Community / Call to get Shaetlan included in the next Scottish census
ISLANDERS have been urged to respond to a national consultation to ensure that Shaetlan is included in the 2031 Scottish census as a named language.
In a letter to Shetland MSP Beatrice Wishart, departing deputy first minister Kate Forbes has encouraged local people to contribute their views as the design of the next census is formed.
Wishart contacted Forbes after linguist Viveka Velupillai and native Shaetlan speaker Roy Mullay published their ‘groundbreaking’ book Shaetlan: A young language wi aald røts in May this year.
The book makes the case that Shaetlan is not a kind of English, Scots or Norn, but deserves to be discussed as a language in its own right.
Wishart reached out to Forbes after constituents asked whether consideration will be given to include Shaetlan in the next census.
Velupillai said it was important to find out how many people would self-identify as Shaetlan speakers.
She added that in previous censuses Shaetlan was not represented as a spoken language, stigmatising it further.
“The linguistic landscape of a place is as important as any other kinds of data – ages, health, employment, and so on,” Velupillai said.
“At the moment speakers of Shaetlan are not represented on the census, since only English, Scots and Gaelic are the named alternatives.
“The consequence is that a number of Shaetlan speakers will end up ticking only English, even though they are in fact bilingual in both English and Shaetlan.
“This in turn gives a skewed picture of the linguistic landscape of Shetland, making it look more monolingually English than it in fact is, which in turn makes the position of Shaetlan even weaker.”
The linguistic professor added that all named languages needed to be treated equally.
“I would therefore very strongly urge all Shetlanders to respond to this consultation and ask for Shaetlan to be included in the 2031 census as one of the named languages, and that all named languages are given the same fine-grained grid of options as English is,” she said.
Her co-author Roy Mullay added: “I wid aks onybody at felt onywyes conflictit bi da questions idda census last time tae respond ti da consultation an git dir views across.
“Hit’s really impoartant ti da security o da Shaetlan language as a whole tae git accurate statistics on da quantity o fokk at speaks, understaands, reads an writes in Shaetlan, becis aa wir figgers eenoo is total guesswark.
“Haein accurate statistics helps da caess fir pittin da richt maesirs in plaess tae help revive whit we ir braaly sure is a language at haes dwindlin transmission ti da younger generation.”
The consultation on the 2031 census is open until 30 September and can be found here.
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