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You can find the current article at its original source at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/sep/30/hsbc-dialect-dying-rab-c-nesbitt
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| My message to the HSBC boss who says dialect is dying: Get real, ya wallapur | My message to the HSBC boss who says dialect is dying: Get real, ya wallapur |
| (about 1 hour later) | |
| By 2066 all dialect words and regional pronunciations will be no more – consumed, according to a new report, by a tsunami of Americanisms and machine speak and sloshed down the clarty drain to oblivion. | |
| “Clarty” is a home-fashioned Glasgow adjective meaning “mucky”. And since HSBC commissioned the Sounds of 2066 report to mark the launch of the bank’s “voice biometrics and security technology” programme, its motives may be, if not clarty, on the opaque side – and smack of predictive wishful thinking rather than balanced social science. | “Clarty” is a home-fashioned Glasgow adjective meaning “mucky”. And since HSBC commissioned the Sounds of 2066 report to mark the launch of the bank’s “voice biometrics and security technology” programme, its motives may be, if not clarty, on the opaque side – and smack of predictive wishful thinking rather than balanced social science. |
| I have a personal interest in this subject, having made whatever name I have by creating a sitcom called Rab C Nesbitt that spanned 10 series over 20 years on BBC2. Nesbitt was rooted in Glasgow, and to its last glottal stop was steadfastly colloquial – or incomprehensible, according to taste. If I had a pound for every time someone said to me: “We think it’s very funny but we don’t understand a word” I’d have about, oh, £25 by now. | I have a personal interest in this subject, having made whatever name I have by creating a sitcom called Rab C Nesbitt that spanned 10 series over 20 years on BBC2. Nesbitt was rooted in Glasgow, and to its last glottal stop was steadfastly colloquial – or incomprehensible, according to taste. If I had a pound for every time someone said to me: “We think it’s very funny but we don’t understand a word” I’d have about, oh, £25 by now. |
| Someone must have understood something because our first series won the Royal Television Society award for best sitcom and was nominated as the BBC’s entry for the Golden Rose of Montreux. I think Rab C Nesbitt still holds the rare distinction of being the first entry to screen English subtitles while the characters were speaking English. | Someone must have understood something because our first series won the Royal Television Society award for best sitcom and was nominated as the BBC’s entry for the Golden Rose of Montreux. I think Rab C Nesbitt still holds the rare distinction of being the first entry to screen English subtitles while the characters were speaking English. |
| We’re all used to the notion of the steady wash of the homogenising wave rubbing the idiosyncratic edges from the pebbles of language. Perhaps it’s time to concern ourselves not with how we express ourselves but with what we’re actually saying. People liked Rab because then, as now, we crave authenticity. It didn’t matter how he spoke or if we missed the occasional word – we liked his company. | We’re all used to the notion of the steady wash of the homogenising wave rubbing the idiosyncratic edges from the pebbles of language. Perhaps it’s time to concern ourselves not with how we express ourselves but with what we’re actually saying. People liked Rab because then, as now, we crave authenticity. It didn’t matter how he spoke or if we missed the occasional word – we liked his company. |
| I readily accept that should I live long enough I will one day speak to my car like an old friend and instruct it to take me to Waitrose so I can forget the bitter Glasgow tenement years of crispy pancakes and deep fried heroin, and embrace the improving crunch of radicchio. I expect my car to respond, not like a heartless Dalek but with a chummy “Nae bother big yin” – since customisation will still, in 2066, be as highly prized a piece of cultural turf as it is today. | I readily accept that should I live long enough I will one day speak to my car like an old friend and instruct it to take me to Waitrose so I can forget the bitter Glasgow tenement years of crispy pancakes and deep fried heroin, and embrace the improving crunch of radicchio. I expect my car to respond, not like a heartless Dalek but with a chummy “Nae bother big yin” – since customisation will still, in 2066, be as highly prized a piece of cultural turf as it is today. |
| The report notes the decline of standard English and received pronunciation – “the Queen’s English” – and asserts that today nonstandard accents and dialects are much more readily accepted. “This improves opportunities for people from a wider variety of social and educational backgrounds. People in 2066 will be mystified as to why Tony Blair, Ed Miliband and George Osborne were slammed so mercilessly by the press for having been caught saying ‘voters’ without using a ‘proper T in the middle’.” | The report notes the decline of standard English and received pronunciation – “the Queen’s English” – and asserts that today nonstandard accents and dialects are much more readily accepted. “This improves opportunities for people from a wider variety of social and educational backgrounds. People in 2066 will be mystified as to why Tony Blair, Ed Miliband and George Osborne were slammed so mercilessly by the press for having been caught saying ‘voters’ without using a ‘proper T in the middle’.” |
| We’re all equal, then. There’s no difference between me, you and Osborne. We’re all of us jumping about being egalitarian and trying not to drip soya milk into our hipster beards. And here we have the crux of the matter. | We’re all equal, then. There’s no difference between me, you and Osborne. We’re all of us jumping about being egalitarian and trying not to drip soya milk into our hipster beards. And here we have the crux of the matter. |
| As previously mentioned, this report was commissioned by HSBC. At the time of the bank bailouts in 2007/8 its then chairman declared his bank to be one of the most strongly capitalised in the world and not in need of government support. Such are the words of elevated men in a privileged world. Their vision sweeps the horizon and sees only new technology from which it can profit and exploit us. We are handed down the future in tablets of stone from the cathedral spire of Canary Wharf. Yes, I know how this sounds – a soft-palmed, former working-class tube (Glasgow slang meaning “empty vessel”) trying to convince you he still has a social conscience. | As previously mentioned, this report was commissioned by HSBC. At the time of the bank bailouts in 2007/8 its then chairman declared his bank to be one of the most strongly capitalised in the world and not in need of government support. Such are the words of elevated men in a privileged world. Their vision sweeps the horizon and sees only new technology from which it can profit and exploit us. We are handed down the future in tablets of stone from the cathedral spire of Canary Wharf. Yes, I know how this sounds – a soft-palmed, former working-class tube (Glasgow slang meaning “empty vessel”) trying to convince you he still has a social conscience. |
| At Montreux, Rab C Nesbitt had the distinction of English subtitles while the characters were speaking English | At Montreux, Rab C Nesbitt had the distinction of English subtitles while the characters were speaking English |
| Once I’ve bought my sun-dried tomatoes and carefully selected corn-fed chicken fillets, I swan in my indolent way across the street to a spacious local hostelry where, having given up drinking many years ago, I buy my skinny latte. | Once I’ve bought my sun-dried tomatoes and carefully selected corn-fed chicken fillets, I swan in my indolent way across the street to a spacious local hostelry where, having given up drinking many years ago, I buy my skinny latte. |
| The bar staff are almost all young, and speak in the relentlessly evolving American argot that the seers at HSBC are warning us about. Almost every staff member is a university graduate. Because they can’t find careers that match their qualifications, they have been pushed down the employment ladder to usurp the jobs that were once the preserve of the working class Glasgow bams and bamettes. | The bar staff are almost all young, and speak in the relentlessly evolving American argot that the seers at HSBC are warning us about. Almost every staff member is a university graduate. Because they can’t find careers that match their qualifications, they have been pushed down the employment ladder to usurp the jobs that were once the preserve of the working class Glasgow bams and bamettes. |
| Language has always evolved. Words are the loose change of communication. Chillax. Mass emigration caused by wars and the economic laws of human supply and demand are as much the drivers of vast social change as technology. No mention of those in the report. | Language has always evolved. Words are the loose change of communication. Chillax. Mass emigration caused by wars and the economic laws of human supply and demand are as much the drivers of vast social change as technology. No mention of those in the report. |
| Perhaps in 2066 the chairman of HSBC will enter an elevator. The voice recognition system may identify his larynx and mutter: “Get real, ya wallapur!” | Perhaps in 2066 the chairman of HSBC will enter an elevator. The voice recognition system may identify his larynx and mutter: “Get real, ya wallapur!” |
| That would be braw. | That would be braw. |