4.5 The 2011 Census

In March 2011 the census of Scotland asked for the first time in its history whether people could speak, read, write or understand Scots. At the time, the population of Scotland was 5,295,403.

The figures for the most Scots speaking regions according to the answers given by people who filled in the survey may be broken down into the ‘biggest single figures’, and the ‘biggest percentages’ as part of the regional council population.

Whilst 49% of Shetland residents responded to the 2011 Census confirming they spoke Scots, the population of Shetland at the time of the census was only 22,400.

The Biggest Single Figures recorded for Glasgow and Fife greatly exceed the Single Figures and the populations of places such as Shetland and Orkney.

Glasgow and Fife are both part of the dialect region commonly referred to as Central Scots.

(Scotland's Census,Census Results [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] , 2011)

As discussed in the previous section 4.3, Insular Scots can be divided into Shetlandic and Orcadian, and both have been studied in depth by the likes of Jakob Jakobsen and Hugh Marwick – both men publishing respected works on the linguistic features found within the Northern Isles of Scotland.

Scotland Census 2011

Map of Scots Speakers from the 2011 Census by CAS Wards. Figures are the % of the population who speak Scots.

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Map of Scotland showing distribution of speakers of Scots and Scottish Gaelic in different regions of Scotland, based on UK Census Data. Scots speakers are indicated in blue, with deeper colours representing greater proportions of Scots speakers. Gaelic speakers are indicated in green, with deeper colours representing greater proportion of Gaelic speakers. The map also has a key, indicating that the darkest shading is of areas with over 50% of the population speaking either Scots or Scottish Gaelic, and the lightest areas showing where less than 15% of the population speaks these languages. The green shades showing Gaelic are distributed over the north and west of the map; the blue shades are found in the North East especially, with smaller pockets of larger numbers in the South West and Borders.

Map of Scots Speakers from the 2011 Census by CAS Wards. Figures are the % of the population who speak Scots.

As you learned in section 4.2, the dialect of Central Scots can be broken down further as West Central, South Central, East Central South and East Central North as each area has a few linguistic features unique to their region.

In Scots language circles it was a proud moment for places such as Orkney, Shetland and Moray to be recognised as having every second resident recognised as a Scots speaker, and in a similar way as Glaswegian and West Central Scots have.

What becomes clear across all of Scotland are the passion and feelings of pride that exist across the country for the Scots language. But, due to social and cultural factors that had an impact throughout centuries, there is still a need to identify, understand and respect the dialect diversity which exists.

An individual wishing to learn Scots language would, rather than learning a standard language, encounter dialect diversity across the country, with linguistic features relating to vocabulary and grammar changing within the areas of Scotland identified above.

Whilst recognition of this element of Scots language is essential to properly grasp the sense of identity Scots speakers from different parts of Scotland have, the over-emphasis placed by Scots speakers on the diversity aspect of the language is one of the reasons for the division that keeps Scots language from truly uniting as a language with a community of 1.5 million speakers, and may hinder the chances of the figure rising in the future.

The reason for this over-emphasis could be due to the different history of the dialects spoken in Shetland, Orkney and Caithness within Insular Scots, in comparison to the history of the Glasgow or Fife dialects within Central Scots.

Or, it could be the more recently formed social perceptions of “rural” and “broad” Scots spoken in Aberdeenshire or the Borders versus the streets of Dundee or Leith.

Either way, the content of this Dialect diversity unit is important for achieving an accurate understanding of what the language is today, and where it has been in the past across Scotland.