Pressure to be “More Scottish” than you are?

[uttuk]

I grew up in Glasgow in a middle class family. My parents were both Scottish. My dad from an Edinburgh Anglo-Scots family and my mum from a working class mixed background, but who spoke Gaelic due to her one grandfather being a first language speaker.

We spoke both Gaelic and English at home. I was sent to a Gaelic language school. The pressure to be more Scottish than anyone else was insufferable, even bordering on slightly xenophobic. I hid the fact my father was not a first language speaker (he can’t speak the language at all). There was a presumption that I and my family would all be SNP voters and if you dared say you were anti independence then you might as well have been Maggie Thatcher herself.

I was wondering it anyone else has felt a pressure over the last 10/20 years, or even recently, to become “more Scottish”? Or if people in Ireland or Wales might also feel this recent national pressure?

I’m south wales and and Welsh schools are a way for middle class parents to get their kids into ‘good’ schools without having to move house to an expensive catchment are of a high performing English medium school. There are parts of Cardiff where a real racial divide has opened as the English medium schools are full of ethnic minority kids and the Welsh school is full of the white kids of white aspirational middle classes. So yes, lots of English only speaking households send their kids to Welsh schools.

I was mildly bullied as a child for being English in a very Welsh part of Wales. I'm a fluent Welsh speaker, and I do often find other Welsh speakers assume I've got a particular set of political values because of it (e.g. pro independence). I don't think I know any first language Welsh speakers who don't support Plaid.

I suspect the situation in the south and east of Wales is very different though.

I identify as British, having an English and a Scottish parent. I grew up in England but visited Scotland a couple of times every year to see family then went to university there. I was a nurse. I experienced some of what you are talking about. One patient refused to let me nurse him because I was English. But on the whole the vast majority of people were absolutely fine. That was a few years ago mind. East coast. Having said that, there were always areas/pubs I would think twice about entering with my English accent, but not enough to actually it stop me.

Yes, it’s more mixed in Wales depending on where you live.

I’ve lived in Wales and Scotland. I loved Scotland but never felt properly it was my home, I think because I knew so many Scottish people were never see it as my home as I am English. There was always a sense I was seen as ‘other’. I’ve lived in (south) Wales a much shorter time but I don’t feel ‘other’ here at all, feel accepted and it feels like home. I suspect it could feel different in a different part of Wales.

I worked in the West coast of Scotland in the public sector and also experienced members of the public objecting to having to speak to me because I was English.

So interesting to read about the experiences within the Scottish community on this thread. I'm English but grew up abroad so really, like a PP, feel myself to be British rather than specifically English. My name suggests that if you go back far enough you'd find a Scottish ancestor. I used to go to Scotland regularly for work and experienced so much rejection that I went from being predisposed to be very positive to kind of bracing for the onslaught whenever I arrived. Completely different to the visits to Welsh and N Irish offices, where colleagues always helped me to understand the national context so that I could adapt what I needed to do. This thread helps explain why Scottish colleagues behaved as they did and the pressure some of them might have been under to do so.

It's the same in Edinburgh, in fact many of the parents, indeed most that I've met, are middle class and English. It feeds in to one of the top high schools. Not that the results of the main stream school make a difference not they obviously don't want their dc rubbing shoulders with riff raff as there was uproar when there was talk of moving it to less well achieving sites.

I don't recognise any of the negative things described living here though. Obviously Edinburgh is far more mixed so maybe not a reflection of Scotland as a whole, however I grew up in the Scottish Borders where it's rather more insular. Being English was no different to having moved from another part of Scotland, or even another town/village in the county though. We moved a few times within the borders and there was always the feeling that you didn't 100% belong as you weren't born and bred in that specific town.

This thread has been really interesting as it’s made me reflect. I moved to Scotland as a young adult. I had never ‘felt’ English before, but quickly did upon moving there because Scots made it so clear they saw me as English and I experienced anti-English abuse and prejudice over the years. As I said upthread, I always felt ‘other’ in Scotland.

This thread has made me realise that, now I am in Wales, I no longer feel like this. I’ve not come across anyone in the part of Wales I live in who has made me feel that they see me as English, rather than as ‘Slantedroof’ ( despite working closely with some welsh nationalists). This thread has made me realise that I now just feel like me again, not English, just me And I prefer it.

Interesting question. Both my parents families were east coast working class and spoke strong Scots (not talking about Gaelic). When growing up we were told not to speak Scots and to speak 'properly'. Now the kids actually learn Scots at school. I assume it is SNP policy. I not so secretly think they should stop wasting curriculum on this and start teaching some maths and science but there you go.

I'm not sure what's unclear - if you live in Ireland surely you've heard of Irish Republicanism? They were called the Irish Republican Army, not the Irish Nationalist Army. And even on their own website Sinn Féin refer to themselves as the Republican Party.

The term 'Republican' is still very much used in certain pockets of Ireland, as a more extreme version of nationalism - and would especially be heard in the circles that Buddysbunda is talking about. Maybe it was used historically more than it is now, but it is still a thing with some people.

The Cringe is alive and well here in 'Rebel Cork' where the Chamber of Commerce has branded one part of the city The Victorian Quarter. I suppose anything built in the 19th C could be called Victorian though ...it could get very confusing if it spreads.

Said cringe has unexpected consequences though. Young people go to England and are complimented on their Irish accents. This induces a sort of cognitive dissonance in the victim of the cringe. Such that they sometimes resent that which they aspire to be. None of this is the fault of English people , who are quite oblivious to the whole thing.

Growing up in Northumberland we were banned from speaking dialect at school. It was very similar to Scots — cannit, divven’t, faitha, troosers — but it’s a dialect there, whereas twenty miles north it’s a language.

Yes. I really don't have a very strong Scottish accent and I have had this attitude from some people that I'm not as authentically Scottish as them even though my parents and grandparents are both Scottish and I was born in Scotland and loved my whole life here.

I also take issue with Scots as a language. It isn't really, anyone who has spent any time in Scotland knows that the words peopel use and the way people talk varies enormously between areas. We used words growing up in Edinburgh which are unheard of in Glasgow, Orkney/Shetland people use words related to Scandinavian languages, Doric in Aberdeen... it's very diverse and you really cant's lump it all into this idea of "Scots".

Ditto

'The adults he looks up to in this crowd are very staunchly Republican and he hides the fact that I was born in the UK because he feels like they won't accept him as much if they know he is half English.'

Just tell him that De Valera was born in the US, James Connolly in Edinburgh, and Jim Larkin in Liverpool, so for him to feel the need to conceal that you're from the UK is a bit silly.

Not quite the same but I’m English and moved to Glasgow for uni about 10 years ago. Lived just outside Glasgow actually, but I felt scared at times to talk in shops/out and about etc incase someone heard my ‘posh’ English accent. There was a lot of anti-English feeling at the time so I did honestly feel a bit vulnerable.
it’s a shame because obviously the majority of people were absolutely lovely and I loved Glasgow!

I think you need to inform yourself. It’s a UNESCO recognised indigenous language

Yes, mostly during the 2014 season! Now it's because the area I live is really quite deprived and some of them are proud at never having been out with a 20 mile radius of their home. My DB lives in a place where the Council market it as 'the wee county' - turned into 'the wee coonty" proudly by the locals. So depressing.

I think you need to inform yourself. It’s a UNESCO recognised indigenous language

That's lovely.There are lots of us who have an issue with Scots and don't really accept that it's a language which is recognised across the country.

Well there’s also lots of people that also don’t recognise the world is round? Doesn’t mean it’s not true

Funny. I grew up speaking Doric Scots, and I can understand spoken and written Lowland Scots just fine, yet Scottish people with no Scots-speaking background struggle to make any sense of either, and I may as well be speaking Swahili if I go full Doric. Almost as if it's separate language with totally different sentence structure to English, and not just a regional dialect. Oddly enough, every Danish person I have ever met understands most Doric Scots words, and there are even Belgians who recognise some of our nouns because the words are the same, and yet they don't exist in English. 🤔

Definitely no, I’m north east

That's what I mean thogh @XDownwiththissortofthingX - "Scots" is being pushed as this language which we should all be speaking if we're not speaking Gaelic, and although there are crossovers between your Doric and someone from Ayrshire, Perthshire or Skye, they're not the same. It's all a bit of a myth.

Also in my entire life living here I have never met anyone who speaks Scots all day, every day, in every situation. Yes we'll all use words like "wee" but as a living language it's just not a thing.