A few years ago, academics at the University of London confirmed what West Country farmers have suspected for years: that cows have an accent. The study showed that within different herds there were distinct tonal variations in their members’ moos, much like our regional dialects. The result is that while one cow may sound properly “Zummerzet” (the lingo of Somerset), another may reveal a Lancashire twang.
This phenomenon has already been well documented in birds. Sonograms have shown that the Scottish crossbill, for example, manages to attract a mate from the entire crossbill population by adopting a strong Highlands accent. The cockney quack of a London duck is apparently a little like a shout and a laugh, while Cornish ducks sound as though they are giggling. Just this week, a study of thousands of sperm whales revealed that these wondrous mammals also communicate in sounds that are bespoke to their clan. It’s becoming clear that tribal language extends far beyond the human sphere.
The paper published in the Royal Society Open Science journal describes how sperm whales exchange distinctive, Morse-code like sequences of clicks with their peers. Each clan has its own vocalisations, and these distinctions are enabling scientists to establish the true number of whale groups in our oceans. But their importance goes further: the variations in sound not only confer membership of a particular group, but also – crucially – keep outsiders out.
Sperm whale clans may meet, but they will never inter-breed. While that might seem a little extreme in human terms, our own coded exchanges are just as useful, and our own sounds are equally key to where we fit in the world (or don’t).
We are all adept at code-switching, dipping in and out of different vocabularies and even accents depending on who we’re speaking to (some of us may like to try the crossbill’s strategy when it comes to dating). But we can also slip back into the language of home in a heartbeat, shrugging on our family’s words and sounds like a cosy and cherished old jumper. Depending on where we’re from, we will no longer feel simply “tired” but instead be “puggled”, “faldered”, “lennock”, “depooperit”, or plain “dumfungled”. Such linguistic loyalty is hard to shake off.
But tribe talk goes much further than dialect. Overlapping these local terms are thousands of other private lingos that have become the secret languages of Britain. Every sport, every profession, every community united by a single passion draws on a lexicon that is uniquely theirs. The thousands of resulting shorthands reflect the needs, ambitions, and personalities of the group, and for any anthropologist, they’re richly informative.
In some circles, including those of spies and Freemasons, secrecy is a given. In the military, operational shorthand can be the decider of life and death. When a paramedic “blues” a patient into hospital with “GCS 3 and possible ETOH”, they are dipping into a standard protocol that is swift, succinct, and painless (for them at least, for the patient in question is likely to be hammered).
Undercover codes like these are as old as language itself. Criminal slang was one of the earliest categories of language to be collected, a subterranean lingo passed from mouth to mouth among highwaymen, cutpurses and card sharks. Any prisoner today will be equally well versed in the language needed to elude the understanding of the screws.
Other professions opt for secrecy for different reasons. Butchers once used a special form of slang, appropriately known as Pig Latin, in which to talk about their customers. Thus a “dab tros” was a “bad sor” and a “fil-heath” a thief, while “cool the delo nammow” meant “look at the old woman” and secretly conveyed the fact that this one was highly irritating. Similarly, a waiter may complain of a “flea”: a bad tipper whose arms are too short to reach their pocket.
For most of us, though, just like the sperm whales, these codes are simply the key to belonging. Any outsider hearing a birdwatcher despair about being “gripped off”, let alone hear them celebrating “unblocking the blocker”, is likely to be thoroughly bemused. But a serious twitcher would immediately clock the frustration of missing out on a highly elusive bird that others have somehow managed to spot. (Unblocking the blocker, on the other hand, involves finally adding a tick to their life-list by spotting a bird that’s escaped them for years).
There is joy in these unifying languages too. Take builders, whose colourful banter brightens both their day and that of anyone who overhears them. For some of them, “a snotter” is anything stuck to paint or plaster that shouldn’t be; for others, “spreading the fat on Lionel Richie’s dance floor” is plastering the ceiling. Vicar-to-vicar, talk of Kinquering Kongs or Shoving Leopard (the hymns “Conquering Kings” and “Loving Shepherd of thy Sleep”) will guarantee a smile – unless the Archdemon is present.
Lexicographers have one, too. They will speak of lemmas, glosses, of parsing and “eggcorns”: slips of the ear that become expressions in their own right, as in “let’s cut to the cheese”. And, as I have found to my cost, any TV presenter who hears they’re looking “hot on the floor” should know not to take it as a compliment (Translation: you’re looking too shiny on set).
This kind of language is often so instinctive that we fail to notice its differences. If you ask a community of Geordie knitters or a group of Cornish trainspotters for their secret shorthands, you may receive nothing but a hard stare. Spend some time eavesdropping in the pub afterwards, however, and you will get the full flavour of tribal lingo. The best time to capture the language of the herd is when it’s not looking. The same can undoubtedly be said for Zummerzet-speaking cows.
Susie Dent is a lexicographer and etymologist. Her latest book is Interesting Stories about Curious Words, published by John Murray