As the last notes of Auld Lang Syne fade and Burns Night approaches, the Scots language prepares for its annual cameo. For a few weeks in January, the “mither tongue” is dusted off, performed with a flourish, and then quietly returned to the cupboard of “quaint heritage” once the shortbread tins are empty.

We rightly celebrate Robert Burns as a towering genius—a global icon who puts fire in the belly of a nation. Yet, there is a profound irony in these celebrations. While many attend Burns suppers to toast the Bard, there is a growing disconnect between the literary performance and the living breath of the language. While some struggle to navigate his stanzas without a glossary, there are communities in rural heartlands and working-class streets living and breathing Scots every day. These are our “language arks,” yet their speech is frequently ignored by a bureaucracy that treats the language as a relic rather than a living pulse.

This disconnect points to a deeper confusion about what we mean by “Scots.” Is it a museum piece, or a modern tongue? Census data often fails to capture the nuance of these arks—the places where the broad tongue remains the primary mode of thought. To move forward constructively, we must bridge this gap. We need a long-term commitment to education that shifts mindsets away from the “class cringe” of the past, while simultaneously recognising the urgent need to protect and fund the authentic speech that still thrives today.

This journey toward a mature identity also requires us to look outward with a new sense of generosity. Just as we demand that Burns be recognised as a specifically Scottish achievement, we should afford our neighbours the same courtesy. Too often, the extraordinary contributions of the English—from Newton to Turing, from the steam engine to the World Wide Web—are swallowed into the generic category of “British.” This robs the English of a specific national pride and treats their identity as a mere default.

A confident, mature Scotland has nothing to fear from cheering English achievement. Whether you are a Unionist or a Nationalist, there is room to say “well done” to a neighbour. Proximity is not a threat; it is a shared history of innovation. Recognising the Englishness of Shakespeare or Berners-Lee is not a concession; it is a mark of our own self-assurance.

However, this generosity must be matched by honesty about our shared history. We cannot blame the British Empire for all wrongs while claiming only the glory for ourselves; we were often its architects and administrators, and we must own that shared dark history as well as our progress. This intellectual honesty is what gives us the standing to demand fairness at home.

The Scottish Languages Act 2025 was a hard-won victory, yet the initial budget reveals a stark imbalance. Gaelic has been allocated approximately £35.7 million for 2025/26—funding that is vital and desperately needed to protect a fragile and beautiful part of our national soul. In contrast, the Scots language, spoken by millions, has been allocated less than £1 million.

This disparity is not the result of external interference; it is a choice made in Edinburgh by our own institutions. It reflects an internal struggle where one native language is treated as a treasure worth saving, while the other is treated as a footnote. The Lowland Scot currently occupies a strange limbo: squeezed on one side by a “Britishness” that is often just Englishness in a different coat, and on the other by a cultural nationalism that sometimes views our linguistic closeness to England as a problem to be managed.

The Lowland spirit—industrious, rational, and Enlightenment-born—links us not just to our neighbours in England, but to a North Sea world of trade and philosophy stretching to Scandinavia and the Netherlands. That spirit is the majority voice of Scotland, and it deserves a seat at the table.

Reclaiming it means ensuring that “official recognition” leads to more than token phrases on government letterheads. It requires a strategy that values our living language arks and ensures that the people who actually speak Scots—from the Borders to the Northern Isles and across to Ulster—are the ones defining its future.