Personal Blogs

[I've changed the order of some of the things on this blog and deleted others to separate the English from the German ones (some stuff is only visible to logged in OU users). I've moved the following up as it is relevant to U214 (Worlds of English)] 

David Crystal competition:

The Telegraph and Profile Book had a competition a couple of years ago to write a poem of not more than 100 words (including the title) which had to include at least 25 words from the following list:

Roe Lea And Loaf Out Street Mead Merry Riddle What Bone-house Brock English Bridegroom Arse Swain Pork Chattels Dame Skirt Jail Take away Cuckoo Cunt Wicked Wee Grammar Valentine Egg Royal Money Music Taffeta Information(s) Gaggle Doable Matrix Alphabet Potato Debt Ink-horn Dialect Bodgery Undeaf  Skunk Shibboleth Bloody Lakh Fopdoodle Billion Yogurt Gazette Tea Disinterested Polite Dilly-dally Rep Americanism Edit Species Ain’t Trek Hello Dragsman Lunch Dude Brunch Dinkum Mipela Schmooze OK Ology Y’all Speech-craft DNA Garage Escalator Robot UFO Watergate Doublespeak Doobry Blurb Strine Alzheimer’s Grand Mega Gotcha PC Bagonise Webzine App Cherry-picking LOL Jazz Sudoku Muggle Chillax Unfriend Twittersphere

These are the 100 words David Crystal analysed in his (then) new book The Story of English in 100 words. It's good fun as an exercise - though High Art it is perhaps not! The following was my attempt (before I found out 'undeaf' is a verb!)

Cherry-picking, or the music of English speech-craft

I’m woken by the bloody radio

- doublespeak and shibboleths –

Undeaf, yet slightly dozing, hazy,

I take in rousing mega-breaths.

I ponder, as a skirt I iron,

That I eat “eggs” instead of “eyren”;

And over tea I’m spoilt for choice

With royal, regal, kingly words.

Out in the street : wee dame I know

Says not “ahoy-hoy!”, but “hello!”

I think of “fuselage” and “carriage”:

Which of these chattels rhymes with “garage”?

Chillax, dude! A rose would smell as wicked

If called a ‘skunk-flower’, when you pick it.

LOL.