#11. Roses are red, violets are blue.

It's been four months. I'm so sorry. I don't know how to make it up to you but I will try, therefore, if you used to keep up to date with this blog and feel cheated as I've abandoned you for too long, I will take personal requests for poems. That's right, if you want a personal poem from the Queen of Language herself, just request one and I will present you with a personalised rhyming sensation. It'll be worth LOTS of money one day. Trust.

So, this post takes on the dreaded topic of poetry. Don't cry, don't run away. I understand that poetry to you probably means Presents From My Aunts In Pakistan and searching for so many metaphors your eyes start to bleed. I'm sorry that this generation of teaching happened to you. I'm sorry that you now hear the word "simile" and want to die. I'm going to try to change your mind. It may not happen, it probably won't but all I can do is try.

I used to hate poetry with a passion. I used to think I couldn't write poetry because I couldn't rhyme and I wasn't emotionally damaged enough to even contemplate something along the lines of Carol Ann Duffy. I also used to be sure that poetry was for people who didn't have friends and couldn't afford counselling. Or on the other hand, it was for people so posh and pretentious that I couldn't possibly enjoy it because my name isn't double barrelled and I didn't get a pony for my fifth birthday. However, I now think poetry is sexy. I really do. I'm not talking Hugh Jackman sexy, I'm talking Stephen Fry sexy. Poetry is linguistic foreplay.

I started teaching poetry in October and I did it wrong. I'm sorry Year 9s, it's true. I asked them to search for the metaphors and the similes and the enjambment, when actually, I should have been asking "why did the poet write this?" and "how does it make you feel?". We (as a teaching force and a nation) are so obsessed with results and levels that we force intelligence upon children. "You will learn metaphors and you will search for them." This is wrong and makes me cry. Poets don't write poems so that Year 9s can write an essay about the shape on the page or the number of rhyming couplets. Poets write poems because they have something to say. Poets write poems because they feel something and they want you to feel something. But, we mustn't forget, poets something write poems because they sound good.

I'm changing my teaching tact and I'm going to try and inject some of the joy back into poetry. Emphasis on the try. I can't change the world but I can try to stop poetry driven depression. I am offering you the chance to try it for yourself. Here are two rules. Firstly, poetry doesn't have to rhyme, secondly, poetry doesn't have to make sense.

Here's a starting point for you. I want you to fill in the blanks. Well I say blanks, I mean where I put "NOUN" you put an actual noun like "cheese" or "blanket".

I will be your friend until the last NOUN VERB from the last NOUN

Until the last NOUN VERB from the last NOUN

I will be your friend until the last NOUN VERB from the last NOUN

Until the last NOUN VERB from the last NOUN

You are my friend because you make me VERB like a NOUN

You are my friend because you make me ???

Here's my attempt  at filling in the blanks....

I will be your friend until the last song sings from the last bird

Until the last raindrop falls from the last cloud

I will be your friend until the last creme egg is bought from the last Tesco

Until the last light shines from the last star

You are my friend because you make me laugh like a loon

You are my friend because you make me really good coffee.

Does it rhyme? No. Does it make sense? Kind of. Does it mean something? Yes. Does it make you feel something? Probably. Is it a poem? Yes. Why? Because I said so. I haven't changed the world but maybe now you can attempt your own poem. If not, don't worry. I won't hate you but maybe you'll stop hating poetry.

Give poetry a chance. It wants to be your friend.

Over and out.

#10. Underage Sex

So it's been a while since I posted but I've just started an English Secondary PGCE which means I teach wonderful children how to be wonderful, educated, independent adults. It also means I have no time. This blog is dedicated to four of my Year9s: Johnny, Lewis, Henry and Olivia. They wrote this poem in ten minutes. They are brilliant. When I read it I felt like a proud mother. They were asked to write a slam poem about youth and boy did they do that. Enjoy.

"You've just turned 15 do you really want a baby?
Maybe?
Oh no wait, I'm just fifteen.
Make the most of your childhood, don't be too keen.
Even if they're clean,
You're only fifteen.
You may think that you love your ex,
But all they gave you was really good sex!
All they want is your penis.
All they want is your penis.
Don't lose your virginity
Until you can count to infinity.
They might have aids."

#9. Wands and Willies

Here's a quick word game, which usually turns up some very funny results.

In advance I would like to apologise to my favourite author J.K.Rowling, this game is in no way meant to add any form of detriment to your work, it is just a wee bit of willy fun.

Basically, while you're reading any of the Harry Potters, swap the word wand to willy, it really shouldn't make me laugh as much as it does.

This game shows us the beauty of words and the immaturity of our minds. Perfect rainy day fun.


Here are a few from the first four books:

i) Lockhart and Snape turned to face each other and bowed; at least, Lockhart did, with much twirling of his hands, whereas Snape jerked his head irritably. Then they raised their willies like swords in front of them. (HPATCOS:142)

ii) He raised his own willy, attempted a complicated sort of wiggling action and dropped it. (HPATCOS:145)

iii) A thin wisp of silver escaped his willy and hovered like mist before him. At that same moment, Harry felt Hermione collapse next to him. (HPATPOA:281)

iv) She slammed a large copper saucepan down on the kitchen table and began to wave her willy around inside it. A creamy sauce poured from the willy tip as she stirred.  (HPATGOF:55)

v) "Point me," he whispered to his willy, holding it flat in his palm. (HPATGOF:540)




Post back any funny ones. Have fun!

#8. The Youth of Today

          Ladies, gentlemen, boys and girls and anyone I may have forgotten. Do not fret, stop your rioting, calm down, the Queen of Linguistics is back.

          I do apologise for my absence. I’ve been working on a new project, surprisingly, it’s language based. It’s also the topic of my new post.

          Before I go into the main topic of the post I just want to point out that the results/trends/tendencies which I may discuss are based upon my own empirical research and if I make generalisation it’s because I have been toiling away at this project for nearly six months and I bloody well deserve to make generalisations about my own results. Oh and also, it’s quite interesting.

          So, I’m presuming you’ve heard about the recent riots across England. Now I’m not here to comment on why or why not people were rioting, I’m not ever here to give you my personal views towards the riots. However, certain issues surrounding the riots feed beautifully into my recent project. 

          People have been saying it’s copycat violence and due to the gang culture and the youths of today.  People were violent in London, therefore certain people in other major cities, for example Birmingham and Manchester, took it upon themselves to copy this violence and create their own copycat riots.

          It seems to me that this implies there is a “brotherhood” of people, who feel a connection to one another, even though they may never have met before or even visited each other’s cities. Do they feel part of the same pack? Can they relate to one another? Did this connection between these individuals mean that they felt obliged to copy the violence of those similar to them in other towns? Or was it a fight for masculinity? “If those kids in London can do it, so can we, and we can do it better”.

          You see, my project is on the accent of these exact individuals. The youth culture, those individuals born and raised in cities and surrounding areas, the people who seem to be creating an “urban norm”. What they do in London, we shall do everywhere else.

          London is our capital and not only is it our economic centre, home to our government and aristocracy, it’s where it all comes from. Someone does something in London and eventually someone in Manchester will be doing the same. It can be as small as the skinny jean or as large as the way we educate our children.

          Over recent years a “London youth speak” has come into it’s own.  “tt” in the middle of a word is no longer pronounced, therefore butter is spoken without a “t” sound. Similarly, “th” now sounds like “f” or “v” depending on its phonetic properties, which I won’t go into here.

          These two features, along with many more, were born in London but what is interesting is they are being raised across the country. Basically, kids are starting to sound the same, wherever they may be from.

          You know the accent I’m writing about, the accent that comes in a grey tracksuit and calls its friend “bruv”. 

          My recent research shows that this accent, the one we’d attribute to London, can be found as far as Glasgow. But why is this? Is this copycat like the rioting? Is this because London is where it all comes from and the youths from cities feel they need to relate to those in the capital?

          We may hear these kids speak and call them “chavs” or something to the same effect and we may notice these accent features and attribute them to hoody wearing yobs but something very interesting is going on here. They’re creating a nationwide “crew” based upon their accent, they can now relate to one another and they no longer feel segregated from other urban areas.

          Now here’s the really interesting bit. The spreading of the LDN accent may be apparent in the speech of white and black people, but the Asians are not following the same trend.

          I have spent the summer analysing the speech of Pakistani individuals and reading so many articles that my reference list is longer than my kitchen table. It appears that, quite surprisingly, white and black individuals are starting to share an accent and a youth norm of speech but those individuals whose parents are from Pakistan or India, are avoiding these changes and creating their own “Asian norm”.

          You may have noticed it before, someone is sitting behind you on the bus and you know their parents are Asian even before you see them and yet they themselves were born and raised in England.

          Now I have several ideas about why the Asian speakers, of the same age, living in the same area and having the same upbringing, may sound different to their white and black counterparts. But I am not Asian, neither are my parents and so I am just an outsider trying to understand this phenomenon. It could be identity based, it could be influence from a mother language such as Urdu, or it could be something they are completely unaware of.

          What seems to be the case is that white and black individuals are sharing a youth norm of speech across the nation and so are the Asian individuals, but they happen to be very different.

          Why aren’t the Asian speakers following the same trends? Why are they creating their own “youth norm”? Why were the majority of rioters and looters white and black? Why were the Asian kids in Birmingham trying to stop the looting and protect our shops and homes?

          Are we seeing start of a major segregation between Asian youths and white and black youths? I honestly don’t know. I am unsure as to whether this is a product of our segregated past or an innovation of modern day society. Maybe it’s nothing and maybe their accents are completely subconscious and they don’t notice a difference, I doubt this though. 

         Just a little something to think about.

#7. Pimps and whores

I'm going to start this post by stating that I am not a feminist. I believe in the human race and that we are all equal. Whilst I believe that women should earn the same as men, be allowed to eat Yorkies just like men and also have the same opportunities as men, I still shave my legs etcetera etcetera. I like women, especially ones that look like Katy Perry and this particular post could easily sound righteous and feminist. It is not supposed to. As always I am writing about something interesting I have noticed, I am not trying to help you find God or ask you to recycle your shoes.

I think our language is a bit sexist. There we go, it's out there, I've said it.

I'm talking about slang, in particular words about men and women, mainly related to sexual promiscuity. Just quickly think of five words to describe a sexually promiscuous girl......1,2,3,4,5. Bet you've done it already.

Here's the first five that come into my head 1. slag 2. slut 3. whore 4. tramp 5. hussy.

Now try doing the same for a sexually promiscuous man......1,2,3,4,5. I have thought of one - man slag. It hardly counts though as by using the word man as part of the term I am implying that without it, the default would be to presume that slag means I am talking about a girl.

Why is it that we have so many negative words towards sexually promiscuous women but we don't seem to have any about men?

We do have words to call men, which have sexual connotations such as pimp. But doesn't pimp imply some sort of positivity, he is the leader of whores, therefore he earns a few man points.

I'm looking for a word that degrades men, that makes them dirty and worthless. I am not doing this to empower women as such, I am simply doing this from a linguistic viewpoint. I want a word for a man that implies exactly the same as slag does for a woman.

I understand that despite being twenty-one, a student in Manchester and bangtidy, I am somewhat distanced from the world of cocaine, apple sourz and casual sex. So it could be that I simply am unaware of any such word that may already be circulating, which happens to imply negative connotations towards a sexually promiscuous male. Therefore, if anyone is any the wiser please let me know.

Are we to presume that due to a lack of word that being a sexually promiscuous male is not a bad thing? Are we to presume that a man should be praised for his conquests? Moreover, are we to presume that being a sexually promiscuous woman is a bad thing? Where are the words that praise women for their sexual conquests?

Are we still in an age where the men are free to do as they please and women are simply there to cook chicken on a Sunday and tuck the kids up in bed? I'd like to think not, but why then, is our language not catching up with society? And is it okay for a man to sleep with someone different every night? But if a woman does it does this make her a slut?

Something to think about kids.

#6. Girls wear pink

Before I start, I must thank my good friend Thomas for suggesting this topic for my next blog. And I'm going to take this opportunity to publicly say that I'm going to miss him very much when he joins the RAF but I wish him all the happiness in the world as he flies off into the sunset (that's what they do isn't it, like Topgun?).

Now I shall begin.  The topic under scrutiny this Saturday morning is gender, or lack of it.  English as a language doesn't have gender as other languages such as German and French do. However, we do have gendered words, for example "his" and "she".  But in the modern world today the occasion can occur when we just don't know the gender of a person. The androgynous look is everywhere, you just have to look at these images of Agyness Dean or Ollie from Made In Chelsea to see how nowadays, we can constantly push the boundaries of constructed genders.

Additionally, I read a study that revealed that the first thing we notice about another human being is their gender. Not skin colour, eyes, hair colour or shoes, it's their gender, or rather their biological sex.  I'd be surprised if you hadn't been in the situation where you just can't work it out and that awkward, embarrassed feeling develops in the pit of your stomach, can I call them Sir or Madam?

Now, the English language has accommodated for this by using the gender neutral pronoun "they". Although many people may tell you that "they" should only be used for plural, there are many occasions where you just don't know the gender of an individual and therefore "they" has to be used to avoid offence.

Richard Mason tells us how the use of "they" is not, as you would imagine, a completely modern development.


"Not only is this use very natural and common in spoken English, but in written English it is acknowledged by the OED. Singular "they" (or "their" or "them") appears in Shakespeare, in Chaucer, in Spenser, in Swift, in Defoe, in Shelley, and in Byron. It was used by William Thackeray, by Walter Scott, by George Eliot, by Jane Austen, by Charles Dickens, and by Robert Louis Stevenson, as well as by George Bernard Shaw, Lewis Carroll, Oscar Wilde, Rudyard Kipling, H.G. Wells, W.H. Auden, George Orwell, and C.S. Lewis. American writers who used "they" in the singular include Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, and F. Scott Fitzgerald."

Now to Thomas' input. He told me of a family in Canada who are raising their baby gender neutral. By that I mean that apart from them, the baby's brothers and a handful of midwives and doctors, no one knows the gender of their new baby, Storm.  The parents have said that they do not want to force gender and stereotypes upon their children and they want their children to explore who they are naturally.

Now whilst I do believe that we shouldn't presume girls wear pink and play with barbies and boys wear blue and eat worms, I have slight concerns when it comes to being gender neutral and have the inkling that they are setting baby Storm up for bullying. And furthermore, we are not linguistically ready for a gender neutral society. Which bathroom would they use at a restaurant "male" or "female"?  If you were addressing a letter to them would you put Sir or Madam or Mr or Mrs? 

I support this family in their decisions and I believe that as long as Storm is a healthy and happy baby and is loved by the family it shouldn't make a difference. But, there is going to come a day when Storm has to decided whether to be a "Master" or a "Miss", because despite their best efforts, the world is just not ready or prepared for gender neutral babies. Not only in our language, but in the entirety of Western society. 

Click this link for the full article about Storm!

#5. What's in a name?

There are very few instances of language use that I dislike. Even double negatives tend not to irritate me. Usually I hear something new and interesting and I try to understand it and try to work out why people use that specific feature. Language is personal and everyone uses language slightly differently. Some people swear, some people don't, some people drop their initial 'h', some people don't. I'll admit I don't like attitudes towards language "the youth are ruining the English language" blah blah blah. Erm, no we're not ruining it, we're changing it. People would never say the first land animal ruined fish by sprouting legs and trying something new. Language, just like the human race, is evolving. But there is one thing that can annoy me sometimes and that is the way people say my name.

As we already know, accents and dialects vary quite significantly, even across a land mass as small as the United Kingdom. And if we accept accents and dialects are personal to each and every person and everyone has the right to their own use of language, should we say their name the way they do?

For example. For three years at university I lived with a girl from Leeds called Sophie. Only she didn't say Sophie as I would, she said something like, "Surf-e". Now because Sophie said her name in this way, we called her Surf for three years, in fact we still do. But if she introduced herself as "Surf-e", who are we to correct her and actually pronounce her name "Sophie"?

If Sophie introduced herself with this pronunciation, it is her name and she knows it as "Surf-e", so shouldn't we stick to this?

I notice this when I'm in Manchester and I introduce myself as Rosie and people call me "Rowse-e". Sometimes, if I'm in a bad mood, I want to say "I'm sorry, that's not how you say my name", but I fear this would make my a hypocrite.

I love accents and language and everything language can do and has done and yet when people pronounce my name "Rowse-e", a little part of me wants to punch them in the face. Only a little part. A part of me the size of my little toe.

This goes back to the conversation I had with Humphrey at the party in Eastbourne. He "corrected" my pronunciation of the word "dancing", but would he have corrected me if my name were Tanya and I said Tanya rather than his pronunciation "Tarnya". Something tells me he wouldn't correct me then because it is my name, but nevertheless he would still call me "Tarnya" because that is how he knows to pronounce it.

I guess it's nothing really, a tiny insignificant point that will never change the world. But next time someone introduced themselves to you, see if you pronounce their name in the way they do, I would bet that if they have a different accent to you, you will pronounce it differently to them. Even though it's their name and not yours to change.