New book to catalogue and celebrate Shaetlan language
A new, bilingual book dedicated to Shaetlan hopes to “put the language on the map”.
Written by linguistics academic Viveka Velupillai and native Shaetlan speaker Roy Mullay, Shaetlan: A young language wi aald røts is currently being printed, according to an announcement by publishers and cultural charity I Hear Dee this afternoon (Sunday).
“It is written to be accessible for the general public and especially for the Shaetlan mother tongue speakers, but in such a way that it will also be useful for the linguistic community,” the publishers wrote.
The book is largely bilingual except for seven essays by mother tongue speakers of Shaetlan. Those contributors include author and former chief executive of the Shetland Fishermen’s Association, John Goodlad, tour guide Hazel Adamson, artist and curator Helen Balfour and crofter Ronnie Eunson.
Shaetlan: A young language wi aald røts has already been received reviewed enthusiastically by linguistic academics from Boston to Cape Town.
Conchúr Ó Giollagáin, the University of the Highlands and Islands’ foremost Gaelic expert, called it “long overdue” and “an invaluable resource”.
I Hear Dee have long campaigned for Shaetlan — formally a dialect of Scots — to be officially recognised as a language. Their previous publications by the same authors include an interactive dictionary.
