SwindonSpeak, it’s a little like a 21st Century version of Orwell’s Newspeak as outlined in his work 1984.
Here’s a snippet of overhearing that fell loudly in to my ears while I was in the centre of Swindon town getting some cash out of the machine (I’ve done the best I can with punctuation, but where there was no breath or natural pause, sentences have been continued).
“Gor lookit tha’ photo she’s go’ tits inshe an’ fuckin’ legs she’s fuckin’ gorgeous Jase wearjoo pull ‘er in that pub in Portugal you toll me abou’?”
“Yer on the firs’ nye an’ she ‘ad a fren rye bu’ she fuck’d off and fucken fuck’d a fucken German wouldja believe i’ good lookin’ bir’ too aye.”
“How far she live ay are you goin’ to ge’ togev’r agin?”
“Nah she’s in fuckin’ Devin inni’ or sumwear up norf s’fuckin’ miles if she wan’s me she can come an’ ge’ me she knows wear I is.”
“Hahahahaha.”
Good grief.
Is there any hope for the rest of us?
B.
I despair. Co-incidentally, I read this yesterday and thought along similar lines – this is the opening page of a book published in October 2007 by a major American publishing house. I think their copy-editor was having an off day…
Robert Fraser slid the heavy backpack of books off his shoulders and set it on the stone floor with a solid thunk beside his motorcycle helmet. Letting his Scots roots show, he said, “Top o’ the mornin’ to ye, Lorraine. How goes it?”
The art department’s blue-haired secretary and unofficial matriarch looked up from her desk. “You have a visitor. You’d better clean yourself up. Toot soo-weet.”
Her bad French for “right away,” liberally accented with the round vowels of Edinburgh, made him wince. “I have a visitor? Who is it?”
“Some old guy. Very mysterious. Came in the back door and disappeared into the chairman’s office about twenty minutes ago. Professor McManus has been buzzing me to ask if you were in yet about every two minutes. Angus is in a fair tizzy over this gent, so he must be a personage with a purse, if you catch my meaning.”
Angus McManus in a tizzy? The old geezer was usually half-comatose these days. No retirement for that bloke, no sir. He’d die at his post, old Angus. The art history department he chaired at Edinburgh University was his life. Robert sighed. Sometimes he wondered if he was fated to end up the same way, shriveled and musty, hunched over tattered old books and half-assed papers from snotty graduate students.
“Go on in, luv, and rescue Angus before he has a stroke.”
(Un)fortunately it was a library book and so survived being hurled across the room in irritation.
I’m seeking relief in the idea that, if I were to encounter them in real life, I probably would not realize they speak a language that’s related to English…
Caroline > toot soo-weet?
Citronella > typed out as it was on the page, sadly! Ditto for the comma inside the quotes on the following line.
I live in Liverpool…Swindon speak is nothing (although they are on the chavvy side of the West Country)
This is a worrying chance that at some point, they are likely to breed.
Do Collins publish an English/Swindonese dictionary? I’m needing one.
And a map would be good too. (So I can avoid the place.)Devon is South of Swindon. Isn’t it? It is, isn’t it???
Mya x
Caroline: Bloody hell what a dog’s dinner! Words failing.
LizSara: When I was in Liverpool a couple of weeks ago the locals I met were very understandable. But I didn’t journey to the darker edges of the city. 🙂
Gumpher: They are breeding, I see them most days!
Mya: South of Swindon by a long, long way. And breathe… 🙂