Saturday, 9 April 2011

Norfuk and a Hidden Dinosaur

This past week I have managed to have possibly the easiest job ever. It has consisted of a lot of sitting, playing on stick cricket and occasionally sweeping up. It has been so painfully boring, but today I found something to do.

I started browsing Wikipedia, and I - in the procrastination style (if I can class this as procrastination, as I'm not actually avoiding doing anything) - thought I'd look at the foreign Wikipedias. I was scrolling through the list and, obviously, my first thought was to go to the bottom, where I found the language of 'Herero' (the language of the Banutu family from Namibia and Botswana) with the lofty total of 0 articles in their language.

After scrolling up a little I found a couple of languages from a little closer to home - Norfuk and Scots. So I keenly had a look, expecting to find a language painfully close to my learnt tongue, with very few differences. I wasn't disappointed.

These 'languages' are... JUST ENGLISH. If these people think they're fooling anyone by turning some of the words a little more phonetic, or more nonsensical, they are naive buffoons. All I can see possible to be achieved by this ridiculous deviation from English language is segregation, although I'm not sure why I'm even entertaining the fact that they could possibly be languages in their own right. At a push they're dialects, but it's all too obvious that on these pages it is English that is being written. I have no prior education of these languages, but I can scan through them effortlessly, only stumbling occasionally.

This also comes after I had a visit to Wickes in which we had a breif altercation with a fellow who seemed unable to use English words. He must be a user of the Bexhillian Wikipedia page... Although I'm not sure computer technology has made it to Bexhill yet, and if it has the local residents would find the magic talky clicky box difficult to control. This man just continually grunted something and pointed to the wrong place to find what we needed. I'm sure you'll approve of our purchase, though. We are setting up to do our loft insulation, so suits and masks were necessary. I might start wearing this as a fashion statement, though. What do you think?


Just finished the loft now, and we found a dinosuar hiding up there. This house is older than I thought...



Well I've spent enough time inside now, so I'll set to spending the next fortnight enjoying this surprise heatwave (yes we're already hearing that word!) and the lovely Sussexian and Kentish countryside.

Happy sunning.

1 comment:

  1. Being a native Norfuk speaker I'm going to have to disagree with this. Trust me, if you were to witness two fluent Norfuk speakers talking you might pick up on some words but the majority of the conversation would be lost on you unless you're familiar with a) 18th century English and b) native Tahitian. Oh and the natural blend these two have managed over the last 3 centuries. Or, of course, Norfuk. Sure, some phrases you can recognise but you can't compare "naawi" to anything like "swim". It's been classified as a Creole instead of pidgeon for a reason...

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