you think that is?

if you think that language isn't political, then you have likely never encountered discrimination based on how you, your friends, or your family speak.

you are speaking from a position of privilege.

'but it's not formal' 'but it's not fit for the classroom' 'but it sounds silly'. you sound silly, amy. I have a stereotypically 'posh' english accent, and I can tell you for a fact: when I go to scotland to visit my family, they think I sound silly too. but in the same way as 'reverse racism' isn't a fucking thing - the difference is that it's not systemic. when I wanted to learn gaelic, my grandmother - who speaks gaelic as her own native language - told me, no, you shouldn't do that. you're an english girl. why would you want to learn a backward language like gaelic?

discrimination against non-'english' englishes is pervasive, systematic and insidious.

it is not the same as being laughed at for being 'posh'. (there's more about class and in-group sociolinguistics here, but that's for another post)

and who told you this? where is this information from? why do you think an 'essex girl' accent sounds uneducated? why do you think a northern accent sound 'honest' and 'salt of the earth'? what relationship does that have with class? why does a standard southern british english sound educated and 'intelligent'? who is in charge? who speaks on your television? whose words and accents do you hear again and again, making your policies, shaping your future? who speaks over you?

think about that, please.

and before anyone says: this is so true except for X lol - I am talking about exactly that dialect. I am talking about that accent you are mocking. I am talking about brummie english, which you think sounds funny. I'm talking about old men in the west country who you think sound like pirates, arrrrr.

(actually, pirates sound like the west country. where do you the 'pirate accent' came from? devon was the heart of smuggling country in the uk.)

so. to this person who equated a book written in scots, a minority and marginalised language, to being 'insufferable, inaccessible brogue':

and also to anyone who is from the UK, anyone who is a native english speaker, and anyone abroad, but especially those of you who think your english is 'natural', who have never had to think about it, who have never had to code-switch, who have never had to change how they sound to fit in:

it might be difficult to read - for you. it might be strange and othering - to you.

but what is 'inaccessible' to you is the way that my family speaks - your english might be 'inaccessible' to them. so why does your 'inaccessible' seem to weigh more than theirs?

and why does it bother you, that you can't understand it easily in the first go? because you have to try? or because perhaps, just perhaps, dearly beloathed author of this article, after being catered to your entire life and shown your language on screen, constantly - you are finally confronted by something that isn't written for you.

and for the non-uk people reading this. I would like you to think very carefully about what a 'british accent' means to you.

there is no such thing. let me say it louder:

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A BRITISH ACCENT

there are a collection of accents and languages and dialects, each with different associations and stereotypes. the clever aristocrat, the honest farmer, the deceitful *racial slur*. there are accents, languages and dialects that you hear more than others because of political reasons, and there are accents, languages and dialects which are more common than others because of discrimination, violence and the path of history.

if you say 'british accent', we - in the UK - don't know exactly what you mean. much more than the US, because the english-speaking people have been here longer, we have incredibly different accents just fifty miles away from one another.

but we can guess. you probably don't mean my grandmother's second-language english - even though, by american conversations about race, she is the whitest person you could possibly find. you don't mean my brother, who sounds like a farmer.

you mean my accent. tom hiddleston's accent. benedict cumberbatch. dame judy dench. sir ian mckellen. and they are all wonderful people - but what sort of people are they, exactly? what sort of things do they have in common? why is it that you associate their way of speaking with all of the charming eloquence of 'dark academia' or high levels of education, and my family's english with being 'backward' or 'country bumpkins' or 'uneducated' or, more insidiously, 'salt-of-the-earth good honest folk'?

we are an old country with old prejudices and old classes and old oppression and old discrimination and old hate. my brother speaks with a 'farmer' west country accent; my aunt with a strong doric accent that most english people cannot understand; my father with a mockable birmingham accent; my grandmother with a gaelic accent, because despite the fact that she is from the UK, as scottish as you can get, english is not her first language.

these people exist. my grandmother is a real person, and she is not a dying relic of a forgotten time. her gaelic is not something to drool over in your outlander or braveheart or brave-fuelled scottish romanticism, the purity and goodness of the 'celt' - but there are fewer people like her now. and I would like to invite everyone to think about why that is the case.

if you don't know, you can educate yourself - look up the highland clearances, for a start, or look at the lives of anglo-romani speakers in the UK and the discrimination they face, or irish speakers in northern ireland. like many places, we are a country that has turned inward upon itself. there will always be an 'other'.

and then there's me. raised in southern england and well-educated and, however you want to call it, 'posh'. so why is it that it is my voice, and not theirs, which is considered typically british all over the world?

I think you can probably figure out that one by yourself.

when you talk about the 'british accent', this is doing one of two things. it's serving to perpetuate the myth that the only part of the UK is england, rather than four countries, and the harmful idea that it is only england in the UK that matters. (and only a certain type of people in england, at that.)

secondly, it serves to amalgamate all of the languages and accents and dialects - native or poor or immigrant or colonial - into one, erasing not only their history and importance, but even their very existence.

dearly beloathed person on the internet. I have no idea who you are. but the language scots exists. I'm sorry it's not convenient for you.

but before I go, I would like to take a moment to marvel. 'insufferable, inaccessible brogue'? what assumptions there are, behind your words!

is it 'insufferable' to want to write a story in the language you were raised in? is it 'inaccessible' to want to write a story in the shared language of your own community?

I don't think it is.

I think it takes a special sort of privilege and entitlement to assume that - the same one that assumes whiteness and Americanness and Englishness and able-bodiedness and cisness and maleness and straightness as being the 'standard' human experience, and every single other trait as being a deviance from that, an othering. that's the same entitlement that will describe Turning Red as a story about the chinese experience - but not talk about how Toy Story is a story about the white american middle class experience.

people do not exist for your ease of reading. they do not exist to be 'accessible'. and - what a strange thing, english reader, to assume all books are written for you, at all.

and despite the fact that the text that prompted this was written by one group of white people, translated into the language of another group, and critiqued by a third - this is a conversation about racism too, because it is the same sort of thinking and pervasive stereotyping which goes into how white people and spaces view Black language and language of people of colour around the world. it's about colonialism and it's about slavery and it's aboutsegregation and othering and the immigrant experience and it's about the history of britain - and my god, isn't that a violent one. it's inseparable from it. language is a tool to signify belonging, to shut people out and lock people in. it's a tool used to enforce that othering and discrimination and hate on a systemic level, because it says - I'm different from you. you're different from me. this post is focusing more on the native languages of the UK, but any question of 'correct language' must inevitably talk about racism too, because language is and has always been a signifier of group belonging, and a way to enforce power.

it is used to gatekeep, to enforce conformity, to control, to signify belonging to a particular group, to other. talking about language 'correctness' is NOT and never CAN be a neutral thing.

it reminds me of a quote, and I heard this second hand on twitter and for the life of me cannot remember who said it or exactly how it goes, but the gist of it was a queer writer addressing comments saying how 'universal' their book was, and saying - no, this is a queer book. if you want to find themes and moments in it that are applicable to your 'default' life, 'universals' of emotion and experience, go ahead. but I have had to translate things from the norm my entire life, to make them relatable for me. this time, you do the translation.

I do not speak or write scots or glaswegian, but I grew up reading it and listening to it (as well as doric and gaelic in smaller measures, which are still familiar to me but which I can understand less). for me, that passage is almost as easy to read as english - and the only reason it is slightly more difficult is because, predictably, I don't have a chance to practice reading scots very often at all. it isn't inaccessible to me.

(I was about to write: can you imagine looking at a book written in french, and scowling, saying, 'this is so insufferably foreign!' and then point out how ridiculous that would be. but then I realise - foreign film, cinema, lyrics increasingly in english, reluctance to read the subtitles, the footnotes, to look things up, to engage in any active way in any piece of media. this is an attitude which even in its most mockable, most caricature-like form, is extremely prevalent online. *deep sigh*)

because. what is 'inaccessible'? it means it is difficult for people who are 'normal'. and what is 'normal', exactly? why is a certain class of people the 'default'? could that be, perhaps, a question with very loaded and very extensive political, social and historical answers? who is making the judgement about what language is 'normal'? who gets to decide?

I'd also like to note that this applies to everyone. it doesn't matter if you are a member of an oppressed group, or five, or none, you can still engage in this kind of discrimination and stereotyping. my scottish family, who have themselves had to change the way they speak and many of them lost their gaelic because of it, routinely mock anglo-romani speakers in their local area. I have an indian friend, herself speaking english because of a history of violence and colonialism, who laughed for five minutes at the beginning of derry girls because the girls sounded so 'funny', and asked me: why did they choose to speak like that? my brother, who sounds very stereotypically rural and 'uneducated', laughs at the essex accent and says that he would never date a girl from essex. I had a classmate from wales who was passionate about welsh language rights and indigenous and minority language education but also made fun of the accent of her native-english speaking classmate from singapore. it goes on and on and on.

take the dialect/language question out of the topic, and I think this reveals a much broader problem with a lot of conversations about media, and the implicit assumptions of what being 'normal' [read: white, anglo-centric, american, male, straight, young, able-bodied, cis, etc] actually means:

if something is written about an experience I do not share, is it inaccessible? or is it just written for someone else?

so, please. next time you want to write a review about a dialect or language you don't speak, think a little before you open your mouth.

the rest of the world has to, every time.