A Kist O Words
I love meeting people who love their jobs. They're inspirational. One such is Laura Spence who met me in Glasgow yesterday afternoon to tell me about her work developing Ulster-Scots programmes for Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Northern Ireland.
I have to confess that my knowledge of Ulster-Scots is a bit coggly and mostly confined to things I'd picked up in brief conversations with Billy Kay and Robbie Shepherd. In Northern Ireland, however, there's a lot of money and effort going in to promoting its use and that stems from clauses originally set out in the
Laura's enthusiasm was infectious and we quickly set about making plans that would tie in to Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Scotland's own plans for new Scots language programmes. One thing we agreed on was that listeners prefer to hear programmes that actually use the language rather than those in which we invite academics to talk about the issues involved. So quiz shows and comedy can do more good than dry panel discussions.
Later Laura took me to task for having been to Northen Ireland but never having got outside Belfast. She painted wonderful word picture of the coastal roads and smaller towns. She was like a one-woman tourism campaign.
Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Radio Ulster's A Kist o Wurds is where you can currently hear Ulster-Scots spoken on air. There are huge similarities with Scots - oxter, gawk etc- but many differences too. I had never heard the word "joogins" before, but i understand this is a bit like "gubbins" - or the insides of a thing.
Laura has plans to launch a new website which will direct her listners to Â鶹¹ÙÍøÊ×Ò³Èë¿Ú Scotland programmes that might be of interest. That includes our own Burns archive project.
It feels like the start of a wonderful friendship.
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