Ian McMillan: A ‘Hiya’ education in the correct things to say

I guess the equivalent round here would be people behind the counter saying “Now then” and “I’ll si thi!” This is the kind of news item that pops up every now and then when the real world gets too horrific and we need something a little lighter, a bit “silly season”.

I remember a similar ripple of interest a couple of years ago when an institution, I think it may have been a bank, in the North East tried to stop its staff calling customers “pet”. Daft, I know: you may as well try and get me to stop calling people “love”.

In the heated debate on the local radio I was put up against a very nice lady who used all the usual arguments against words like “Hiya!” and “Seeya!” which boiled down to the fact that, although they sounded friendly and cheerful, they simply weren’t, in her word, “professional”.

It was an old row and one that will always get people to sit on one side of the fence or the other. You don’t get many neutrals when it comes to the use of the English language. Or of any language, I guess: I suppose they have similar discussions on French or Brazilian radio. Or maybe they’ve got better things to talk about.

About halfway through the item, the Very Nice Lady used an odd phrase, though: after demolishing my feeble arguments in praise of “Hiya!” and “Seeya!” she said: “Anyway, they’re made up words.”

I have to admit that stopped me in my tracks. I was briefly speechless, and that’s not like me. I was, for a moment, flabbergasted. As Frankie Howerd might have said, my flabber had never been been more ghast.

There was radio silence, which isn’t a great thing, and then I recovered enough to say “all words are made up!” I was so disgruntled (my gruntle had never been more dis) that I said it again, in a louder voice “all words are made up!” And they are.

Look at some of the lovely colourful words I’ve used so far in these few paragraphs: kerfuffle, ripple, feeble, flabbergasted, disgruntled. All of them were made up at some point, to describe or celebrate an event or an object or a feeling.

Of course, I don’t know what the exact process of any word’s invention is, but I guess there were a number of attempts that didn’t quite stick, in the same way that in evolution there were lots of fish that didn’t make it up the beach.

Maybe “disgruntled” began as “ungruntled” or “disgrunted” or “notgruntled” and the ones that didn’t quite fit gradually fell out of use until “disgruntled” climbed the winner’s podium and shook the champagne of language.

No, it’s easy to dismiss the “it’s a made up word” thesis: “Hiya!” is only made up in the same way that “Hello” is made up. The harder question to address is that one of sounding “professional”, the idea that “Hello” is professional and “Hiya!” is, what, amateur? Silly? Daft? Somehow it’s insinuated that the user of “hello” is a better human being than the user of “hiya”.

This question is constantly coming up whenever Yorkshire people talk in Yorkshire accents or Tyke dialect; self-appointed guardians of the English language will pop up to tell us that what we’re speaking is some kind of aberration from “proper” speech.

They’re wrong, of course: language is a constantly evolving thing, and regionalism is one of the factors that can give life and vitality to English and stop it fossilising.

I remember once being lost in Dudley and asking directions and a man saying “Yow turn left at Toys Yam We!” Glorious, unfettered language! The other thing of course is that there’s nothing we can do about it.

Our feeble dams will never be able to halt the torrent of words. There are certain locutions that I’m not keen on, but I’ve learned to accept that they’re part of the vitality of the constant reinvention of English.

I’m not keen on the use of the word “absolutely” to mean “yes”and I’m a little irritated when people in cafés say “‘Can I get a coffee?” but I’ve learned to bite my tongue because Grammar Rage is like Road Rage: it does nobody any good at all.

So let’s revel in unofficial words: let’s say “Eyop” and “Or 8?” and “Tintintin”. Let’s “thee and tha” and let’s drop our T’s in the old Bra’ford way. Let’s play language like a kazoo, not a grand piano.

And remember: all the words in this sentence are made up. And all the words in this sentence are made up. And this one and all. See ya!