A As In... (The Alphabet For Today's Kids)

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Forget Alfa, Bravo, Charlie and Delta, nevermind Echo and Foxtrot, things have moved on mightily from the days of Second World War movies and police series...

These days you're more likely to hear kids saying, well, something like what's shown in this chart below, for example.

Here's the original NATO alphabet from the old days, by the way, just for interest (you can tell it's old, look, even the pixels are yellowed with age)... Over and out.

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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?

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While we (the majority of the human race) were losing sleep over frivolities like "Why is the grass green?" and "What on earth am I going to do for my next lesson?", the greatest thinkers of all time were considering an altogether greater problem: Why, indeed, did that legendary chicken cross that fateful road?


Plato:
For the greater good.

Karl Marx:
An historical inevitability

Tomas de Torquemada:
Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.

Timothy Leary:
Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would let it take.

Douglas Adams:
Forty-two.

Nietzsche:
Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes also across you.

Oliver North:
National security was at stake.

Carl Jung:
The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.

Jean-Paul Sartre:
In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Albert Einstein:
Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the chicken depends upon your frame of reference.

Aristotle:
To actualize its potential.

Buddha:
If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.

Salvador Dali:
The Fish.

Emily Dickinson:
Because it could not stop for death.

Epicurus:
For fun.

Ralph Waldo Emerson:
It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.

Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
The eternal hen-principle.

Ernest Hemingway:
To die. In the rain.

Werner Heisenberg:
Uncertain.

David Hume:
Out of custom and habit.

Saddam Hussein:
An unprovoked act of rebellion.

Pyrrho the Skeptic:
What road?

The Sphinx:
--

Sappho:
The hen on the other side was more fair than all of Hellas' fine armies.

Henry David Thoreau:
To live deliberately.

Captain James T. Kirk:
To boldly go where no chicken has gone before.

Machiavelli:
So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for who among them has the strength to contend with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the princely chicken's dominion maintained.

Hippocrates:
Because of an excess of phlegm in its pancreas.

Bill Clinton:
No one has ever offered one shred of evidence that the chicken went anywhere near the road. Anyway, answering this question will not educate a single child or provide a single senior citizen with medical care.

Hillary Rodham Clinton:
Wait a minute! Chickens? That's domestic policy! You promised that to me, Bill!

Al Gore:
To get ... to the other ... side.

Barack Obama:
Because it could.


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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'Why Did The Chicken Cross The Road?'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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Yeah, Right!

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Another of those... funny Facebook things which has done the rounds but is worth seeing once at least.


Loving English double negatives opens the door to understanding all sorts of foreign languages. I still can't see why my parents always went apoplectic every time I said that 'I ain't got no money' or whatever.


AH! So you have some then, my father would proclaim, triumphant, and my argument would be lost.


Then again, I still had the Rolling Stones and their 'I can't get no (satisfaction)' to back me up. For some reason it never worked.


Yeah, left...

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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'I Am Hungary'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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I Am Hungary

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One of those... funny Facebook things which has done the rounds but is worth seeing once at least. Looks like a fun game you could even try at home. But what else could you do? Jamaca lesson on countries if you're an English teacher..? I s'pose you could if you francy it... but would English teachers have what it takes..? Oops, I'd better stop before icelander anyone else... 


I am hungary...

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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'I Am Hungary'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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One Buffalo, Two Buffali

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I know, I know... you've seen these a million times, but if I'm to offer you everything funny that's ever been written about the weird and wonderful English language we have to stop by the classics from time to time.

One Buffalo, Two Buffali

A goose and a goose make... two geese. A moose and a moose make... two meese? A mouse and a mouse make...two mice. A grouse and a grouse make...grice? Greese?

One buffalo, two buffali? That sounds good, give it a try. It may be wrong, it still might fly. One buffalo, two buffali.

An ox and an ox make... oxen. A fox and a fox make...foxen? A cow and a cow make... cattle. A sow and a sow make sattle? Seattle?

One kangaroo, two kangari? Works for me. Give it a try. It may be wrong. It still might fly. One kangaroo, two kangari!

A bunch of crickets... make a racket. A whole pack of jackals... make a jacket? Bucks make a bucket. Ducks make a ducket. Do a whole bunch of duckets... make a quacket? Why not?

A pooch and a pooch... make a peach. A leech and a leech make... two looch. A roach and a roach make... two reach. A priest and a priest... what? Preach?

One caribou... two carabi? I love it, give it a try. It may be wrong, it still might fly. One caribou. Two carabi.

Twelve inchworms... make a foot worm. That's one long and skinny shaped worm. Two footworms... make a feet worm. Which you measure, with a tapeworm.

A gnu and a gnu make... two gnee. A shrew and a shrew make... two shree. A pair of canaries. How sweet! That's called a parakeet.

One buffalo, two buffali. One caribou, two carabi. One kangaroo, two kangari. One buffalo, two buffali.

Hey, Mary-Kate, what's a lot of baby tooths? Baby teeth. What's a lot of Baby Ruths? Baby Reeth? A lot of hippos? Hippies! Two buzzards? A blizzard.

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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'One Buffalo, Two Buffali'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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Likez-Vous Zee English?

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This was spotted in Paris and is a perfect example of English creeping in where it isn't always welcome. Something else that has occured to me since writing the piece below is that 'Liker' would have to be pronounced something like 'licked', as in 'Il m'a liké', or 'He licked me', which isn't the same thing at all...


I originally published this on my Paris & I photo blog. I've included the accompanying text to give you an idea of what happens over there.

Likez-Vous Zee English?

If ever evidence were needed that the sacred French language is forever being compromised by neologisms from the anglosaxon canon, here's some.

On an official poster spotted near my place comprising a whole bunch of verbs the likes of which you can do in the neighbourhood, such as jouer (play), chanter (sing), sourire (smile), applaudir (applaud) and so on, it's rather easy to identify the odd one out.

Liker isn't nor has it ever been, to my knowledge, an official verb recognised by the hallowed Académie Française. Literary giants would be shaking the Panthéon if they saw that word just above the notorious little thumbs up now synonymous with Facebook's global empire.

Frenchies are now perfectly au fait with phrases such as Il m'a liké, Il m'a friendé, and the collégiens worst nightmare... Il m'a unliké, le salaud !(He unliked me, the bastard!)

And I doubt it'll end there, despite what the 'immortals' of the Académiemight wish otherwise. After all, we have chatcher, browser and le mail, all frowned upon by the committees that be, and all well extablished in the adolescent and professional on-line vernacular. Watch out for tweeter (v),le cloud (n), forwarder (v), texter (v), smart phone (n) and why notiPhoner, iPader (v) or Androider(v), as the original concept of phoning fades away on a wobbly wavelength.

This invasion of French by cutting edge English isn't to everyone's taste, but what about you? Vous likez tout ça ou pas ?

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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'Flushed With Emotion'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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Alergik to Grammer

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You've gotta laugh. I still have problems with apostrophes and spelling isn't my strong point either. And as for non-defining relative clauses, well...

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Hotch Potch English: The SNAIL ~ 'Alergik to Grammer'

Created & written by Sab Will

Copyright 2012 Sab Will / Hotch Potch English ~ The Unique English Language Website

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