The Return of the Scots Language

In an independent Scotland, might Scots become the official national tongue? That's the question recently posed by the Guardian.

From the article...

In the middle ages, Scots – the language of makars, or poets, including Robert Henryson and Gavin Douglas – was one of the great literary languages of Europe. But closer ties with England eroded confidence in it: the intellectuals of 18th-century Edinburgh, including David Hume, sought to remove "Scotticisms" from their writing and speech.

The reversal of this process, championed by the poet Hugh MacDiarmid and continued by the current Scots makar, or poet laureate, Liz Lochhead, has now been taken up by policymakers. After a 2010 survey revealed that a majority of Scotland's population still speak Scots, and want it taught in schools, the SNP committed to follow recommendations from an advisory group led by pro-Scots scholar J Derrick McClure. McClure envisions an independent Scotland in which Scots is as different from English as Swiss German from German, and English tourists pack phrasebooks alongside the midge spray and cagoules.

So is the promotion of Scots an act of preservation or revivalism?