Walter Sutherland (Norn)
Walter Sutherland (died c. 1850) was a Scottish man who was reportedly the last native speaker of Norn, a North Germanic language which had once been spoken throughout Shetland, Orkney and Caithness.[1][2] Sutherland was from Skaw, on the island of Unst and lived in the northernmost house in the British Isles, near the present-day Unst Boat Haven.[3]
Sutherland may, however, have been merely the last native speaker of Norn on Unst. Some unnamed Norn-speakers of the island of Foula were reported by Jakob Jakobsen to have survived much later than the middle of the 19th century.[4]
Notes
- North-western European language evolution: NOWELE, vols. 50-51 (Odense University Press, 2007), p. 240
- Area Guide Unst
- June Skinner Sawyers, Maverick guide to Scotland (2000), p. 557
- P. Sture Ureland, George Broderick, eds., Language contact in the British Isles: proceedings of the Eighth International Symposium on Language Contact in Europe, Douglas, Isle of Man, 1988 (M. Niemeyer, 1991), p. 455
gollark: I don't know how you would do that, but while it would have political *effects* that doesn't really make it political.
gollark: You can maybe be *practically* non-political, if you just somehow avoid letting politics affect your purchasing decisions.
gollark: Hmm, okay then. As in, a big dropoff right after that happened, or just a general decline around the same time?
gollark: You seem to think that laws drive social attitude change. I think it's somewhat the other way round.
gollark: You should say it that way initially then. It's clearer.
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