Depictions of Scots speaking on TV

In which I continue a public debate and propose some objective measures for determining if dialogue is Scots or Not

The other day I was idly bickering with some people on that Twitter, and in among the Scots-related tweets the well-known folk-singer and activist Iona Fyfe posted a list of films and TV shows in answer to a question about TV shows where they speak Scots and provide subtitles in English.

A few hours later the editor of the Scottish Daily Express had published a story about this list of films and TV shows.

In previous analyses of the various Scottish censuses I’ve come to the conclusion that people who work in journalism and publishing are less likely to have reported any Scots language skills than the general population. I don’t doubt that Ben Borland the Express editor is any different than other journalists and editors in this respect.

Last year, I tried writing some insightful and informative readers letters to The Scotsman newspaper, and eventually got a reply asking me to write in standard English, because the letters editor was an Englishman who had no conception of the Scots language. He didn’t grow up reading Robert Burns or hearing classmates or family members speaking Scots.

Earlier this week the Scottish parliament unanimously passed legislation recognising Scots as an official language of Scotland. Not one political party voted against it, not one MSP voted against the legislation. It follows that any commentator on twitter or in newspapers who doesn’t recognise Scots as a language is a crank with views so outwith the Overton window that no mainstream political party would welcome them.

If we generously imagine that instead of sleazily picking on a single Scots language activist, Scottish Daily Express editor Ben Borland is actually using his position to start a national debate about depictions of Scots on TV and on screen, then here’s my contribution, which we don’t all have to agree with, but this is my Substack, my opinion:-

Scots isn’t depicted on Scottish TV in a proportionate manner. TV producers, like journalists and publishers, are less literate in Scots than the general population and are unequipped to make accurate and realistic judgements about Scots speaking in TV shows.

The Written form

Out there, there is a mantra that Scots is a predominantly oral or spoken language, if someone says this you know you’re dealing with an idiot. Scots is the language of Burns, Henryson, Sir Walter Scott, Ramsay, Fergusson, Macdiarmid, writers, poets - Makars. More people in the 2022 census reported that they consider themselves able to read Scots than able to speak it.

When we see books written in Scots, it is undeniable that it is Scots and not English. No one looks at books like The Young Team or Duck Feet and reports that they are written in Standard English.

If we had some kind of collection of 21st century Scots writings, a representative corpus even, we could objectively compare Scots and English. Such a comparison would show than typically Scots writing shares about 40% of spellings with English. Some writers share up to 50% of word spellings and some as few as 5%.

For short phrases Scots and English writing might appear identical - because they share many word spellings.

In the same way that using words like croissant, construction, hospital or derriere in an English phrase doesn’t mean English is the same language as French. Some words just happen to be shared in several distinct languages.

Whilst we can find books written wholly in Scots, there are many books that are written in with narrative English but with some dialog in Scots. This doesn’t mean that book is written in Scots, it just happens to incorporate Scots in some of the characters speech.

The winner of this year’s Carnegie Medal, “Glasgow Boys” by Margaret MacDonald is described in press released and news articles as “features Scots dialect” or “incorporates Scots dialect”, which is somewhat accurate.

If it was written in Scots, it wouldn’t have been eligible for the Carnegie Medal. Having one character speaking distinctly in Scots is a significant plot point.

So we accept that some books are written in wholly in Scots and some are written in English, but incorporate Scots dialog for some characters.

Scots or Not

In the domain of speech on TV and in film, deciding if something is Scots or not is less clear cut, a lot of it is subjectively in the eye of the beholder. One person’s Scots might be another person’s “English with Scots words”.

A year back, on that Twitter, there was a discussion about a clip of a BBC Debate featuring that Karen Dunbar, and was she speaking Scots or English?

Whoever was doing the subtitles was transcribing Karen’s speech in English, correcting any accent, so that if English speakers struggled to make out what she was saying, then the subtitles would help.

Conversely, we might imagine if the subtitler was transcribing Karen’s speech in Scots, then they wouldn’t need to “correct” any pronunciations and would be more accurately able to render her speech.

If we turn off the closed caption subtitles, and use our own judgement, we find Karen Dunbar’s speech is peppered with words and syntax Scots.

0:05 Aye       - Scots
0:11 Mines     - Scots
0:15 not       - English
0:20 noo       - Scots
0:23 movin     - Scots
0:25 ah        - Scots
0:26 policin   - Scots
0:31 intae     - Scots
0:42 noo       - Scots
0:47 intrestin - Scots
0:48 tae       - Scots
0:51 happenin  - Scots
0:53 an        - Scots
0:57 don't     - English
1:00 oot       - Scots
1:01 cannae    - Scots
1:01 anythin   - Scots
1:02 any       - English
1:03 mair      - Scots

Freed from a subtitle supervisor lingering over our shoulder, compelling us to unnaturally transcribe the speech into one language or another, we might freely decide that Karen Dunbar’s speech is closer to Scots than English - transcribing into Scots involves fewer corrections.

We might note at this point that in a discussion panel, the participants’ speech is unscripted - conversely most TV shows and films have scripts that are written months or years in advance, scripts that have been edited and revised and approved and edited again.

If someone says “dinnae” or “cannae” in a scripted TV show, its not just random chance, that’s a conscious decision that’s been made, in the same way as a character in the Carnegie Medal-winning “Glasgow Boys” is speaking Scots.

Most viewers aren’t party to the original scripts of TV shows, and even the subtitles are usually generated outwith the access to the shooting scripts.

Objective measures

If a viewer wants to decide whether a character is speaking Scots or English, they must use their own judgement, and possibly some objective measures.

Just shy of a year ago, I published an article here proposing a six-point checklist for non-speakers to decide whether someone was speaking “Scots or Not”

This checklist is based in identifying words that are not shared between English and Scots:-

1. Are negatives created using either -NAE or -NA
whereas in English they would be -N’T for example CANNAE, DINNA, WADNA, instead of CAN’T, DIDN’T or WOULDN’T
Also using NO in places where NOT would be used in English.

2. Are any “Overt Scottisisms” present - words that are commonly used in Scots but rarely in English
for example WEE, BAIRN, WEAN, LOON, CHIEL, DRIECH, ILKA, AHINT, ABUIN, BEN etc.

3. Different pronunciation of common function words
For example 
TAE instead of TO
YE instead of YOU
either O or AE instead of OF
WI instead of WITH
DAE instead of DO
either FAE or FRAE instead of FROM

4. Placement of definite article distinct from British Standard English
For example in Scots “going to THE school” or “taken to THE hospital” whereas in English it is merely “going to school” or “taken to hospital”

5. Verb forms
In the English the present participle -ING verb ending, the -G is pronounced
In Scots there is no -G.
Strong and weak verbs are also different in Scots – the past tense of TELL is TELT, not TOLD

6. Regional distinctions -
Different regions in Scotland have different regional dialects of Scots, in a manner distinct from regional dialects of English.
In Glasgow AE is used instead of O or OF
In the North East FIT is used instead of WHIT or WHAT
In Shetland DA is used instead of THE, DU instead of YOU, DEY instead of THEY
In Orkney -AN is used as the verb ending instead of -ING or -IN, for example WALKAN
In the north north east -EEN is used as verb ending instead of -ING

If only one or two of these sections are checked, then its not clear-cut that the speaker is using Scots. It might be that their speech isn’t long enough to cover sufficient items, or it could be they are speaking English. It could be code-switching or “English with a few Scots words”, we can’t easily be certain.

If three items are checked, then its more likely they are speaking Scots

If four or more items are checked then we can be reasonably certain that speaker is speaking Scots and not English

I’m not going to carry out substantial research to verify the proportions of false positives and false negatives - would I have to ask the original scriptwriter or director or producer to make the decision?

It might be that the checklist could be improved to have a better accuracy rate, but that would need to be tested and proved. At the moment I reckon the measures are about 80% accurate.

Dept Q

Now, using the criteria above, I was watching Dept Q on Netflix, yer main character is an Englishman playing an Englishman, speaking British English. There are lawyer characters who we might expect to be speaking Scottish Standard English.

That lassie in the prison who got stabbed in the eye, she was speaking Scots pretty consistently. And DC Rose Dickson, played by Leah Byrne occasionally code-switched into Scots.

Kelly MacDonald’s character didn’t speak Scots using my criteria above, but I’m reasonably sure her character in Trainspotting did.

Still Game

Still Game features many characters speaking Scots, and when we pull up the scripts online there are plenty of overt Scotticisms and didnaes

Coding scheme

Maybe a further coding scheme is required, to express the degree to which programs incorporate Scots:-

WH - Wholly or predominantly in Scots - Still Game
MC - At least one main character speaks Scots consistently - Glasgow Boys
OC - Occasionally minor characters speak Scots - Dept Q
NA - No Scots is spoken, but Scottish Standard English is present - The News

I guess you could have finer degrees of how much Scots is used in a TV show, as a percentage of the dialog, and perhaps identify an idealised “representative” level of around 32%. This might come after the BBC or STV, Netflix had a department dedicated to measuring the proportion of Scots speaking and its outwith the scope of this article.

Proportionality

The 2022 Scottish census reported that 32% of people consider themselves able to speak Scots. The 2009 Attitudes to the Scots Language survey suggested that 60% of people speak Scots. God knows what all those people were specifically and individually thinking, but from watching Scottish TV shows, the proportion of people depicted speaking Scots is nowhere near 60% or 32%.

Even regional shows like “Granite Harbour” or that Shetland one seem to go out of their way to avoid depicting people using the local variety of the language.

Maybe the TV producers think they’re doing their audience a favour, making shows more understandable to English ears. But is that what they are paid to do? Is that in the spirit of according equal respect to Scots and English?

Is that what the people of Scotland want?