Coming from outside Northern Ireland, the issue of language and identity to me is an entirely non-political one, and simply dividing cultural issues along such lines is an unfortunate side-effect of recent history here.

Both languages (Lallans and Gaelic) and their respective cultures long predate any issues here and it greatly diminishes both by politicising them. As has been seen in Scotland, language and culture are both above party politics and, as a speaker of both, I feel that I can only fully enjoy an appreciation of Scotland, Northern Ireland and Ireland by having a knowledge of both languages at my disposal, irrespective of how many speakers of each there are.

In Scotland we have resistance to the teaching of Gaelic in Lowland schools, yet such opposers have no problem with the introduction of French, Chinese and other languages to pupils as young as four. There is no political backlash against those languages, no call to stop them, because they are no longer spoken on the local streets and no political footballing between one side and another.

Putting such issues in the narrow political confines of Planter v Gael does neither culture any favours.

The dismantlement of such linguistic and verbal division is, symbolically, just as important as the decommissioning of weapons of war.

Craig Cockburn, Belfast and Edinburgh