Why the window is closing

Every parish has a few people who still use the old words without thinking about them. They will say that a lane is a snicket, or that a neighbour is nesh, and the word sits in the sentence as naturally as anything else. When those speakers go, the vocabulary tends to go with them, not because nobody wrote it down, but because a word on a list is a dead specimen. What keeps a dialect alive in the memory is the texture around it: how it was said, who said it, and what was happening at the time.

That is why a recording project is different from a glossary. It is not about collecting spellings. It is about catching the voice while it is still doing ordinary work in an ordinary room.

Record more than the word list

A word list tells you that a narrow passage between houses might be a ginnel, a snicket, a twitten or a jitty, depending on where you are standing. That is useful, but it is thin. What you actually want is the same speaker using the word three times in three moods: once to give directions, once complaining about the bin lorry, once telling a story about a dog that would not come out of one.

Capture pronunciation properly. Note where the stress falls, how long the vowel is, and whether the word changes when the speaker is relaxed, angry or teasing. Local forms surface most strongly in joking and in irritation, so do not only record the polite voice people keep for visitors.

Capture context. Who used the word, in what trade or task, and how far it travelled. A fishing word may not be known two villages inland. Capture the stories too, because a word arrives wrapped in one. Ask for the word for a muddy field and you get a definition; ask about the winter the sheep had to be carried out by hand and you get the word, the field name, and half the family history with it.

Kit that gets out of the way

You do not need much. A small solid-state recorder with a decent built-in pair of microphones is enough for a kitchen table. A clip-on lavalier microphone, or a handheld dynamic mic held about a handspan from the mouth, is better still. Record to WAV at 24-bit and 44.1 or 48 kHz, and never edit the master file. Keep the original untouched and work from a copy.

Phones are perfectly usable, but put the handset in aeroplane mode, check that the app saves in a lossless format, and rest it on a cushion rather than a hard table. Outdoors, use a wind muff or the recording will be nothing but weather. Sit so the speaker is not facing a window or a bare wall; soft furnishings, curtains and rugs soak up the echo that makes a voice sound as though it is coming from a drain.

Write down the date, the place, the room and everyone present. Take a photograph of the room. Ten years from now, that note will be worth as much as the audio.

Getting people talking

The worst question is: how do you say this? It makes people self-conscious, and they shift into the careful voice they keep for strangers. Instead:

• Ask about a task, not a word. How did you get the hay in before rain? How did you gut a herring? What did your mother say when you came home covered in mud?
• Bring objects. A tool, a photograph, a ration book, a hand-drawn map of the fields before the bypass. Objects pull out vocabulary that questions miss.
• Record two people who knew each other well. The richest dialect happens between speakers, in asides, interruptions and shared jokes.
• Let silences sit. Count to five before prompting. The second thought is usually the better one.
• Ask for repetition only when you must, and check the recorder has actually been running before you ask again.

Consent, cataloguing and care

Before you press record, explain in plain terms where the file will live, who will hear it, and how it might be published. Use a simple written permission form with a separate box for each use: archive, transcription, broadcast, booklet, website. Include a box for anonymity, and give the speaker a copy to keep. People are generous when they know what they are agreeing to, and uneasy when they do not.

Label every file on the same day. Speaker's name, year of birth, birthplace, places lived, occupation, the name of the person recording, and the date and place of the session. Note anyone else audible in the room.

For each word, write a plain-English gloss, a simple respelling that a non-specialist can read aloud, and a note on where and by whom it is still used. A note recording that a word has dropped out of use, and roughly when, is just as valuable as one that says it is thriving.

Publishing it back to the community

The purpose of recording is not to fill a hard drive. A dialect belongs to the place that made it, and it should go back there. That might mean a small booklet with a dozen remembered words and the stories attached; a listening evening in the village hall with headphones, a projector and a tea urn; a short piece in the parish magazine; or a deposit of the masters with the local record office, with a working copy held by the local history society.

Schools are natural partners. A class can adopt a speaker for a term, prepare questions, and produce the transcript themselves, learning handwriting, listening and local history in one go. Libraries and museums will often host a listening station if you supply the files and a clear label. Credit everyone by name unless they asked you not to.

Finally, store three copies in three places, and check them once a year. A single hard drive in a damp shed is not an archive. Do that much, and the words will still be speaking long after the last of the old speakers has fallen quiet, and the community that inherits them will be able to hear exactly how they were said.