The English

So we\’ve got the guns firing off in the park with a salute about the opening of Parliament.

I\’ve sort of lost count but it\’s at about 29 or 30 at the moment.

I thought the tippy toppy level was a 21 gun salute?

Quite.

Town hall staff have been banned from using the phrase \’singing from the same hymn sheet\’ because it could upset atheists.

Oddly, I\’ve just been reading one of Douglas Adams\’ essays, where he describes himself as a militant atheist. He also addresses the question of his use of religious imagery ("some bloke got nailed to a tree two thousand years ago" for example).

The point is that such images, certain phrases ("giving up the ghost" comes from the King James translation of Genesis) are in the very bones of the language and the culture. Any writer is going to use these as they reverberate, come laden with resonances.

I\’m sure we could find all sorts of bits and pieces from Polly T\’s columns where she uses such phrases and she\’s the President (or High Punkah Wallah, whatever title they use) of the National Secular Society. Dawkins I\’m sure also uses them.

This is inevitable as there are really only two works which created the English language. Yes, it\’s a delightful mongrel tongue, taking words from everywhere, but it\’s Shakespeare and the King James Bible that helped to codify it. In a way, the KJB is one of the founding documents of the written language and thus there are religious overtones to many well known phrases.

Something which a "militant atheist" like Adams was well aware of, indeed revelled in.

The world\’s greatest pub crawl, 14,000 pubs and counting, and look what happens:

He said there have been up to twenty drinkers in their team but most have fallen by the wayside after getting married.

Northerners have better aim.

Allowing Catholics to reign, first born inherits whether male or female…..

Sources said No 10 would like the legislation to be passed quickly in a fourth term…

Ah, OK, back to sleep everybody.

A fourth term there just ain\’t gonna be.

CHANNEL TUNNEL SHUT AFTER FIRE BREAKS OUT ON TRAIN

Tourists visiting the South West have had a miserable summer

Umm, the South West is somewhere to come from, not somewhere to go to….

Well, yes:

I know what many will say: what\’s the use of learning another language when English has become a lingua franca? The knowledge of other languages, dear monolingual friends, is quite simply essential: life-enhancing, mind-blowing, even life-saving. It will make you richer; get you the girls or the lads of your dreams; spare you huge embarrassments; help you get out of tricky situations; and, most importantly of all, help you avoid being a laughing stock.

But then so will the study of economics make you rich, get you laid and enhance your life. With the added extra that it will also aid you in understanding when the politicians in your life try to rip you off.

Mind you, in other patriot games, the extent to which Britons have developed an unhealthy fascination with the Olympic medal table now that we\’re actually winning some events is mildly distasteful. There\’s a slightly boorish boastfulness to it all that is somewhat unbecoming. Sort of stuff one associates with foreigners, frankly. Better to permit oneself a small smile while paying tribute to the gallantry of the plucky, foreign losers.

Most amusing.

A German diplomat has criticised a group of bundestag MPs over their behaviour on a recent visit to San Francisco, accusing them of using a racial slur and of choosing sightseeing and shopping above meetings with US counterparts……..Responding on behalf of the committee, he added that the consulate\’s service was "not of the standard we\’re used to … The people at the consulate appear to be used to getting drunk tourists out of prison, but are unaware of the sort of service they should give to German MPs."

Leave aside the point that the consulate is indeed there to get drunk tourists out of prison rather than shepherding around politicians on a junket.

Instead, just remember the words of the Prague Captain of police when discussing drunken British tourists, along the lines of:

Yes, the British when drunk are pretty bad but they\’re still better than the Germans sober.

I mean, I know this is all just for pie-munching Northerners, but you just know that after this it\’s going to be the Morlocks, the sweaties and the web-footed Anglians. And sooner or later this shit is going to infest civilisation as well.

Without the north we wouldn\’t have the vote: the Peterloo protesters, the Chartists and the suffragettes were all from the north. The trade unions were born in Manchester….The joule unit of energy, Whitworth engineering standards and Peel\’s police force – all northern….And what would music be without the north? The world-famous Hallé, the Beatles, Hollies, Smiths, Buzzcocks, New Order, Stone Roses, Oasis, Happy Mondays, Arctic Monkeys. In 2012 the cockneys will invite us down to have a good old knees-up at the Olympics. Sorry my old china, but you wouldn\’t be in a position to hold the games without Manchester\’s Commonwealth success in 2002, after London messed up a bid for the world athletics championships.

It is a parade of depressing failures, isn\’t it? But the one that really grates is the idea that Manchester is responsible for the disaster of the 2013 Games.

Definitely time to close that fucker down then.

Given that English often spells identical sounds in several ways, it is little wonder that English-speaking adults always come near the bottom in international studies on literacy, he says.

The ee-sound, for example can be spelt as in: seem, team, convene, sardine, protein, fiend, people, he, key, ski, debris and quay. Yet there are no rules for deciding when to use which, so why not just spell the ee-sound simply as “ee”? To ease the switch from current spelling to a more phonetic system, the Spelling Society advocates a period of transition in which traditional and new forms are used together.

One reason why we don\’t do this could be that team and teem, while pronounced the same way and, in this new method, spelt the same way, actually mean rather different things.

Yes, Inglish Spolling is difficult, weird even, but it does allow us to be precise in our meanings.

Isn\’t there something delighfully feudal about this?

I remember sitting in a campaign meeting during the Newbury bypass protests and marvelling at the weirdness of our coalition. In the front row sat the local squirearchy: brigadiers in tweeds and enormous moustaches, titled women in twin sets and headscarves. In the middle were local burghers of all shapes and sizes. At the back sat the scuzziest collection of grunge-skunks I have ever laid eyes on.

The old order seems to re-establish itself in the most unexpected places.

Hmmm…

That is, as long as they are taught properly. Schools often fail to equip children with anything other than a fragmented, phrase-book command of foreign tongues. Language instruction is caught in a vicious cycle: grammar is eschewed for fear of putting children off and a lack of grammatical foundations means they never reach the level of actually enjoying access to the riches a language can offer – new music, new books, new friends. The subject is made harder, not easier, by learning random phrases with no framework to hold them together.

Umm, there\’s nothing in that that doesn\’t also apply to the learning of English itself. So we\’re to have grammar lessons in English are we? Perhaps elocution lessons (for the language lab repetition of phrases in French ios just that)?

Can\’t say it would be abad idea, either, but I\’m pretty certain that the Observer leader writing team would have hissy fits if that was actually seriously suggested.

If somebody has something important to tell me, he can do that in English, and if he doesn\’t want to do this, then that something probably wasn\’t that important in the first place, simple as that. The English language is perhaps the most underrated bozo filter currently in existence, silently blocking out tons of idiocy.

Yes, we still celebrate:

Soldiers from the 2nd Battalion The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers prepared yesterday to commemorate one of the greatest victories of the Seven Years’ War against France more than 200 years ago, with a traditional gesture – wearing red and primrose-yellow roses in their caps on guard at Buckingham Palace.

En route to take part in the Battle of Minden on August 1, 1759, in the area of North Rhine in Germany, allied soldiers from a Prussian-Hanoverian-British army gathered roses for their hats for good luck as they marched through the fields towards the superior French force. Among them were members of the 20th Regiment of Foot from which The Royal Regiment of Fusiliers was formed.

Today, after successive operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, the 2nd Battalion, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Peter Merriman, will honour the battle, when the allies defeated the French against all the odds, by wearing roses while they carry out their Palace duties.

A misunderstanding of orders in battle led to a British infantry brigade advancing against the massed ranks of French cavalry and infantry – but the British succeeded in driving them off. The 20th Regiment of Foot lost 17 officers and 304 men.

So lads, when do we march on Paris?