International linguists sure know how to mind their language.

Experts from the Council of Europe chose their words very carefully when they described how speakers of Scots and Gaelic are treated.

In the diplomatic terms typical of a supranational body, they warned that attitudes to Scotland’s two minority languages were “highly politicised”.

The specialists did not point fingers. They did not need to. Scots speakers, they said in an official report published last week, “raised concerns that there are many instances of intolerance, threats and hate speech linked to the use of Scots in public life”. 

They added: “Such instances have happened mostly online, and women appear to be a particular target.”

This was a far from insignificant moment in 21st century Scottish history, even if it made little by way of headlines.

The continent’s pre-eminent guardian of human rights was flagging discrimination against this country’s two main linguistic minorities. It was a wake-up call. Or at least that was what it was supposed to be.  Scotland’s issues will feel familiar to lots of other Europeans. That is because there is nothing unusual about languages being “heavily politicised” on our continent.

And this is especially true in places where there are contested, rival or overlapping concepts ofnation and national identity, as we see in the UK, or Spain, or the Russian Federation. 

Take Montenegro. The small Balkan state of 600,000 or so souls became independent in 2006 after splitting with Serbia. Its people - in a second referendum - voted by 55% to 45% for sovereignty.  The ratio, if not the result, will look familiar to Scots.

So too will its debate on language. Which, nearly two decades after independence, is still raging. Why?

Well, because there are people who do not think the state language of Montenegro is real. 

Montenegrin, they say, is just Serbian. Indeed, until the 1990s and the break-up of the former Yugoslavia this was a pretty widespread political view. 

The two languages are certainly very similar and their speakers have little trouble understanding each other. 

Something like two out of five people in Montenegro say they speak Montenegrin. More than a third identify as Serbian speakers.

Montenegrin is written in to the Constitution of Montenegro as the state language. Serbian is protected too for “official use”. 

So, by the by, is Albanian, an unrelated language spoken by some five per cent of Montenegrin citizens.

People in Montenegro - as in Scotland - can get pretty het up about language. And perhaps - again as in our country - about what counts as a separate recognisable language. 

For the avoidance of doubt, Montenegrin secured recognition as a language from the international organisation for standardisation or ISO back in 2017. 

But that did not satisfy everybody. There is a movement of Montenegrin language deniers - or skeptics, depending on how you want to look at the issue.

Earlier this month the populist presidents of Serbia and Montenegro,  Aleksandar Vučić and Jakov Milatović respectively, met at an international conference in Prague. 

Something happened at the event that really got tongues wagging about how people speak in the Western Baltics.

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Milatović said that, essentially, everyone in the region speaks the same language. Vučić told his Montenegrin colleague he was speaking Serb. “I do, I do,” replied Milatović before adding: “It is, essentially, the same language linguistically. Many people call it by different names.”

Back home Milatović went on TV to try and smooth the issue out. “The whole of Montenegro knows it,” he said, according the English-language version of the online newspaper Cafe del Montenegro. “I’m a Montenegrin, speaking the Serbian language. 

“On the other hand, I don’t think that people who speak Montenegrin love this country less and vice versa – that someone declaring himself as a Serb loves this country less. 

“I just don’t put an emphasis on those things, but if someone asks, my answer is concrete. 

“The right of every individual in this country is to say which language they speak.”

There is a linguistic reality here. Serbian, Bosnian, Croatian and Montenegrin are closely related languages and have historically been lumped together as a “pluricentric” single language.  

They are similar but not the same. This is true, to one extent or another, of most languages on our continent, including in these islands.

Scots and English are sister languages, essentially two twigs on a Germanic branch of the Indo-European language group. Gaelic and Irish are on the same “tree”, only on a Celtic bough.

There are those - usually on social media rather than in mainstream public life - who will say Scots is English or Gaelic is Irish. 

Linguists, including those at the Council of Europe, will disagree. They are, unsurprisingly, unfazed by related language varieties.  

The rhetoric - and the academic response - would not be out of place on the former Yugoslavia.

Is it worth thinking about the ongoing controversy over Montenegrin here in Scotland? Maybe. Because we are about to enter in to a whole new debate about Scots and Gaelic, about their status in public life.

Last week the SNP government - after 17 years in power - put forward its first bill on Scots and Gaelic. This includes proposals to make the languages ‘official’, changing the way public bodies deal with the languages and their speakers.

(Image: Archive)

The last census, in 2022, counted about a million and a half Scots speakers, with the highest concentrations in unionist heartlands like Orkney, Shetland and Aberdeenshire. 

That is more people than the SNP, even in its post-referendum pomp, was ever able to get to vote for it. That does not mean Scots is widely used in public life: only 0.3 per cent of people said it was their main language. 

Gaelic is far less widely spoken. The census suggested 130,000 had some skills - though only 0.1 per cent said it was their main language.

English dominates in Scotland, especially in the public sphere.

It is about a quarter of a century since the UK signed the charter for minority and regional languages under the Council of Europe. 

Spoken or written Scots or Gaelic can still trigger overt prejudice and abuse. As in Montenegro the language question is intertwined with strong feelings about independence or the union, about rival nationalisms.

That, at least, is the view of the committee of experts sent by the Council of Europe. They have come up with a series of recommendations on topics like education and broadcasting.

But they also called for specific protections for minority language speakers under the UK Equality Act. And the said it was time for Scots to “decouple” their attitudes to language from their politics. 

In their own diplomatic argot, they said:  “The Committee of Experts encourages the authorities to continue and enhance efforts to depoliticise regional and minority languages and to promote non-discrimination.” 

This, as the Balkans and many other regions have demonstrated, is easier said than done.