This project will produce an in-depth grammatical description of Shaetlan, which is currently considered endangered. The grammar will be designed to create better understanding of the language, to gain it credibility and acceptance, and to show that Shaetlan is a linguistically viable language variety in its own right.
The importance of a language variety to the identity and sense of place of a community cannot be underestimated. Essentially a language is the breath of the culture and embodies the collective knowledge, history and character of a culture. However, language is also capital and should be recognised as a valuable commodity on a par with other natural resources.
Location: an archipelago forming the border between the Atlantic Ocean to the west and the North Sea to the east, situated between Great Britain, Norway and the Faroe islands.
Capital: Lerwick
Population: ca 23,000
Estimated number of Shaetlan speakers: ca 30-50% of the population. The number given in the 2011 census is misleading and reflects the fact that the census only included English and Scots but not Shaetlan. However, most Shaetlan speakers do not identify themselves as speakers of a Scots variety, nor as a Scots population, but rather as a distinct Shetland population with a distinct language variety. This is, in fact, historicolinguistically justified: while Shaetlan can now be argued to be a highly distinct variety of Scots, due to its strong Norn substrate and strong contact influence from Low Germanic languages, it is not mutually intelligible with other varieties of Scots except for those in the former Norn speaking areas (Orkney and Caithness).
The language is endangered, with dwindling transmission, as an increasing amount of parents are choosing not to speak Shaetlan with their children. Furthermore Shaetlan has never been recognised as a medium of instruction in schools, and is still actively discouraged from use in the classroom and in school work.
About the language name: The autonym, or the name of the language by the speakers themselves, is Shaetlan /ˈʃe̞tlən/ for most speakers. A minority of speakers also refer to the language as Shetlandic, though this name tends to be divisive.
It is not uncommon for languages and places to have the same or very similar names. A well known example of a place and a language with the same name is Suomi (Finland) / suomi (Finnish). Other examples are Lao (Laos) / lao (Lao), Kiribati (Kiribati) / kiribati (Gilbertese), Lallans (Lowlands Scotland) / lallans (Lowlands Scots), among many others. Examples where the name for the place and the language are near-identical are Malta (Malta) / malti (Maltese), Hrvatska (Croatia) / hrvatski (Croatian), València (Valencia, Spain) / valencià (Valencian).
Glottocode: shet1241
Linguistic repression is typically seen where natural resources are being exploited by a minority of power holders. The language of the powerholders is consequently equated with status and wealth, leading to the false assumption that the language of the wider community is inferior and a hindrance to social advancement. This in turn leads to the promotion of one language over the other and a shift away from the stigmatised variety, instead of furthering acceptance of the legitimate and symbiotic coexistence of both varieties. This stigmatisation of and shift away from one of the varieties in turn leads to a disconnection between the sense of identity and sense of place, and ultimately to collective lack of selfconfidence and sense of self-determination. However, in communities where each language variety is accepted in its own right, the sense of identity, confidence and resilience tends to be stronger, in turn leading to higher educational and economic achievements. An example of the latter is the Faroe Islands, which has shown high flexibility and problem solving inventiveness, not the least during the current pandemic crisis. An example of the former community is Jamaica, which has seen its natural resources exploited by a small linguistic minority and where this has led to a long-standing, deeply ingrained linguistic repression of the majority community language, which in turn has led to great educational and economic inequalities and subsequent brain drains. Put differently: communities that are linguistically confident tend to also be educationally and economically successful, whereas communities who are subjected to linguistic repression tend to experience brain drains and economic stagnation. Consequently the importance of a language variety to the welfare of a community cannot be underestimated.
Shaetlan is a language variety that has seen intense contact throughout its history. Its main input languages are the now extinct Scandinavian Norn, the language once spoken by the Viking settlers, and Scots. It is still highly distinct from other varieties of Scots, with the Scandinavian elements still noticeable in the language.
The Shetland Islands have been a place of contact for centuries. The islands were inhabited when settled by Norsemen from Western Norway starting in the late 8th century. They brought with them their Norse language (Norn) which was the language spoken on the islands until well after the Scots take-over in 1469. The shift from Norn to Scots was gradual and lasted at least 250 years. The intense trade contacts between Shetland and mainland Scotland, as well as with the regions within the Hanseatic League, especially in connection with the herring industry, led to multilingualism on the islands throughout the middle ages and renaissance and into modern times. The language spoken in Shetland has thus always remained unique and is strongly tied to the local identity, and as such forms part of the intangible heritage of Shetland.
The 20th century has seen a steady shift from Shaetlan to English, and that shift seems to have accelerated in the last generation. This shift tends to be attributed to the radical economic and demographic changes that the oil industry brought with it to the islands, starting in the mid-1970s and peaking in the mid-1980s. However, there is as yet no description of the language as it was before the oil boom, which means that the assumption that the ongoing shift is related to the effects of the oil industry have remained anecdotal and unquantified. The aim of this project is therefore to produce a comprehensive grammar of both the pre-oil and the contemporary language. This will also allow the documentation and description of Shaetlan at a critical stage, when endangerment might be possible to stem, if not turn.