© Ulster-Scots Language Society 2020

Ulster Scots

Ulster-Scots (or Ullans) is the variety of Scots spoken in Ulster, one of the four provinces of Ireland. Principally heard in the counties Down, Antrim, Derry/Londonderry and Donegal, it is the native tongue of many rural communities, which were settled by Scots in the seventeenth century. Nowadays, most of its speakers are able to switch seamlessly between Ulster-Scots and Ulster-English. At least 100,000 would call themselves Ulster-Scots and readily understand the language; a much smaller number speak it every day.

It was granted official status as a Regional or Minority language in the British government’s European Charter of 1st July 2001, after having been previously recognised by the European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (EBLUL).

The New Testament in Ulster-Scots

The Ulster Scots New Testament translation project was started in 2006. It was undertaken by several groups of volunteers, under the supervision of Wycliffe Bible Translation consultants, Philip and Heather Saunders.

The first part of the project was the Gospel of Luke (Guid Wittins frae Doctèr Luik) which was published by the Ullans Press in December 2009, with a foreword by Professor Michael Montgomery (University of South Carolina at Colombia), who was President of the Ulster-Scots Language Society. Despite being published as a diglot alongside the King James Version, it is an original translation, not unduly influenced by a Scots, English or any other version. This was placed online in 2018.

The project continued andTha Fower Gospels o Mattha, Mairk, Luik an Jhone was published in 2016 and placed online in 2020.