Cold Æsh
An A and an E, glued together,
But why ?
So how are we meant to say it, this guy ?
Best leave it alone for Danish and Latin –
Round here, we don’t need our A’s to fatten.
Save ligatures for when we’re putting a sign up –
Though why do the crossbars never quite line up ?
All-in-all, it feels so confused
And æsthetically ugly – oh, that’s where it’s used !
Just an Expërrement
Fonnëtick Inglish ? Wots the poynt ?
But its a lahf, I gess.
The trick tu this hol spelling gaym
Iz keeping things abowt the saym.
The needlesly bizärr will just disjöÿnt,
A kays ov ‘morr iz less’,
So dohnt bee oeverly nuröttick,
Just giv hints ov the exsötick.
For instans, difrent things ar dun
For singul-sillabulz –
It helps keep wurds the morr fammïlyer,
Stops things getting even sillyer.
But in the end, its just a bit ov fun
To mayk sum nurdy roolz.
I dohnt intënd tu laber it –
My spelchecker wuhd hav a fit !
Eurovision Song
You can’t understand a word I’m saying
That’s okay, let me sing it all again
Tu ne peux pas comprendre un mot que je dis
That’s okay, let me try to explain
Du kannst kein Wort verstehen, das ich sage
But I’m sure I can make my meaning plain
Non potes intelligere verbum me dicens
But no communication is in vain
All we need to do is turn the subtitles on
Activer les sous-titres
Schalten Sie die Untertitel ein
Conversus in sub textu
And we all can get along
And sing the same song in our own way
Because we all say Yeah and Okay.
(G)nus
I don’t know why the wilderbeest
Deserves a second name –
Of all the cattles, he’s the least
From a European frame.
We don’t see herds of wilderbeests
In the hills of Tuscany,
Or sweeping down from out the East
To the beaches of Torquay.
I don’t know why he has a G
That is and isn’t said –
These grammar rules are traps for me,
Like cowpats where I tread.
My tolerance for the dear gnu
Is very nearly full –
So whether with one beat or two,
He’s a very silly bull.
Aardvaarks
Double-A in English ? That can’t be right.
What are we to do with this alpha-oversight ?
A whiff of the exotic, though who knows from which address ?
So how do we pronounce it ? I guess we’ll have to guess.
It looks a bit Old-Testament, like Balaam the Canaanite,
Though surely ancient Hebrews had a diff’rent way to write ?
Diff’rent letter-forms, and not-a vowel included –
Whoever chose the spellings in the Roman was deluded !
With a single-A long and a double-A short,
Spelling things in English shouldn’t be a tricky sport…
Our batteries are flat and our gearboxes stall –
We need to gain sobriety, but who can we call ?
Infact, the double A in Hebrew loaners are probably a relic of a slight ‘h’ sound between them, splitting them into two separate syllables. The Greeks, when translating the Bible, had little use for mid-word H’s, and eventually the sounds merged (though not the letters because as everyone knows spelling must remain fossilised). See also Aaron.
And yes, I am aware that Aardvaark is usually spelled with only three A’s, and I’ve decided I don’t give a toss. Maybe Afrikaans pronounces ‘aar’ and ‘ar’ differently, but nobody in English does. So if you are happy being silly in the front half, then I see no reason to get serious with the aarse-end.
Trigger Warning
Ev’rybody, get an offence to take,
You too can be just as special –
Your very identity’s at stake,
And now you are such a delicate vessel.
All the cool kids are getting upset,
While words are being redefined.
Remember, the world owes you respect
To spare your innocent mind.
It’s all Greek to me
Ev’ryone thinks of Alpha,
Alpha waves and alpha dogs –
Beta has its beta blockers,
Beta tests and beta logs –
Gamma gives us gamma rays,
And tennis gives us Gamma strings –
And Delta – so much Delta !
With its rivers and its wings
But no-one thinks of Omicron,
As obscure as you get,
What excitement could there be
In the bowels of the alphabet…?
Drop the Tittles
Its time to ditch the postrophe,
Its use is a catastrophe –
A snare for those who cant decide
Just how these ticks should be applied.
Theyre deathly silent in our speech,
Beyond the pedants overreach,
Yet still weer well and understood –
Just cos theyre there dont mean we should.
Loopiter
I never understood loopholes,
I mean understood it as an actual thing –
I get that they’re escapes from laws –
But are we then fenced-in by string ?
They might have referred to arrow-slits,
But they only fit an arrow’s stem.
They might be thinking of knotholes,
But only secrets can pass through them.
The breach in the wall of the castle of law
Would have to be a backdoor, or overhanging beams.
So I never understood why ‘loopholes’ –
Their meaning escapes my logic, it seems.
Homonym
A tick is a bug that sucks up meaning,
A tiny check-mark on the skin
That no amount of language-cleaning
Will dislodge now it’s sunk its snout in.
A facial tic on our pristine tongue
Of too many meanings from a single noun –
Oh for a speech that’s regular and young
Before the parasites invade the town.
We use words on tick, to be paid for later,
Like the stuffing in a tick-case that is already frayed,
Or the ticks on a rule till the namesakes are greater
And we’ve spewed-out enough for a tickertape parade.
It ticks us off that such gaudy schlocks lurk,
But they’ve plagued us forever, syphoning their fraction –
Older than moments, older than clockwork,
The tick is as ancient as Anglo-Saxon.
‘Tick’ is also a Middle English word for goat (whose latter name is even older), and though thoroughly out-of-use can still be found in placenames such as Tickenhurst.
Incidentally, what does a twitcher call the first whinchat of the year ? A tick tick.
Rhyming Couplets 