The chairwoman of the Scottish Parliament's cross-party group on the Scots language, Irene McGugan, visited the team of researchers at the University of Dundee recently and praised their work. Ms. McGugan said: "Vernacular Scottish is used by more than one million people daily and is the largest 'minority' language in the UK. This indicates a changing mood towards our culture, which is vitally important. If we don't work to keep the indigenous languages alive, no one else will do it for us. Making the Scots language accessible on the Internet is a fantastic way to open it up to as many people as possible."

The Dundee researchers are working through 100,000 Scots words, some of which date back to AD 1200. The team is led by senior English lecturer, Dr Victor Skretkowicz. The three-year project has been funded by a £320,000 grant from the Arts and Humanities Research Board.

Details are available in a recent BBC News article that you can read at: news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/scotland/newsid_2022000/2022999.stm

While you wait for the above major academic effort, you might want to use the small dictionary of Scots language already available at: www.ullans.com/ScotsDictionary.html.

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