Historic Environment Scotland (HES) has launched its first audio guide in the Scots language, made available to visitors of Linlithgow Palace in West Lothian.
The new Scots guide will be available alongside an English version which contains some Scots language.
The new audio guide is hoped to both cater to the Scots language and allow other visitors to “access the intangible heritage of Linlithgow Palace in a new way, as they listen to the history of the site in a modern version of the language that would have been spoken at the time,” it said.
During the 1400s and 1500s, when Linlithgow Palace was used as a royal palace, Scots was the language of the Scottish court, spoken by the monarch and ordinary people alike.
A 2011 Scottish Government census suggests around 1.5 million people can speak Scots.
Fiona Fleming, Project Manager at HES, said the audio guide is hoped to “increase the accessibility and inclusivity of Scots, which is a minoritised language today.
“When making the new audio guide, we were keen to shine a light on a diverse range of people and stories from the Palace’s past, such as the story of Margaret More, one of the women known in historical records as the ‘Moorish Lassies’, and the story of a young chorister who is voiced by a real-life choir singer.”
The audio guide has been developed by HES with translation and input from Ashley Douglas, a researcher, writer and translator specialising in the Scots language.
