Brothers put in a geed wyord to save an ancient Scottish dialect from extinction

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"I think other people understand it, but they don't use it. You don't hear the expressions we used to use at all now, but I think that's true for everywhere. - BOBBY HOGG

Story in full WHEN Bobby and Gordon Hogg meet up for a chat, they enter a linguistic world that few, if any, can now understand.

The brothers, both in their eighties, may be the last known speakers of a dialect peculiar to the Black Isle town of Cromarty.

Robert Millar, a lecturer in linguistics at Aberdeen University and author of Northern and Insular Scots, has described the dialect as the most threatened in Scotland.

With Bobby, 87, and Gordon, 80, perhaps the last practitioners, efforts are being made to record their distinctive twang as part of the Highland Year of Culture.

The small communities throughout the Black Isle once had five separate dialects, with the fishing people of Cromarty, Avoch and Fortrose each having their own distinct speech.

The brothers' fishing dialect is even different from that spoken in the main part of Cromarty, which is derived from Scots.

Bobby said: "It's been dying for some time and it will just die a natural death. I was brought up in the fishing industry, which has died out, and the dialect has gone as the place changes.

"It was not used by the people very much, although my brother and I speak it all the time. Others gave it up because they maybe thought it was not the right way to speak.

"I think other people understand it, but they don't use it. You don't hear the expressions we used to use at all now, but I think that's true for everywhere.

"You can hear the odd smattering of it in some of the things people from Cromarty say, but nobody really speaks it."

The fishing language still uses formal expressions such as "thee", "thou" and "thine", and words beginning with "wh" can often lose the "h" or even "wh". The phrase "what do you want?" is heard as "at thee seekin?"

Bobby's wife, Helen, said: "My husband is fluent in the Cromarty fisher dialect. I understand it, but his brother is the only other person who can speak it."

Jamie Gaukroger, the content coordinator at Am Baile, the online Highland culture archive, said he hoped to record the brothers in the next few days to help preserve the dialect.

"I was not aware until last week that there was this distinctive Cromarty dialect. It's new to me, but it's very exciting all the same," he said.

"It's important that we get it recorded while we still can. If we manage to get it on tape before it disappears, it will be a real coup."

David Alston, a Cromarty-based historian and local councillor, said: "There were two distinct dialects in Cromarty, the town dialect and the fisher dialect.

"But the fisher dialect has now almost completely gone - Bobby and his brother and perhaps only a couple of others are the only ones left."

Mr Alston said language was dynamic, with new dialects emerging all the time. "There is a natural process of dialects dying and coming to be, but it is important we record them before they disappear," he said.

SOUNDS UNIQUE

ACCORDING to the Scottish National Dictionary, the Cromarty dialect has some distinctive sounds.

When a "g", or "k" precedes a vowel, the "oo" sound can be replaced by "ee". So, for instance, good, school and cool become geed, skeel and keel.

When the vowel comes before an "r", as in ford, moor and poor, the word can be changed to fyoord, myoor and pyoor.

The "wh" sound at the start of words is often replaced by a "wu" - so which and whiskers become wutch and wuskers.

In words where "kn" is pronounced "n", this can change to "kr" - knee, knife and knit are heard as kree, krife and krit.

An "h" is often inserted or omitted from the beginning of words. So ale-house, Annie, hand and house become hile-us, Hannie, an and oos.