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Scottish man Bobby Hogg passes away, takes Cromarty English dialect with him

The last person to express his desire for tea as "foamin for want" has passed away, taking with him to the grave the remnants of an entire English dialect.

Bobby Hogg, 92, was the last native speaker of Cromarty, a dialect from a tiny fishing village on the edge of Scotland's Black Isle. He died last week.

Though the dialect has been largely out of use for years, the loss of any human language is something to be mourned.

"I think that's a terrible thing," Robert Millar, linguistics expert at the University of Aberdeen, told the Associated Press. "The more diversity in terms of nature we have, the healthier we are. It's the same with language."

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Along with Hogg, linguistic gems like "A'm fair sconfished wi hayreen; gie's fur brakwast lashins o am and heggs," a phrase that demands, "I'm so fed up with herring, give me plenty of ham and eggs for breakfast," also disappear.

And while Am Baile, the Scottish Highland Council's history and culture website, has compiled a list of Cromarty phrases, it's doubtful too many Saturday night revelers will be referred to as "holl tol" (very drunk) on a regular basis again.

As language becomes more standardized in the Internet era, a number of more obscure dialects are disappearing.

In India, BBC News reported the demise of Bo, one of the world's oldest remaining languages, when its last speaker died in 2010.

South Alaska also suffered the loss of an indigenous language spoken by the area's Eyak people when its last native speaker, Marie Smith, passed away in 2008.

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