About us
I Hear Dee is working to raise the profile of Shaetlan as a fully viable language variety in its own right both locally, nationally and internationally. We have secured a place for the language in the Microsoft SwiftKey keyboard, have created a Shaetlan Wirdle, have put out a freely available primer for the general public and have launched the first interactive online dictionary of Shaetlan, where all speakers can give their input. Everything we put out is freely available and is bilingual with Shaetlan as the default and English as an option.
Shaetlan is a highly distinct contact language that pre-dates Standard English in Shetland, yet has never been recognized as a language. We want to show by action that Shaetlan is perfectly viable as a language of instruction and should be included in schools, tertiary education and general public life as one of the two languages in this bilingual community.
Prof. Dr. Viveka Velupillai is affiliated with the Department of English at the University of Giessen, Germany, but is based in Shetland, where her principal project is to document and describe Shaetlan in a typological perspective. She was awarded a Visiting Professorship at the University of the Highlands and Islands in November 2023. Her specialities include linguistic typology, contact linguistics and historical linguistics. Her work includes An Introduction to Linguistic Typology and Pidgins, Creoles & Mixed Languages: An Introduction, as well as participation in the World Atlas of Language Structures, The Atlas of Pidgin and Creole Language Structures and The Automated Similarity Judgement Program.
She is particularly interested in the interaction of language, place and the environment, and the effect of linguistic diversity on economic resilience and environmental sustainability. She is also interested in the effects of digitalk in giving written voices and growing acceptability to stigmatised and marginalised languages.
Roy Mullay is a native speaker of Shaetlan with a keen interest in linguistics and a background in game programming. He has made Jakob Jakobsen’s Etymological Dictionary of the Norn Language in Shetland available on Internet Archive and is currently in the process of converting it to a web interfaced searchable resource. He is also time served in graphic design work and is the brains and talent behind the graphics of I Hear Dee.
Julie Dennison is also a native speaker of Shaetlan and a keen advocate of the language. She is a trained artist, graphic designer and printmaker, with an added background in contemporary textiles. She has illustrated children’s books in Shaetlan, for example Da Tree Bears, as well as written and illustrated her own. She is the brains and talent behind the drawings and cartoons of I Hear Dee.
Andrew Blance is a Shetland-born data scientist with a PhD in machine learning and quantum computing in particle physics. He is interested in the application of AI, developing apps and playing with fun tech things. He is an advanced Python developer, having previously taught courses on it, and has published numerous papers on Deep Learning. He is the tech genius behind our Wirdle, da daily Shaetlan wird game.
James Stewart is a Shetland-born software engineer with a background in politics. He has worked for isles MP Alistair Carmichael in Westminster, in the charity sector and is now a Lead Engineer in a telecommunications start-up. He is writing a book on the history of politics in Shetland and founded gaming charity Get-Well Gamers. James lives in Ayrshire with his wife Steph and owns a café there. He is the developer of Da Spaektionary, a collaborative Shaetlan dictionary for Shetlanders, by Shetlanders.