Saturday, January 23, 2010

What English Is

This morning I uncovered a wonderful short rap on YouTube called The 21st Century Flux. It captures my views on English quite well. English is this dynamic language that's everywhere right now and has taken on (and continues to adopt) words from every other language in the world. We adopt these words and say them our own way. Vocabulary that people around the world are using that become part of the internet or media lexicon become part of the language. Even the grammar is changing!

Students: If you're preparing for the Cambridge Advanced level exam, you might try listening to the rap before reading the lines on the screen. See if you recognize any of the expressions; then look at the screen the second time around. Since the speaker is not rapping in American English, it was even a challenge for me to understand. That's part of the beauty of English, however. There are so many accents and so many ways to say the same thing.

2 comments:

tiredofslampoets said...

That's not rap.

manyenglishes said...

poetry in motion?