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It's That Damn Phone

With the constant evolution of the English Language over time, it was inevitable that with new technology would come a new way of speaking- especially for the younger generations. As always anything that's not as its always been will upset a few of the 'old fashioned' people intent on preserving the language that they know. The best example of the language changing with the use of technology is 'text speak'. Most people who have social medias now a days will have seen or written words that have stemmed directly from the use of mobile phone texting. Older phones had a lengthy and irritating way of getting the letter you needed and without the use of the ever-helpful auto-correct we of course found a way around this. Words like 'your' got shortened to 'ur' and phrases like 'be right back' became 'brb' - initialism; pronouncing the first letter of a group of words separately. Although it’s now much faster to text and we have the ca...
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Poshing Up

In some ways think the logic behind teaching children received pronunciation makes sense. I haven't come across many professionals with thick regional accents and certainly not any politicians or similar people with power. Banning regional accents and slang is completely different to learning how to 'turn it on and off' in different situations. Although the idea that people with standard English accents are more intelligent than people with regional accents is judgemental, a lot of people think it. Companies use this widespread idea to convey a sense of authority, in call centre's for example. One call centre in Newcastle hire the locals to answer the phones because they sound friendly and familiar. If the customer asks to speak to a manager or the phone call has to be escalated it will be transferred to someone with a 'posher' accent often RP. This is a commonly used way to portray authority when you cant see who you're talking to. This shows that in s...

What the F*ck

The English language has a many a swear word and most of us take great advantage of this.   According to statistics swear words make up about .7% of a person’s vocabulary. That doesn’t seem like a lot but in the grand scheme of things, a.k.a. all the absolutely useless words that we all know, its quite a significant number. Its proven that children tend to know at least one swear word before they know the alphabet at around 4-6 years old which is admittedly very amusing but also shows how integral swearing is to our everyday speech. I happen to think swearing enriches our language and can greatly assist in conveying emotion. My favourite and definitely most used swear word is the ever charming ‘fuck’ as it can mean so many things in different contexts. For example, to show something/someone is good, bad, painful or just when everything just goes horribly wrong. It’s a go-to really. Swearing helps us to communicate effectively. It doesn’t only show our meaning in a sentence b...

I Could Care Less

The influence of American English on British English no doubt infuriates the thousands, but we must ask ourselves what it is they’re so riled up about. Surely these literary pet hates are unnecessary?   We do indeed speak a beautiful language but to denounce American English, one of the largest and most influential varieties, as if it’s some kind of abomination is ridiculous. Now, there are many Americanisms which just don’t make sense, but we have plenty of those in British English too; idioms like ‘lost the plot’ and the endless synonyms we have for the word ‘idiot’ being a few of my favourites. One of the biggest culprits for angering the Brits is the ‘Can I get a…?’ after the argument over the use of ‘can’ rather than ‘may’ has been settled it’s the use of ‘get’ rather than ‘have’ that really gets them on edge. On a radio spot in 2017 one man said that it wasn’t so much the phrase but the way it was said which angered him (‘This isn’t New York!’) and that people s...