Quick Talking

As any linguist, cunning or otherwise (fnarr), will tell you, language is never inert. It develops to suit the times and the needs of those who speak it. Tutting Daily Mail readers who today bemoan youngsters speaking like they're extras from The Wire are the same as their grandparents grumbling about kids in the 1950s using words like "cool" and "hip".

All this is why we thankfully don't speak like we're in some boring Shakespeare play, but it occasionally bites you on the arse and makes you look a bit of a right old duffer before your time.

The scene: work, lunchtime. I'm off out to the shop to get something to drink.

"Anyone need anything from the shop?" I ask. "I'm just off to get a can of pop."

Everyone laughs at my use of the word "pop". What? Has that word really fallen out of use so quickly? OK, as said in my previous post, I admit I come from a town where you could film an episode of Doctor Who set in 1970 and not need to spend much money on clothes for extras, but surely calling some soft drink "pop" hasn't fallen out of common use so quickly?

It would seem so, and I was left thinking I should have completed the picture by putting on me flat cap and saying I needed the drink to help wash down the bread and dripping I would be having.

Which reminds me of something else that may make it look like I grew up in the 1950s, rather than 80s: on a summer's day, a guy in a van would come round flogging bottles of cola, lemonade and dandelion and burdock made by a company called Dent, in nearby Cleator Moor. I was never that comfortable drinking the lemonade, as it was the same colour as piss, but the cola was fine. Just as well, as in true clichéd Northern mother style, the only time she'd stump up for "proper" cola was when it was on offer in Presto.

All this being said, it doesn't stop me rolling my eyes and thinking "bloody kids" when I'm on the bus next to some baggy jeaned gobshite. But at least it's not because of what they're speaking - no, it's because of the complete tinny crap passing for music coming out of their phones.