Windows on the World

Like an England penalty-taker, I missed a couple of crucial blogging moments last week. Indeed, they were all Euro 2004 related - first, while Rooney-mania swept the land, a piece in The Times purporting to elucidate the young striker's Scouse dialect; and afterwards, as the St George flags were furled for another couple of years, a rash of dreadful puns playing on the similarity between the shortened form of refereeing and the present continuous verb form of the F word. Read 'em and weep.

Lern Yerself Roon!

Reffing Hell


But, that's all last week's news, and as I watch for camera close-ups in the remaining matches to see what language the players are swearing in, I thought we might continue our discussion of English as a global language. Is its relentless roll around the globe a good thing, ending Babel and facilitating communication and understanding on a scale never known before? Or is it a bad thing, crushing every smaller, more delicate language in its path, ending countless centuries of cultural heritage? If language and thought are related, isn't a monolingual world a disaster?

Check out the article below and post me your thoughts.

They're talking our language