King James for the 21st century

It's often said that a key step on the road to English becoming a world language, and in literacy in England, was the translation and publication of the King James Bible. Many idiomatic expressions entered our daily lexicon from the work of those putting this book together.  Google it to find them out.

The Qur'an is a holy text, distinguished by its linguistic universality - all Muslims all over the world still read and hear the words recorded by the Prophet's scholars.

So what is stopping Christian scholars from rewriting the bible for a contemporary and international audience? And has this been attempted already?

Easy English for the faithful

English as a lingua franca (ELF), English as an International Language (EIL), easy English, export English...whatever you want to call it, a variety of English with no national bias used for international communication is already in use - and its evolution into a standardised form seems inevitable.  Here's an example of it being used for a church service in Sydney's Chinatown. 

Red Kites

I often forget how beautiful the red kites are which circle my mum's house and the surrounding area, after a fantastically successful breeding programme brought them back from near extinction. They're often near enough to make out their colours, reflected in the sunlight, and their cry, halfway between camp and haunting, fills the air. Occasionally they'll see a dead sheep  - or as happened today, our dinner as we ate outside - and swoop down before giving up or realising their mistake.

Swoop. That's an interesting one. Birds swoop, while wildebeest and other herd animals sweep. If you look at the position of you tongue when saying these similar words, with almost identical meaning, spelling and pronunciation, you see that when describing a bird's flight the tongue is raised, and when describing a land animal's movement the tongue is down. I wonder if there was one person who was watching a red kite, as I did today, and instinctively described its movement with his or her tongue following their eyes up to the skies? Maybe not, but I'm going to start thinking of other examples where the physical position of the tongue has a direct correlation to the word's meaning. Should keep me busy. 

Code mixing, code shifting

Since moving to Morocco code mixing has become part of my daily life. I spend most of my time speaking English (a good thing too, otherwise I'd never achieve anything), but constantly find myself adding Darija (Morccan Arabic) phrases. It's something which Moroccans do unconsciously with Darija and French, and occasionally Spanish and English, and is both hugely humbling to an English speaker, rich in layers of meaning and a wonderfully rich linguistic melange. Here are some Darija phrases which it's easy to throw into my everyday speech, whether it's French or English:

Hamdullah (Thanks to Allah - also used as a response to the question "How are you?", whether you want to give a positive or negative answer: the pragmatic meaning is inferred by the listener)
Inshallah (God willing - general future form)
Saafi (That's OK / That's enough)
Mushee mushkil (No problem)
Wakha (OK)
La! (No - best said in the style of a Moroccan mum)
Khoya (Mate / Bro)
Khti (Sis - there is conflicting feedback as to whether this is appropriate or not.)

Just a Minute - discourse

1.    Students choose a topic and challenge the teacher to speak for one minute on this. The teacher does so, emphasising the use of discourse markers (Well, right, anyway, then, I mean), or chunks of language related to the context. Record this if you can - use your mobile and play the recording through a computer / speakers.

2.    Ask students which words you used often (the discourse markers), and repeat if necessary.

3.    Elicit the discourse markers, board them and decide on their function (e.g. anyway: to change the subject).

4.    Students do the task themselves. Turn this into a game by asking their partner to count the number of discourse markers they can use in one minute.

5.    If necessary, they do the task in L1, and then translate into English. This will demonstrate the use of discourse markers in their L1, which will lead to them asking for a translation which they can use in English. 

Affix of evil

English is a language awash with prefixes to alter meaning (overpaid, counter-productive, anti-war) and suffixes to change word class (happy, happiness). Suffixes can also alter meaning, such as the very useful -ish ("What time do you get off? - About sixish"). I always like teaching this suffix as students identify its vagueness with the actual name for the language they're studying: Engl, ish.

Many languages, for example Tagalog and Bahasa Indonesia, use internal affixes, or infixes, adding to the middle of a word to alter meaning. In English we can use tmesis -  inserting lexical items into words to alter meaning, most notably in the wonderful adjectives "fan-bloody-tastic" and "abso-fucking-lutely". I wonder if it's just the beautiful rhythm of these extended adjectives which leaves, to my knowledge, few other examples if this lexical building in English.

P.S. "diddly" is not an affix, internal or otherwise.

In tune with our language

I'm sitting in the shady terrace cafe at Yves Saint Laurent's lasting monument to beauty and tranquility, les Jardins  Majorelle in Marrakesh. The tranquility remains despite the hustle from the tourists from all over Europe (predominantly). I'm surrounded by languages I recognise and can distinguish without understanding - the dental tittars of Italian; lips and tongues racing each other in Spanish; the swooshing ballet of Polish. I don't have a clue what they're talking about, but I know where they're from, their history, their popular culture, just from the sounds they're making. Even when we don't understand a language we understand people.

What's funny is that there's an English couple on the other side of the cafe. They're talking too quietly for me to hear what they're saying: they are English, after all. I know, however, from the few sounds I can identify that they're from the south-east, probably no more than forty miles away from where I was born. My hearing is not particularly good, but I'm so tuned into my language or accent that I can identify it at twenty paces.

I wouldn't dare introduce myself, though: we are English, and from the home counties at that, after all.