A disagreement and Cromarty Fisherfolk...

I got caught up in a bit of a storm last night, a discussion between my daughter and her beau about the use of language and how it might be easier if everyone pronounced all words in exactly the same way. Of course this debate took place through the medium of texting, not that texting was even a word a few years ago, but, as The Jam once said, this is a modern wowld.

Anyway, it got me thinking about how language has changed over the last fifty years or so and how some worlds, and the words that went with them, are gone 4ever, never to return.

Cromarty, the stuff of late night weather warnings; I’ve heard all about it on the Shipping Forecast, it’s a wet and windy place by all accounts.

It also until very recently had it’s own unique dialect called Cromarty Fisherfolk, not an accent, a unique dialect which apparently had Germanic roots so there was no ‘wh’ and ‘what’ became ‘at’, ‘where became ‘ere’ it also had no ‘H’.

Last week the last speaker of the dialect, 92-year-old, Bobby Hogg died and with it Cromarty Fisherfolk.

I wonder if he ended up talking to himself?

Ten miles down the coast is another sleepy fishing village, Avoch, where another distinct dialect is spoken. This dialect now becomes the closest thing to Cromarty Fisherfolk, although it is very different. Think of that, two villages only ten miles apart speaking to all intents and purpose quite a different language.

“So what” I hear you say, and where is this going anyway? Or rather: “So at” I ear you say, and ere is tis going anyay?

My grandfather was born and bred in Lincolnshire and I could hardly understand a word he said. He’d use words that I couldn’t find in the dictionary, spoke in guttural grunts and snorts, and the nodding and shaking of his head seemed to play an important part in the way he communicated. I’m reliably informed I might have been able to understand him better if I’d been Dutch as the dialect he spoke was invented by the settlers from Holland who were his, and my, ancestors.

“Nar den, hoe jij ben?” He’d ask, “Hoe indeed?” I wondered.

Even then I could see that times and the way in which we spoke were changing, or rather vanishing as the older people died. I had a strong Oxfordshire twang as a boy; ‘milk’ was ‘moilk’, ‘girl’ was ‘goyl’, and in answer to the question of whether I was from Buckinghamshire I’d reply: ‘Bis oi Bucks? Bis oi baggery.’

Of course, I soon got this kicked out of me when I went to my semi-public grammar school, and I really do mean kicked out.

Even over my short lifetime (too long I hear you complain) language has been changing faster than at any time in the past probably . In some ways it is getting more interesting; new words are being invented all the time - innit - but in other ways language, particularly the way it sounds across geographies, is becoming bland and differences are disappearing.

In general, as the world becomes one big global village, and as people become more literate, the differences in cultures begin to disappear, with technology and the huge advances it has brought to communication being the driver behind the change. Most of the world read the same books, watch the same films and television, follow the same sports teams, drive the same cars, can speak the same few languages.

The world is becoming uniform and with that inevitably comes sterility and sameness, a grey world full of grey people saying the same grey things in a universal grey language.

Distance no longer matters. YouTube, Skype, Twitter, Facebook, mobile phones, texting, the ease with which we can fly to almost any part of the world; it’s almost as if nowhere is anywhere any more as places lose their identities and are absorbed into the bigger whole.

In language terms, one day we will all sound the same, use the same words, speak the same language, and of course understand each other with ease. Not that they’ll be any need to talk; after all when that day of total unison comes they’ll be nothing to talk about. People who agree generally just make noises.

One day we may all talk in Earthspeak, if we can be bothered.

Of course I’m overstating the case, but with each small loss of uniqueness the blandness creeps and we move towards a less creative future. Each time we lose something unique, like Cromarty Fisherfolk, a little bit of the colour of life vanishes, another Dodo is gone for good and Neanderthal man is cross-breedingly absorbed into Homo-Sapien.

William Shakespeare invented a new word each week or so of his adult life and once there were two Scottish villages only ten miles apart who invented their own individual dialects - ten miles beyond that there was another one, and ten miles beyond that another, and ten miles beyond that…

Without diversity the world is a poorer place.