BY MATTHEW CORRIGAN
With the holiday season descending and the post-Brexit Pound having found a more realistic level, we may well soon be seeing an influx of foreign tourists to our shores. As ever, they will be most welcome.
Seasoned visitors to the UK will be only too aware of our dismal performance when it comes to foreign languages, and will very likely have a fairly good grasp of English themselves. For all those returning after several years of absence though, please be aware you might find there have been one or two changes. It’s not just your language we struggle with these days.
Language evolves. Technological advances and a shrinking world make this pretty much inevitable. English, however, seems to have evolved at a faster rate than most. Whether one ascribes the cause to Mr Zuckerberg’s puerility-promoting ‘platform’ (see?) or the effects of ‘Education, Education, Education,’ the old mother tongue has changed beyond all recognition. English has become the equivalent of a Conservative on social media: an object of ridicule to be routinely abused.
I should therefore like to present you with thi
There fore I have prepared this guide to help yourself get bye in english.
what you say/hear/write What is meant:
hey guys Good evening, Sir; Madam.
can i get May I have?
brought Purchased.
so I am about to begin a sentence.
defiantly Definitely.
alot Many; more than a few.
lose Loose.
loose Lose.
rediculous Ridiculous.
smashed it I have had a small modicum of success.
aloud Permitted.
except Receive.
here here I concur wholeheartedly.
of Have. As in: ‘i of already been passed their’.
are Our. As in: ‘i think are nhs is wonderful’.
an And.
angle A celestial attendant of God.
Several words in English are now entirely interchangeable. Common examples include the following:
their/there/they’re
your/you’re
where/were/we’re/wear
affect/effect
to/too/two
For native English speakers, the absolute inability to correctly employ apostrophes when writing has very much become the cultural norm (indeed, some demonstrate the uncanny knack of getting them wrong a hundred per cent of the time, thus defying the law of averages). In order to appear fluent, one should liberally apply them wherever the letter ‘s’ appears in a word. Similarly, capital letters should be randomly applied throughout a written sentence. Here’s an example:
hey, can I get a Apple juice a gin an Tonic an too packets’ of Crisp’s.
The correct forming of verb tenses is notoriously difficult in English. The answer, naturally, is to do as the locals do – don’t bother. For example:
i do’nt like him he is defiantly bias an do’nt no what he is on about
Finally, in order to create the impression of true mastery, the speaker should adopt the very latest trend. At present there is a creeping failure to recognise that the indefinite article is modified by a following vowel sound. Of course, some people are just a bit dim, but the strong suspicion is that many have chosen to speak in this manner quite deliberately, for effect, because they’ve heard some vapid, vacuous moron do it on the TV and they think it makes them sound cool. Anyone who really wants to sound au courant should embrace this manner of speech forthwith.
Be aware, though, that a small handful of people still exists who are of the opinion that this is truly the mark of the simpleton. Catch the wrong person on a bad day and you may well be advised that anyone who refers to a early bath, a evening meal or a insurance policy is either AN idiot or AN arsehole.
