LANGUAGE, FOUL AND OTHERWISE

English Like What it is Spoke

Dr Vernacular’s supremely copacetic guide to the heart-warming communications of the English in modern society

A bunch of delightful English people mingle with the tourists in central London — and, no, I am not getting into the difference between British and English here. My lesson applies to the whole UK. If you want to be sure they are English, btw, listen out for the quality of their travelogue comments: “Fuck me, look at the size of the dome on that. Looks like a fucking tit. I’d like to handle a pair of those,” would be a fair approximation of the quality of commentary. Photo by Dom J: https://www.pexels.com/photo/people-walking-on-concrete-walkway-near-dome-354061/

Hello there, old bean. How perfectly spiffing of you to drop by for my little lecture today about English as it is spoken in everyday polite society and not as represented by actors in foreign television and film (Hello, America — I had not thought it was possible to go downhill from Dick Van Dyke’s Australian Cockney, but then there was Daphne from Frasier, wasn’t there? A woman who sounds as much like she comes from Manchester as Taylor Swift sounds like Enrico Caruso).

The scintillating germ of a notion behind today’s piece is not just to sound like Stephen Fry (Although, why not, I ask you, in all honesty, when everything on television sounds like Stephen Fry in this country some days, and the sounding of Stephen Fry is, of course, a pleasant sound up there with the chimes of Big Ben, the lapping of the waves on Brighton beach, and the frying of an artery clogging Mars Bar in the eight-day-old chip fat at the Greasy Shithead Chippery in Chiswick.)

Instead, I will be dropping the Fry persona and adopting the traditional italics (painful, but necessary) to translate some key English phrases into English as it is Spoke — or, to give its title in its own language — English as it is Spoke, You Fucking Git.

Lesson One

“I say, dear chap, would you mind ever so lending me one shiny English pound?”

Gizza quid, you cunt.

“I would just like to give my hearty endorsement of your lasting kindness and friendship in my otherwise friendless and disappointing existence on this sad planet.”

I love you, you bastard (followed by optional, alcohol-induced vomit down said bastard’s front).

Please note: other expletives are always available for loved ones. It is just bad form to use the word cunt in the first two examples of an article. Additionally, as we will also see below, please do not neglect to be creative with insults about individual’s sexuality — allusions to bottoms, arseholes, and the many and tear-inducingly delightful activities one might engage in with such an orificial opportunity.

Please note additional: it is, however, actually possible to conduct whole conversations with the word cunt in English Like What it is Spoke. Football matches, motorway works (both workers and drivers), and school playgrounds are superb examples of this subset of the language and, indeed, the degree of near incoherent venom with which one otherwise simple syllable can be projected through the eyeballs of another human being.

“I must say, you are indeed most fulsomely attractive and I would be honoured to spend an evening with you, perhaps an aperitif and then a nice meal and glass or two before perhaps repairing to my place.”

Gizza shag, you bint.

“Oh, I hear you are a writer and you spend your time pontificating on pomposity and pointing fingers of derision at the foibles of those who least understand the humour in what they do and, indeed, perhaps understand even less than that, making Messrs Dunning and Kruger blush and Donald Rumsfield invent a category even below unknown unknowns. How absolutely splendiferous.”

Now keep lying there, you bastard, while I kick your fucking head some more.

Here endeth Lesson One of English as it is Spoke. I hope you have learned something and will enjoy your forthcoming holiday to the country of Great Literature and foul language.

Now piss off, you cunt.

Mike Hickman (Sir Henry’s Substack | Mike Hickman | Substack) has been many things. Formerly a teacher, academic, external examiner, fundraiser, personal assistant, doctoral student, drama teacher, “actor” (ha — never again), documentary director, and so very much else besides. Sometimes, these days, he is a writer.

Want more? Of course you do. There’s a novel on Substack (above) along with plays and stories and a sit-com. On this platform, here’s a recent piece for you:

Job Advert Red Flags. Or…translating the bollocks | by Mike Hickman | Doctor Funny | Oct, 2024 | Medium