I see people are trotting out @lokiscottishrap's accent as an excuse to ignore his message. And thus, you all get a mildly incoherent rant about why Scots is important to me, somebody who moved here from a different country.

1/13

Our acccents, the way we speak, is often used by those who want us to conform to their own behaviours. We are punished through humiliation by those who want to exert control over us. Scots speakers are often told to 'speak properly' or that we're 'inarticulate', or 'rough'.

2/13

Or, the most annoying one of all, that we 'need to stop using slang'.

It sometimes works the other way as well. I arrived here from Hong Kong with a generic Midwestern American accent - coupled with my middle class upbringing, I have a relatively 'posh' Scottish accent.

3/13

And so people make certain assumptions about me, or my ability to discuss certain things, particularly politics and economics. It's the same either way, with a broad accent or a lighter one, people seek to ignore opinions they don't want to hear by blaming your accent.

4/13

Scots isn't just an accent, though. It isn't just a dialect, or 'slang'. It's a language unto itself - it shares its roots with English, and there's lots of similarities. But it has a distinct path of its own, and a huge cultural weight behind it, too.

5/13

When I was in Hong Kong, my Gran used to send me @TheBroonsFamily and @AbodysWullie annuals. I absolutely ate them up. I'm never joking when I say DC Thomson taught me to read. I could always understand what they were talking about, because my Dad would read them with me.

6/13

Scots as a language is a huge part of the Scottish Identity, at all levels of broadness. It's taken me a while to realise it, but it helps me - someone of mixed race and cultures - to validate my own feelings. I realised this when I first met @DrMDempster.

7/13

He picked up a copy of my comic "Bonnie Words", and he was excited about the fact that I had some of the characters speaking in Scots. Again, only about as broad as my own speech, but it was there, unexplained, unabridged, and unashamed.

8/13

He didn't care that it was a Scottish-Chinese character written by a Scottish-Chinese person. He saw that Scots was living in those pages, and spoke to me at length about Scots in comics. And he still does!

9/13

For the first time, even through all the Burns nights, and the ceilidhs, and the songs and the music - I felt truly Scottish, culturally. Because of the language, and how I wove it into my work, and how it was accepted without question.

10/13

It's definitely not just me. Is there anything more wonderful than the mix of Indian and Pakistani voice with Glaswegian patter? Or the young waiter who switches fluently between braid Scots and Cantonese? Or my personal favourite pairing - Iraqi-Scots.

11/13

Speaking Scots is a powerful cultural force. To call it a badge of belonging is to understate how it grips you at the mental and spiritual level. People who live here naturally pick it up, because it is everywhere, and it becomes a part of your life, your way of thinking.

12/13

To try and ignore what's being said by folks like Darren on the basis of their accents alone is to do a massive disservice to them, to their arguments, and to their wider communities.

Cut through the prejudice. Listen. Comprehend. Don't hide behind pale excuses.

13/13