Mother Tongue Other Tongue (MTOT) is a competition with a long history in Scotland. Since 2014, young linguists from P1-S6 in Scotland have been invited by SCILT to take part, giving them the opportunity to share their poetic creativity along with their wealth and diversity of language skills.
Since academic session 2020-21, the competition has focussed on the spoken word. Learners are invited not only to write a poem in their mother or other tongue, but to perform it so that their words can be heard in their own voice. Throughout the ongoing challenges schools and learners face from the global pandemic, teachers have supported these young poets to celebrate their language skills, and their work continues to inspire us year on year.
MTOT 2021-22 was launched on 7 October 2021, National Poetry Day. An additional prize was offered this year for poetry in the Scots language, sponsored by our partners at the Dictionaries for the Scots Language. To our delight, by December we had received over 120 entries from more than 30 schools. The range of both Mother and Other tongue languages was again astounding: from Arabic, Urdu, Scots/Doric, Bulgarian and Polish to Afrikaans, French, Spanish, German and Italian. The themes chosen by our young poets were diverse and inspirational, giving a unique insight into what is important to young people in an uncertain and ever-changing world. The language skills on display were quite phenomenal, reflecting the diverse and multicultural nature of modern Scotland. 2022 was truly a great year for MTOT.
Our judging panel of experts from the universities of Strathclyde, Glasgow and Edinburgh were joined by a new colleague, Bruce Eunson from the Dictionaries of the Scots Language in 2022. After much deliberation, the panel chose the winners in each category, and these were announced live at our online Awards Ceremony. Fittingly, this was held on 21 February 2022, International Mother Language Day, a day when we celebrate all world languages. In true Oscars style, the winners were announced live to an audience of parents, carers, teachers, learners and specially invited guests. The opening address was a specially recorded message from Kathleen Jamie, Scotland's Makar, who paid tribute to the young poets, recognising the importance of their language skills. As part of their prize, the winners will be able to have their poems published on the Children’s Poetry Archive (part of the UK National Poetry Archive), and feature in a special episode of the international Kids' Poetry Club podcast.
As ever, MTOT 2021-22 gave young linguists an opportunity to showcase not only their language skills, but also to share their heritage, their creativity and their learning. SCILT is proud to support these courageous and talented young poets; we congratulate this year's winners and highly commended entries, and we look forward to seeing even more languages and inspiring poems in MTOT 2022-23!