Now us Brits may not be good at everything, but by George, when it comes to strolling into a country and taking it over we are past masters.
How did we achieve this in the days of the Empire? By using the English language and shouting a lot of course! And let’s not forget how having a crisp white shirt also gave us the upper hand. Oh yes mate-boy, we may only have 26 letters to play about with, but boy do we know how to use ‘em. I mean, which other country has words that sound the same, are spelt differently and mean totally different things? Example: ware, wear and where. It’s enough to confuse any ‘Johnny foreigner’, and even some of our American friends.
Another bonus of our language is; the silent letter. It reeks of opulence from way back. We could save a fortune in printing costs, like the Americans who remove some of the letters, but no we sally forth regardless thinking we know no what’s best. However, some people forget one salient point; there are different types of English spoken in England. There’s the Queen’s English for starters.
She uses the same amount of letters as her subjects but they all sound different to the riff raff. A house translates as: a hice. Trip a little bit further down the Thames estuary and ‘a house’ in the east end of London sounds like: an ass. “I’ll see you round your ass at 9am!” And ‘sex’ is what one puts ones coal in!
However, there is a flaw in the English language, some words and phrases are compromised by their very spelling which goes onto change the meaning, thus. If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, shouldn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys can be deranged, models deposed and tree surgeons can be debarked!
This process also throws up a number of other questions too. If you spin an Oriental person around a number of times, would they become disoriented? If Polish people are called Poles, why aren’t the residence Holland called Holes? And please spare a thought for the locals of Maryland, USA!
Here are a few more oddities to finish: do infants enjoy infancy as much as adults enjoy adultery? A person who plays the piano is called a pianist, so why isn’t a racing driver called a racist? Most people warm to a wise man but a wise guy – not so much! And don’t get me started on the anagrams. If you rearrange the letters in ‘President Clinton of the USA’ you get. To copulate he finds interns! And if you do the same with ‘mother-in-law and ‘election results’ you’ll find Woman Hitler and Lies – let’s recount! I really must get out more!
PS If you’re a smoker and are totally pissed off with where you can and can’t smoke and the whole anti-smoking campaign, this might be for you.
Already, the staff who work behind the cigarette counter in supermarkets are hacked off with opening and closing the shutters that conceal the naughty cigarettes.
The reason? The shutters are linked to a bar code machine, which puts the till in ‘BUY MODE’. So if you ask for something and THEN CHANGE YOUR MIND, the staff have to get a book out and, BY LAW, have to tell you the price or some such nonsense. Now, if that happened once a day, it would become a tad annoying. But what would occur if it happened 40 times day?
It makes you wonder how long it would take before a story like this went viral and made the 6 o’clock news. I’m not suggesting you should go to your local supermarket and undertake this prank. Well it’s childish isn’t it, and you wouldn’t want upset the Government, would you…
40-a-day-man strikes back for British smokers on St Georges Day
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