THE BLOG
…what’s in a WURD?… I’m fluent in uttering Rubb-ish…
By Seamus Gallacher
…it’s not classified as a foreign language, but the patois that used to pass as voice communication back where I grew up in Docklands Govan in Glasgow is still unintelligible to the bulk of the rest of Mankind… even other Scots folks visiting ‘Glesca’, where the Commonwealth Games have just been held, can be found reaching for the translation earpieces when the locals start talking… not so much dialect, more a divine interconnection of grunts and other guttural sounds, the Glaswegian tongue defies the linguistic abilities of most people I meet… I think this was what first drove me to attempt to garner at least a passing fluency in other languages throughout my career… even in London, it was necessary to modify my delivery… slowing down speech by at least 50%, and enunciating consonants that had long stagnated with non-usage… dotting around the planet over the past four decades has brought me the delights of living and interacting with the inhabitants of the Far East, and now the Middle East… a good foundation of six years in the Scottish Hebrides gave me more than a passing acquaintance with the GaelicLanguage, the code-speak of the Gods… in Hong Kong, Cantonese absorbed a couple of years of learning…
…I well remember my first solo effort in it… at a small store I asked in Chinese for a bottle of milk and a loaf of bread… the counter assistant promptly handed me a newspaper and a bar of chocolate, at which point I realised there was yet more WURK to do… in the Philippines the staccato rapid-fire intonations of Tagalog actually proved simpler than expected to cram into the ol’ brain box, with an incredible amount of eyebrow gestures attendant to underline the conversation… my academy French has hung around a lot longer than should be thought possible—it was so long ago… mais, la plume de ma tante EST bleu, merci beaucoup..thanks
…here in Kamel Kuntry, the thought that the guttural proficiency which lends itself to the Scots brogue might assist in mastery of Arabic was totally misguided… back to the newspaper and bar of chocolate thingy again there, I’m afraid… the over-riding conclusion is that part from my basic Govan-ese, (English is considered a foreign language in deepest Glasgow) I speak most fluently in uttering Rubb-ish… Berlitz, eat yer heart out… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!…
