Escocés del Úlster

El Escocés del Ulster o Ullans se refieren a las variantes del antiguo idioma Escocés que se habla en las provincias del Ulster, en Irlanda del Norte.

]</ref> which gave effect to the implementation bodies incorporated the text of the agreement in its Schedule 1.

The declaration made by the United Kingdom Government regarding the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages reads as follows:​

The United Kingdom declares, in accordance with Article 2, paragraph 1 of the Charter that it recognises that Scots and Ulster Scots meet the Charter's definition of a regional or minority language for the purposes of Part II of the Charter.

The definition from the North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999 above was used in the 1 July 2005 Second Periodical Report by the United Kingdom to the Secretary General of the Council of Europe outlining how the UK meets its obligations under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages.​

The Good Friday Agreement (which does not refer to Ulster Scots as a "language") also recognises Ulster Scots as "part of the cultural wealth of the island of Ireland", and the Implementation Agreement established the cross-border Ulster-Scots Agency (Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch). The legislative remit laid down for the agency by the North/South Co-operation (Implementation Bodies) Northern Ireland Order 1999 is: "the promotion of greater awareness and the use of Ullans and of Ulster-Scots cultural issues, both within Northern Ireland and throughout the island". The agency has adopted a mission statement: to promote the study, conservation, development and use of Ulster Scots as a living language; to encourage and develop the full range of its attendant culture; and to promote an understanding of the history of the Ulster-Scots people.

The Northern Ireland (St Andrews Agreement) Act 2006​ amended the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to insert a section (28D) entitled Strategies relating to Irish language and Ulster Scots language etc which inter alia laid on the Executive Committee a duty to "adopt a strategy setting out how it proposes to enhance and develop the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture." This reflects the wording used in the St Andrews Agreement to refer to the enhancement and development of "the Ulster Scots language, heritage and culture"​

Literature

The earliest identified writing in Scots in Ulster dates from 1571: a letter from Agnes Campbell of County Tyrone to Elizabeth I on behalf of Turlough O'Neil, her husband. Although documents dating from the Plantation period show conservative Scots features, English forms started to predominate from the 1620s as Scots declined as a written medium.​

In Ulster Scots-speaking areas there was traditionally a considerable demand for the work of Scottish poets, often in locally printed editions. Alexander Montgomerie's The Cherrie and the Slae in 1700, shortly over a decade later an edition of poems by Sir David Lindsay, nine printings of Allan Ramsay's The Gentle shepherd between 1743 and 1793, and an edition of Robert Burns' poetry in 1787, the same year as the Edinburgh edition, followed by reprints in 1789, 1793 and 1800. Among other Scottish poets published in Ulster were James Hogg and Robert Tannahill.

Poetry by Robert Huddlestone (1814-1887) inscribed in paving in Writers' Square, Belfast

This was complemented by Ulster rhyming weaver poetry, of which, some 60 to 70 volumes were published between 1750 and 1850, the peak being in the decades 1810 to 1840, although the first printed poetry (in the Habbie stanza form) by an Ulster Scots writer was published in a broadsheet in Strabane in 1735.​ These weaver poets looked to Scotland for their cultural and literary models and were not simple imitators but clearly inheritors of the same literary tradition following the same poetic and orthographic practices; it is not always immediately possible to distinguish traditional Scots writing from Scotland and Ulster. Among the rhyming weavers were James Campbell (1758-1818), James Orr (1770-1816), Thomas Beggs (1749-1847), David Herbison (1800-1880), Hugh Porter (1780-1839) and Andrew McKenzie (1780-1839).

Scots was also used in the narrative by Ulster novelists such as W. G. Lyttle (1844-1896). Scots regularly appeared in Ulster newspaper columns, especially in Antrim and Down, in the form of pseudonymous social commentary employing a folksy first-person style.​

The poet Seamus Heaney indicates the importance of Ulster Scots to his own writing in his poem 'A Birl for Burns':

From the start, Burns’ birl and rhythm,

That tongue the Ulster Scots brought wi’ them

And stick to still in County Antrim

Was in my ear.

From east of Bann it westered in

On the Derry air.

My neighbours toved and bummed and blowed,

They happed themselves until it thowed,

By slaps and stiles they thrawed and tholed

And snedded thrissles,

And when the rigs were braked and hoed

They’d wet their whistles....

Language planning

The brand identity of the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure in Northern Ireland as shown on this sign is displayed in English, Irish and Ulster Scots​

In 1992 the Ulster-Scots Language Society was formed for the protection and promotion of Ulster Scots, which some of its members viewed as a language in its own right, encouraging use in speech, writing and in all areas of life.

Within the terms of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages the British Government is obliged, among other things, to:

• Facilitate and/or encouragement of the use of Scots in speech and writing, in public and private life.
• Provide appropriate forms and means for the teaching and study of the language at all appropriate stages.
• Provide facilities enabling non-speakers living where the language is spoken to learn it if they so desire.
• Promote study and research of the language at universities of equivalent institutions.

The Ulster-Scots Agency, funded by DCAL in conjunction with the Department of Community, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs, is responsible for promotion of greater awareness and use of Ullans and of Ulster-Scots cultural issues, both within Northern Ireland and throughout the island. The agency was established as a result of the Belfast Agreement of 1998.

In 2001 the Institute of Ulster Scots Studies was established at the University of Ulster​

An Ulster Scots Academy has been planned with the aim of conserving, developing, and teaching the language of Ulster-Scots in association with native speakers to the highest academic standards.​.

By the early part of the 20th century the literary tradition was almost extinct.​ Much revivalist Ulster Scots appearing in official translations has little in common with traditional Scots orthographic practices as described in Grant and Dixon’s 1921 Manual of Modern Scots, instead they represent attempts to develop Ulster Scots as an autonomous written variety whose “common denominator is to be as different to English, and occasionally Scots, as possible”. This hotchpotch of obsolete words, neologisms, redundant 16th and 17th century spelling conventions and “erratic spelling which sometimes reflects everyday Ulster Scots speech rather than the conventions of either modern or historic Scots”. The resulting pastiche “is also often incomprehensible to the native speaker.”​. In 2000 Dr John Kirk described the "net effect" of that "amalgam of traditional, surviving, revived, changed, and invented features" as "artificial dialect", further adding "It is certainly not a written version of the vestigial spoken dialect of rural county Antrim, as its activists frequently urge, perpetrating the fallacy that it’s wor ain leid. (Besides, the dialect revivalists claim not to be native speakers of the dialect themselves!). The colloquialness of this new dialect is deceptive for it is neither spoken nor innate. Traditional dialect speakers find it counter–intuitive and false [...]" ​. Later, in 2005, Gavin Falconer questioned officialdom's complicity, writing: "The readiness of Northern Ireland officialdom to consign taxpayers’ money to a black hole of translations incomprehensible to ordinary users is worrying." ​. Recently produced Education materials, have, on the other hand, been evaluated more positively.​

See also

• Scots language
• Ulster
• Ulster Scots people
• Ulster Irish
• Dictionary of the Scots Language
• History of the Scots language
• Languages in the United Kingdom
• W.F. Marshall
• Mid-Ulster English

External links

• The Ulster-Scots Agency (Tha Boord o Ulstèr-Scotch)
• The Ulster-Scots Language Society
• Pronunciation of Ulster Scots
• Aw Ae Oo (Scots in Scotland and Ulster)
• Aw Ae Wey (Written Scots in Scotland and Ulster)
• listen to an Ulster Scots accent
• 'Hover & Hear' Ulster Scots pronunciations, and compare with other accents from the UK and around the World.
• (Language, Identity and Politics in Northern Ireland)
• Public policy and Scots in Northern Ireland
• Scots Online
• The Dictionary of the Scots Language
• Ulster Scots voices (BBC site)
• Ulster-Scots Online
• website promoting Ullans to the Gaelic community of Ireland.

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