Language really is a funny thing. I was born and raised in Ireland, living there until my mid-twenties when I emigrated to the U.K. When I was growing up, I always had a bit of a funny relationship with the Irish language. My father is a proud Irish nationalist, and in my early years, Irish was very much an important part of my daily life. My mother stuck little stickers around the house with the Gaeilge words written on them to make it easier for me to learn. I went to a Gaeilge speaking pre-school and attended a Gaelscoil (Irish speaking school) for a little while. But I didn’t appreciate how little I knew of my own language until I moved over here and began to lose the little I had in the first place.

Ireland has a very similar history to Scotland, both colonised by England, both having had our cultures stripped away, our language banned, our identity rewritten.

“Common Tongue” follows Bonnie, a woman who has spent her entire life being proud of being Scottish and for speaking Scots as it’s what she has grown up with. However, even within her community, there are those who don’t buy into speaking Scots. There is an unfair assumption that speaking something like Scots is a reflection of your class, and therefore, also makes it a reflection on your educational ability. Bonnie faces this prejudice throughout the play and has to fight against all the pressures to change.

Olivia Caw’s performance is flawless, her accent is flawless, her crowd work (Oh yes, she will talk to you) is flawless. We feel the depth of Bonnie’s emotional journey through her. We, too, feel her pain, Scottish or not, at fighting to just be who she is.

Fraser Scott has written this beautiful love note to Scotland, and I applaud him for it. This has been my favourite show of the Fringe so far! It is important to understand language and to see it as that: not slang, a language. Slang is something you pick up, like calling something cool “Gucci”, but language is so much more than that. It makes up our identity, and “Common Tongue” champions the right to speak our words with no fear of judgment because (to paraphrase the play) the words we use are our birthright.
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