“ARE you from Birmingham? I can definitely hear an accent. Or is it Manchester?”

That was a fairly common question when this Bishopbriggs boy arrived among the bright lights of London some two and a half decades ago. At that point I had never been to either of those cities; I was a Glasgow boy, albeit with a fee-paid education and a degree in law. I'd never left my beloved Glasgow. I was as Glasgow as Janey Godley, as Glasgow as year-long rain, as Glasgow as sectarianism.

Why did they think I was from anywhere else? I think it was simply down to visual perception. A lot of London folk didn't know brown people lived north of Manchester. That there might be Scots Sikhs would have been a revelation to them. They saw the handsome face, the golden brown skin and the massive pastel-coloured turban and assumed northern England.

Tired of correcting and convincing I think I subconsciously modified, softened my accent. I dropped the words I loved saying. I was thereafter knackered and not scunnered. My feet ached and never again louped. People took the mick and never took a lane of me.

When I came home, prodigal and proud, I re-found my lexicon, my lovely language. My accent softened back to what it had been and I blethered away happily. Then a few months ago I acquired a new phone and joyously spent an afternoon at Artisan Roast on Gibson Street inputting all my favourite Scots words, Scots spellings and Scots variations. I now have a fully Scottish Samsung. That really matters to me. I consciously switch and swap between Scots and English. Speaking to my pal Eddie in Bridgeton is quite a different speaking experience to interviewing Lord Grade for BBC1. But it's a variety that I love.

But it seems that by 2066 all accents and local slangs will have been revised out of our language. According to research by speech scientists at the University of York, in 50 years we will all talk the same, the spectrum of various city-speaks indecipherable in a homogeny of uniform communication. Why? The machines …

This is the ultimate, Terminator-like revenge of technology. But this war won't be waged in the streets. Rather, our dialogue with computers and the global dominance of America will soon see and end to the nuance, the variety and the vernacular that weaves the richness of thread through the tapestry of our linguistic life. As voice recognition technology starts to replace keyboards, there will be an imposed “simplification” of English. (I'd like to see how the machines deal with Arnold Schwarzenegger's Americo-Austrian voice when it comes to voice recognition.)

History is written by the victors; so it seems that our technological future will be written (or spoken) by the programmers. West coast Americans, never knowingly open to influence outside their own state let alone country, will drive and define how we speak.

Well, let me tell you – over my dead body. My language, my people and my culture will not be melded into a pot of uniformity. I love the Scots tongue far too much tae let it slip, silently into history. The reason we Glaswegians are the expressive, life-loving folk we are is connected to our mode of conversation. The fact that a granny can leave over a pushchair and refer to her grandchild in the most extreme of expletives might offend some but it also defines us. Glaswegians swear mid-word, we embrace language and its every joy. The expressive nature of the words we use, the phrases we favour and the idiom we employ defines us as much as any geography, any flag.

I'm all for the vibrant and dynamic nature of language. I was once referred to as the only broadcaster who could get away with calling someone “Bro” on Radio 4. Language has to develop; but that development has always come out of the mouths of those that speak it rather than from the machines and the computers that are increasingly beginning to respond to it.

Yous might aw be tickety boo wi aw these changes but I fur wan am pure scunnered tae think ma grand weans will soond the same as aw their wee cousins in India and America. No on ma watch.