PETER TRUDGILL on whether Scots should be considered a language or not.
My column of a few weeks ago, about how the Swiss are encouraged to learn their country’s various languages – and how something similar here might benefit the UK – annoyed reader Bill Cooper, who wrote to The New European to say so. His letter was published a couple of weeks ago.
He was annoyed because I implied that Scots is a language. The status of a linguistic variety as a language or dialect is often more of a political, cultural and historical than linguistic matter, so to an extent it is a matter of perception.… Lês fierder