An internet-based cultural archive is to record a rare dialect that is only spoken by two elderly brothers before it disappears forever.
Bobby Hogg, 87, and his brother Gordon, 80, are believed to be the last fluent speakers of the "Cromarty fisher dialect". It is said to be the most threatened dialect in Scotland and is to be recorded for
It evolved when local fishermen in the town of Cromarty, on the Black Isle north of Inverness, picked up words from English soldiers based in the area in the 17th and 18th centuries. The fishermen adopted formal words such as thee, thou and thine, but also mispronunciations, 
substituting "erring" for "herring" and "hears" for "ears".
Bobby Hogg said: "You hear the odd smattering of it in some of the things people from Cromarty say, but nobody speaks it fluently these days but for us two."
His wife Helen added: "My husband is fluent in the Cromarty fisher dialect. I understand it, but his brother is the only other person who can speak it."
A spokesman for Am Baile, a Highland internet archive, said it was important to capture a recording of the last two speakers. Robin McColl Miller of Aberdeen University's English department said the Cromarty fisher dialect was the most threatened in Scotland, and one of five different dialects once found in the same small area.
* Hear the brothers speaking by clicking on the attachment below.
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