Momma Tongue

There are five times as many Yankees
Speaking English as the English,
So who’s English do you think will win ?
Whatever the linguistic tankies wish,
We’re just a little fish –
Perhaps it’s time to take it on the chin ?
Or, to be overt (and probably incite your wrath) –
You do the math !

Ow !, that hurt.
So stark and ess-less on the page,
Just stoking up my British rage –
Yet kids today are fine to say it –
They don’t care, it’s just a thing you say,
Like missing out the pointless yoos
And adding honest zees
That they know we’ll criticize –
They choose to do it anyway,
These wize-guys.

So what’s my beef ?
Am I so shaky in my self-belief
I have to wave my flag
At quickening American ?
Does my inner Anglo-Saxon gag
And want to ban their New-World-ness ?
Well, yeah…I guess –
We’ve traveled far, we dove right in
We took the rout of least chagrin.
But it’s all just arbitrary guff,
And how long can I really bluff
Until I must admit, their way makes sense ?
Time to quit – don’t be a bore,
For in this theater of war,
My silent letters voice me no defense.

I know I have no chance tonite
To tell the kids what they can say –
Just as my teachers had no right
To scold me for ‘okay’.
But oh !, it hurts to hear my cherished forms
Be cast away.
Yet if the kids choose that instead of this,
Well, who the hell am I then
To dismiss them for their choice ?,
As if I have a voice they’d listen to.
So on they plow their furrow
By their dollar, yard, and boro –
For kids will always marvel at what’s noo.

I can assure you that it isn’t only Americans who can make wrath and math rhyme. There are so many other British voices besided RP, despite the OED’s attempts to pretend otherwise.

By the way, I can’t help thinking the last line looks less New York and more Scottish ! I suppose I could say ‘nu’ instead, but I think that will look even stranger.

Whenceforth

Whence ‘from whence’ ?
It makes no sense,
It just means ‘from from where’.
But then again,
It sounds so vain
And old-world debonair.
It looks contrived
That we’ve revived
Such quaint and frilly bull.
We just don’t need
The added speed
To drop a syllable –
So don’t correct
Our speech unchecked,
Don’t leap to its defence –
It’s overstayed,
So let it fade,
And cease all use, from hence.

RAS Syndrome

So what if it’s redundant
To repeat the words we say
In a PDF format
Or an LCD display ?
That’s just what you get
When you over-shorten-down
So your acronym comprises of
Both adjective and noun.

So what if they’re redundant
In their final acronemes ?
We’ll always have PIN numbers
For our ATM machines.
Cos that’s just human nature,
So triumphant to a T –
But if you wish to argue it,
Then please RSVP.

RAS Syndrome stands for ‘Redundant Acroneme Syndrome Syndrome’.  An acroneme is a single letter within an acronym.  I just made the latter up, and I’m really pleased with it.  According to Wiktionary it also means “the slender section of a flagellum”, but it doesn’t give any citation, so I win – QED demonstated !

Glottal Stop

I love the way you speak,
I’d never seek to mock its cocky tone.
Your fully-glottled cant
Ain’t mine to grant, it’s yours and all your own.
Ignore the RP snob
Who wants to rob your patois of its melody,
And claim it’s just the vogue,
Your burnished brogue, and not your self-identity.
So know that I in no-way disrespect
Your tongue as somehow incorrect
When I request that you select
Your speech with special care.
It’s not your vowels, for they’re your glory,
Nor your consonants abhor me –
Yet the needs of oratory
Cause us to beware.
There is, I say, a world apart
Between the rhythms we employ
In casual chat and speaking smart,
And knowing when the wrong will cloy.
And when it comes to rhetoric,
There comes a need for clarity –
Don’t change you accent, let it stick,
Just punch-in those plosives, and ring-out that final G.