Grammar Is Not Married To Granddad!

While visiting a school in Greater London recently, I found myself in a strange conversation with a young man who was fifteen years old. He seemed to have a total lack of understanding of the English language, even though he was born and bred here, and so were his parents and their parents etc.

"You is foreign or summat?” he asked adding, “yous sound if yous from Korea innit?” I understood "Korea"

I know that lots of people have problems with my Yorkshire accent in London. It's a city that is very multi-cultural, with people from around the globe, but they have problems knowing where Yorkshire is. I asked him if he thought that I was Korean (even though my heritage is Irish/Italian) He replied, “Yeh”. I then asked him why he thought this, and he replied, “Cos yous is talking odd innit?” We had further conversations about just where my home county is and why "I is talking odd innit", then I asked him why he spoke like he did.

This really threw him, because he said, “I is English (not British) we all talk like dis”. I explained that he wasn't talking English but a type of slang or pidgin English. 

“I aint no fucking pigeon!” he snapped. I asked him if he knew what diction or grammar were, “You is a perv, man!” I think he called me this because of the "dic" part of diction. He then told me that he knew what grammar was, “She is married to Granddad innit?” (I doubt his Granny was ever married to his Granddad!) This wasn't a very old feeble joke: he really believed this.

Now please don't think that I'm being a snob here, although I suppose I am a little. But I am faced with this problem time after time. If you have read any of my previous blogs, you will have heard me moan on about this before. I have no problem with the use of slang. I use slang when I'm with my friends, but I also know when not to use it. I know that language changes all the time, but because lots of young people don't understand how to use their language, or how it should sound, they are losing the art of conversation. Rappers spit out words of the street, which I love, because it has form and anger when used in this way, but what if you have to talk to a person who has learned the proper way to speak English, how will you communicate with them? How would you feel if your surgeon turned to you and announced, “Yous as cancer innit?”

The older generation may have had problems with accents etc, but they knew when they weren't speaking properly, hence lots of extra aitches thrown into polite conversations, such as, “Whell hi hask you?” In my recent blog called 'Where Is The North?' I spoke about Londoners becoming more and more insular, which is true. They seem to have problems with regional accents and have developed a way of speaking which is quite alien to people not from an estate in London. They never seem to travel Britain and have no knowledge of places outside of the capital. Most have no knowledge of places outside of where they live!

That is why, as co founder of Relight-Ed, which is a not for profit enterprise, I can announce that we are starting a project called, 'Dare You Tell'. Our aim is to get young people not only here but all around the world to learn the art of story telling. To learn about the rhythm of the language, how to structure a sentence and how to create a way of talking which engages the listener. Street talk is good for the street, it's brilliant when used in a rap, but it limits the ability to communicate with others.

So as they say up north, "is tha interested?"