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I'm Chris from England and this is for Mojtaba Yaghoubi and the Facebook page...at address
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Today, I'm going to read the full article entitled "The Joy of Slang" on the BBC Magazine
website.
It was written by someone called Charles Nevin.
You can find it by clicking on this link: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-24669828
Please read this article with me and study it afterwards because
the author discusses a lot of current British slang words
which I recommend you learn
and the mood of the piece is very positive and enthusiastic.
I like it a lot and I hope you will too.
This is a reading of "The Joy of Slang", a BBC article:
Slang such as ain't, innit and coz has been banned from a school in south London.
Author Charles Nevin celebrates modern slang and revisits phrases that have fallen out
of fashion.
Cor lummy!
Please do not misunderstand me.
I love modern slang.
It's as colourful, clever, and disguised from outsiders as slang ever was and is supposed
to be.
Take bare, for example, one of a number of slang terms recently banned by a London school.
It means "a lot of", as in "there's bare people here", and is the classic concealing reversal
of the accepted meaning that you also find in wicked, bad and cool.
Victorian criminals did essentially the same with back slang, reversing words so that boy
became yob and so on.
The other banned words are equally interesting.
Extra, for example, mischievously stresses the superfluous in its conventional definition,
as in "reading the whole book is extra, innit?".
And that much disapproved innit? is in fact the n'est-ce pas?
English has needed since the Normans forgot to bring it with them.
"Cockney rhyming slang survives well beyond its original inspiration,
as in the currently popular marvin for starving hungry"
And who would not admire rinsed for something worn out or overused -chirpsing for flirting,
bennin for doubled-up with laughter, or wi-five for an electronically delivered high-five?
My bad, being new, sounds more sincere than old, tired, I'm sorry (Sos never quite cut
it).
Mouse potato for those who spend too much time on PCs is as striking as salmon and aisle
salmon for people who will insist on going against the flow in crowds or supermarket
aisles.
Manstanding is what husbands and partners typically do while their wives or partners
are actually getting on with the shopping.
Excellent.
Nor is tradition ignored.
Words that have fallen out of fashion are revived - vexed, for example, is angry.
Cockney rhyming slang survives well beyond its original inspiration, as in the currently
popular marvin for starving hungry, after Hank Marvin of The Shadows, who, without wishing
to be unkind, hasn't been that well-known outside his household for a good 25 years.
Which, even so, is not as long as it is for a ruby (curry), after Ruby Murray, 1950s pop
star.
But (and it was always coming) I do have a sadness to report - the loss of much-loved
old friends of phrases that have fallen victim to time, change, and two further factors - first,
the current need for brevity in modern communications, and second, the much wider acceptance of words
previously considered too uncouth for public exchange.
Being generally opposed to censorship, I've no quibble with the latter, except when it
becomes monotonous and repetitious, or even more crucially, when it drives out charm and
variety.
Consider, for example, this expression of surprise from Jeremy Paxman recently on University
Challenge: "Oh my godfathers!".
It's a phrase which was clearly devised to disguise the then unacceptable "Oh my God!"
and so is equally clearly now redundant.
But that's the charm of it, as with lawks a mercy (Lord have mercy), cor lummy (Lord,
love me) and other such "minced oaths".
I'm fond, too, of Lord luv a duck, whose delightful obscurity has defeated even Michael Quinion's
excellent World Wide Words blog but is a splendidly satisfying thing to say.
Try it.
Why do teenagers use slang?
"Slang is about people creating an identity, and that's what teenagers have done," says
Tony Thorne, editor of the Dictionary of Contemporary Slang.
"They have created their own language and are proud to use it."
Your family must have some similar sayings handed down.
My aunt was particularly fond of this, in response to some piece of bad behaviour: "Aren't
people the giddy limit?"
My grandmother, wishing to discourage the nagging questioning of grandchildren anxious
to know what they'd overheard and weren't supposed to, used to say, "Raros to meddlers!".
I'm now lost to know where they came from, although I glean through the magic of the
internet that another exasperation-venter,Strewth Meredith can be traced precisely to a music
hall sketch, The Bailiffs, first performed by Fred Kitchen in 1907.
Blimey O'Reilly is even earlier, from a song performed by Pat Rooney in the 1880s.
My mother's frequent request to slow down, gently Bentley, is much later, from the perhaps
equally forgotten Australian comedian, Dick Bentley, in the 1950s.
Most marvellously, my grandmother's solicitous greeting, "How's your poor feet?"
turns out to be a song written in 1851 in response to the miles people were walking
round Crystal Palace at the Great Exhibition.
I don't want us all to start sounding like Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins, or indeed,
Boris Johnson.
Nor do I say all past imprecations were that good.
By the cringe, a schoolboy favourite of mine, should be left where also lie swinging and
dodgy, 1960s catchphrases of Norman Vaughan, another performer to whom time has been unkind.
But I do think we would be much more interesting to listen to if we put some effort into achieving
what Reader's Digest used to call "more picturesque speech".
Brush up your Shakespeare?
Modern insult, for example, is terribly thin stuff compared with the master, William Shakespeare.
Whole websites are devoted to the staggering range and force of Bardic bad-mouthing.
My current favourite is: "You peasant swain!
You whoreson malt-horse drudge!"
And if you're concerned to be brief, just initialise, as with OMG.
BO'R, for instance, or RTM.
I'm not entirely convinced, though, that we're quite ready for the return of Jimmy Young's
TTFN.
That article was by the BBC Magazine website.
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Good luck with learning English and best wishes for everything else in your life.
This is goodbye for now, from me, Chris from England.
Take care.
I will see you next time.