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(This page is being hosted on behalf of the Cross-Party Group of the Scottish Parliament on the Scots Language)
Consultation on a languages question in the 2011 Census
Organisations and individuals are invited to read and respond to the attached Consultation Paper issued by the above Parliamentary Group, proposing a particular languages question for inclusion in the 2011 Census and inviting support from interested parties.
The consultation opens on 1/7/5 and closes on 31/8/5
It is of particular interest to Census data users and to community languages and cultural organisations.
You can download a Microsoft Word version of the document here.
You can download a PDF version of the document here.
The document contains simple forms for response, which should be forwarded to the Scots Language Resource Centre by email for preference at office@scotsyett.com (The Scots Language Resource Centre acts as Secretariat to the Cross-Party Group.)
This page continues with an HTML version of the paper: you can respond directly from here.
Cross-Party
Group of the Scottish Parliament
on
the Scots Language
Convener
Please
reply to:
The
Scottish Parliament
c/o A.K. Bell Library
email: office@scotsyett.com
June 2005 - closing date 31/8/5
Proposal
for a comprehensive languages question in the 2011 Census – a consultation
paper
Executive
Summary:
Please
note:
We are circulating this paper by email and web in order to save cost and
time, but if readers would prefer hard copy to be posted please advise us
accordingly. We would prefer formal response by email if possible, to the
Scots Language Resource Centre (address above) which acts as Secretariat to
this Parliamentary Group.
In
the run-up to the 2001 Census, people interested in the Scots language
mounted a campaign for the inclusion of a question similar to the question
that has regularly been asked concerning Gaelic. The mood of the Scottish
Parliament (which is sovereign in this matter) was not supportive at the
time, and a motion to include such a question fell.
Since then, the Cross-Party Group on Scots has had a number of
consultative meetings with Executive Ministers and others, and indications
are that an acceptably designed question that could attract broad support in
the community and among Census users might perhaps go forward with all-party
support.
Within the broad Scots language movement, we have considered that we
should not now advance a question that dealt only with the Scots-speaking
community, but that as the largest ‘minority language’ community in
Scotland, we might perhaps offer to help to lead or co-ordinate an
initiative that would also meet the needs of other language groups in the
Scottish community. Who are these groups?
In the first session of the Scottish Parliament, its Education,
Culture and Sport Committee produced in 2003 a report which identified the
predominant minority languages as Scots, Gaelic, Urdu, Punjabi, Bengali,
Chinese, Arabic and British Sign Language and stated:
·
This report concludes that the many
questions and concerns surrounding the languages of
·
To ensure the development of a
satisfactory Policy, substantive research, consultation and reporting needs
to be carried out to gather much more information than is currently
available on the specific needs of each language.
The proposal set out in this paper aims to contribute to that
requirement for ‘substantive research’, and would extend that list of
languages in an open manner, so that significant new communities of minority
language speakers could be identified – something that may be very
important in European Scotland where labour mobility leads now to a
significant presence of workers from member states, particularly in the
health and catering industries.
Respecting and planning for the language needs and rights of our new
communities and migrant workers should be no less important than ensuring
the survival of our heritage languages Gaelic and Scots.
2.
Why this matters to the community of
The
ideals of multiculturalism and equal opportunity are grounded in the moral
principle of respect for others, summed up well in the Scots saw that
‘we’re aa Jock Tamson’s bairns’, the departure point for our own
noblest national ideal. However, we fall short if we fail to ask ourselves
the questions that a considerate host nation would ask, when there are new
folk, not guests, but members of the family living among us whose needs we
may have failed to think of and make provision for.
We would argue that local authorities ought to know, in order to plan
provision for translation services, education courses or cultural
activities, who lives, who works in a given area and what languages do they
understand, what are the heart-languages of their own communities? This is
precisely the information that the Census can provide. Health organisations
need to know this, and business organisations might find opportunity in
knowing what resource they have in the languages knowledge of the general
population.
Respect for others goes beyond making simple provision for competence
in the lingua franca, English.
Unless new members of the community have some means of access to Gaelic and
Scots in areas where these languages remain strong, we are giving them a
cold welcome. At the same time, neglect of general language rights damages
our native culture also, and more dangerously. Our neglect cannot damage the
Punjabi or Arabic languages, only individual rights; but neglect in
The question we are putting forward should identify the particular
languages spoken in our country, and the circumstances in which they were
learned by individuals, thus distinguishing native-speaking language
attainment from attainment through education, and identifying real language
communities, as well as providing a limited measure of the impact of
education, including self-education.
We have not attempted to assess in this question general difficulty
with any language through different forms of disability: we feel that that
is a distinct subject which may merit its own form of question. However, we
recognise that though associated with hearing disability British Sign
Language is a language in its own right. It is the purpose of this paper to
invite others to propose refinements to the exact form and wording of the
question we are putting forward in order to meet their needs and wishes,
though clearly we are not in a position to dictate formats which will be
decided within the General Registrar’s Office and in the end, by
Parliament. There are practical constraints on space and complexity, so that
in the version set out in section 4 only Urdu, of the non-indigenous
languages group, is mentioned explicitly.
Referring the question format overleaf, it is designed in the form of
a table with language selections totalling five rows, with the first four
filled in as ‘English / Gaelic / Scots / Urdu’ and
the fifth left for other options. The focus of the question is therefore on
‘native’ languages – community languages – for the moment without
specific, inflexible insistence on this, since people often have more than
one native language, or cannot easily say what is native or non-native as
they may experience the matter. The columns to the right ask for competence
in understanding / speaking /
reading / writing; and then whether each language is a home language or learnt
elsewhere. Urdu is mentioned explicitly, as we think it is the largest
non-indigenous language: mentioning all possibilities would over-encumber
the form.
The aim is to identify where groups of the speakers of particular
languages are located in the general population, and to test levels of
competence in ways that can inform policy decision-making about the needs of
the speakers concerned.
Competence found in understanding
and speaking with a lower response
rate for reading and/or writing would be a primary indication of a literacy problem in a
given language, with implications for education provision.
An inability to write in
English, or indeed to speak it,
would point to a problem in accessing the lingua
franca, with implications for training needs especially in health and
welfare services. Difficulty identified in reading
it, in part of a given community, might establish a need for particular
translation resources for official publications.
Ignorance of Gaelic or Scots, in communities where these languages
are otherwise found to be strong, creates a case for cultural outreach.
The usefulness of the final two colums is in assessing the ways in
which given languages are effectively transmitted, and this should be of
particular interest in the indigenous group English, Scots and Gaelic,
perhaps in different ways. With statistics from these columns, we can begin
to understand how many new Gaelic speakers are learners, and whether and to
what extent Scots is transmitted through families nowadays, or whether it is
assimilated more diffusely. We have some test of the effectiveness of
education in enabling English for those who do not have it as a home
language. These are all vital to proper language planning in the long term:
essential first steps to inform the correct starting points for later,
research-supported studies.
It
is our expectation that this question, in whatever developed form may issue
from this consultation, will be piloted by the General Registrar’s Office
in 2006, and issues concerning its reliability, and the degree to which it
is understood properly by respondents, will be investigated then.
4.
Layout of the proposed question
 |
The above layout was prepared by the General Registrar’s Office in
their preferred house style. (In this consultation we welcome comments on
the proposed layout, and would observe that one change under consideration
by the GRO itself is to make it clearer in the presentation that the
question is not seeking to elicit whether people remember the French they
learned at school, for example, but wants to focus on languages with a real
community presence.)
| Form
1 |
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| Form
2 : Census Data Users |
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1st July 2005