Rhiannon L's > English Language A Level Blog

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...

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...

This blog will be my responses to topical issues about the English Language. We have already explored a topical debate about Americanisms in British English.