Now recognized: An old language with Scandinavian roots in the North Sea

Shaetlan is a Mixed Language spoken in the Shetland archipelago, the northernmost part of the UK. As shown in the blog from 2022, it emerged due to a long drawn contact situation. There was a situation stable of Norn/Scots bilingualism. Norn was a West Scandinavian variety and Scots a West Germanic variety. This bilingualism was additionally in sustained contact with the Dutch/Low Germanic varieties. Those were spoken by those involved in the Hanseatic and Dutch fishing trades. This multilingual ecology led to Shaetlan, a Grammar-Lexicon Mixed Language with a predominantly Scandinavian grammar, but with a mainly Anglian vocabulary.

Shaetlan serves as an example after the fact for Bakker’s type of mixed languages that he calls G-L languages. These tend to have most of their grammar from the language of the original settlers, but most of their vocabulary from the new, more socioeconomically powerful settlers. The grammar of Shaetlan aligns extremely closely with that of the Continental Scandinavian languages. This was discussed in a recent book written by linguist Velupillai & native speaker Mullay in 2025 (see Figure 2).

The vocabulary, however, is much more heterogenous: if one looks at the basic vocabulary, the 100 most common words, one finds that it is closer to the group of languages that includes English. One can visualize this by means of a so-called lexicostatistical phylogenetic network. This places Shaetlan on the Anglian branch. It is quite far removed from the other Anglian varieties in the graph (see Figure 3).

If we go beyond the core Swadesh words to a wider every-day lexicon, the proportions of Scandinavian-derived as well as Dutch-derived words increase. Thus we have a nevfoo ‘fist full’ of something (Danish: nævefuld) , we might cook niers ‘kidneys’ (Dutch: nier, Danish nyr) for dinner or we might prefer to get faerdi-maet ‘take away’ (Danish; færdig mad, lit. ready-food), our pot might be tøm ‘empty’ (Danish: tøm) and in the cold season we might get a host ‘cough’ (Dutch hoest, Danish host).

There seem to be some areas of meanings that have a more Scandinavian vocabulary than other, such as weather words, words related to the sea (especially types of waves and states of the sea), words related to diseases and body parts, and words related to traditional skills such as crofting, fishing, boat building, knitting, peat cutting, stone building, music instrument construction, etc. I have described some of those in a study published this year, 2025. See that article for more details and an in depth discussion. If we’re expecting visitors we might need to gather our proil ‘stuff’ (cf. Dutch prull / Low German Prüll/Pröll/Proll < Middle Low Dutch / Middle Low German prul, whence also Swedish pryl). And in the winter we might get flukkra ‘snowflake(s)’ (< Middle Dutch/Middle Low German vlocke ‘(snow)flake’) sailing down on the landscape. At the moment most statements about patterns in the etymological clusterings by semantic domains are anecdotal. Much more quantified research needs to be done here.

Most Shaetlan speakers have long felt that what they speak is a unique code. However, in the last 200 years, universal schooling has been introduced. This has exclusively been conducted in English. In school, Shetlanders have been told that the only ‘proper’ language is English and that their own speech is quirky and only suited for humour (at best) or that it is rude and should be eradicated. They have also been (and continue to be) told to “speak proper” – by which English is meant – or else nobody will understand them. That in itself is an attestation of how distinct Shaetlan is from other languages. Yet the obvious contradiction of “your language is too different to understand” and “what you speak is not a language” keeps being repeated.

An ISO code for Shaetlan

Based on the data collected by Da Shaetlan Projict / I Hear Dee, an application for an ISO 639-3 code was submitted on the 1st of May 2023. The application was co-signed by a number of mother tongue speakers, as well as a number of linguists around the world. The process was long drawn and far from transparent. However, finally, on 15 October 2025 Shaetlan, this remarkably resilient Mixed Language in the North Sea, which has so long been stigmatised and ridiculed, finally got recognition in the form of the ISO 639-3 code scz.

This has led to celebrations in the local media, such as in the Shetland News and The Shetland Times, and to joyful suggestions in social media of making the 15th of October the Shaetlan Language Day:

I have also received a number of personal messages celebrating the fact that Shetlanders now have external validation and recognition for their language:

I’m dat blyde Shaetlan is bøn recognised as a language.

Hits something wi aa kent bit didna ken foo tae prove hit.

So whin dø wi git tae study fir a higher grade athin Shaetlan?

Blissins

Cecil

Cecil’s question is highly justified, and in fact this ISO code has already helped lend more weight to the Shaetlan Language Plan put forth by the Shetland college of The University of the Highland and Islands. We have described that in our book, written by Velupillai & Mullay in 2025.

Classification for Shaetlan

One of the main hurdles for Mixed Languages in major linguistic databases is that they do not neatly conform to genetic classifications. These linear 19-century classifications and family trees do not cope well with branches merging. The consequence is that Mixed Languages, as well as other types of Contact Languages, are usually classified according to one of the ancestor languages, which in turn makes it look like a (non-standard) variety of that ancestor language. More often than not, such a language will be classified according to the ancestor language which has provided the bulk of the vocabulary. This of course completely ignores that language is not a tub of words that get pulled out at random. Indeed, any language has a predictable structure, and that the grammar is equally essential for the character of the language. For example, the majority (56%) of the Contemporary English lexicon is French-derived, but surely nobody would try to classify English as a dialect of French. This kind of antiquated classification system in turn perpetuates the very common attitude that speaker of so many Mixed Languages are confronted with. Outsiders say they are ‘dialects’ of the socioeconomically more powerful ancestor language, when in fact they are unique blends that emerged in unique contact situations, and they should be celebrated as such. They are fascinating testimonies of human history, diversity and ingenuity.

Further reading:

Bakker, Peter. 2017. Typology of mixed languages. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald & R.M.W. Dixon (Eds.), Cambridge handbook of linguistic typology, pp. 217-253. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Velupillai, Viveka. 2025. Language preservation in strangely familiar places: How traditional skills have helped preserve Shaetlan. In Alexandra Y. Aikhenvald, Anne Storch & Viveka Velupillai (Eds.), Language in strange and familiar places. Linguistic research in uncharted territories. [Anthropological Linguistics 13], pp. 39-73. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton

Velupillai, Viveka. Forthcoming. Shaetlan. An endangered Mixed Language in the North Sea. In Jeffrey P. Williams & Nils Langer (Eds.), Endangered languages of Europe. Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton.

Velupillai, Viveka & Mullay, Roy. 2025. Shaetlan. A young language wi aald røts. Uradale: Kalafine-Skrits.

Weinreich, Max. 1945. Der YIVO un di problemen fun undzer tsayt. YIVO Bleter 25(1). 3-18.

Viveka Velupillai is professor of linguistics at Geese University in Germany, locally known as Giessen. She has written textbooks on typology and on pidgins, creoles and mixed languages. She is a long-time resident of the Shetland islands, where she is surrounded by animals and nature. She is also a skilled knitter.

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