The English Language

The advent of the internet and text messaging etc. appears to have dissolved the intellect of the average person to the point that they are incapable of communicating more coherently than a five year old. For example, pointlessly abbreviating words is lazy at best. Really, how much time does typing ‘gr8’ rather than ‘great’ save? Maybe I could collect together all those saved nanoseconds and spend the time curing AIDS. Do people think it makes them look cool? If I send a text message saying ‘R u going 2 the pub? C u l8er’ I’ll be super cool. I will be like a hacker! Check out my l33t skillz yo!

Of course not. In reality I’ll come across as a lazy, ill educated moron.

Only slightly less irritating is the average person’s inability to grasp the correct usage of apostrophes. Just because something is plural is doesn’t automatically gain one. PC’s? No. CD’s? No! Unless you’re saying that something belongs to the CD, leave it alone – it’s CDs. It’s staggering how much ‘professional’ printed material contains this elementary mistake. On that subject, I refuse to take my car to have its MOT test anywhere which has a sign saying MOT's (unless they can prove that Mr Mot owns the place).

While I’m at it, I may as well have a crack at those who cannot fathom the different between there, their and they’re. The general consensus appears to be that if you don’t know the difference you just use there for every eventuality. It seems most adults would implode if faced with the challenge of correctly writing, “They’re going to get their ball from over there”.

The irony of having witnessed, on several occasions, people refer to someone as a ‘looser’ on an internet forum is brilliant. A looser of what exactly? Is that a job title (is it even a word)? Are you inferring that it’s his job to go around and loosen things which are too tight? If so, I’d like to be a Bra Looser please. Where do I sign?

Moving on, I walked into a takeaway the other day and was confronted with a handwritten sign which said, “Cheques only accepted for values ova £5”.

Ova? OVA? Are you bloody kidding me? I was so irritated I nearly punched the chav like girl behind the counter. Eventually I figured it might impede the preparation of my food and I was really hungry. Who, in a commercial customer facing environment, would think it acceptable to use text speak? I barely tolerate it within a text message. Maybe I’m the fool though since I still buy food there.

Anyway, the examples go on and on.

Why does this irk me? I don’t know. I am English and I live in England. We invented the bloody language so it’d be nice to see people I converse with display some ability to use it correctly. The UK’s population is around 60 million. World wide, it is estimated that 375 million people speak English as their first language. If you combine non-native English speakers then the figure soars to a billion or so. Would I like to be picked up on my English by a foreigner who was learning the language at night school? No. But then I have some pride.

I will now, with plenty of forethought, defend myself against the most obvious of retaliatory attacks. Pointing out my written mistakes in general is missing the point as there is a difference between a typo and habitual miss-use. Everybody makes mistakes and that’s not my point; it’s the continued blatantly incorrect use of your own language that should be eradicated, at its very base level. I don’t expect everyone to be able to talk at length about prepositional pronouns but it’s got to be reasonable to expect someone to know the written difference between off and of.

National Stereotypes

National stereotypes are pretty silly and I’m going to prove it in a moment. What I’ll also do is inadvertently offend just about everyone who reads it. Never mind. If you find your fists clenching and your temple throbbing you’re missing the point. Generally, stereotypes are not positive so when I list a nation’s it is going to invoke some reaction (maybe). Don’t worry, my home is in here too so don’t think I’m sitting in an ivory tower just casting dispersions about everyone else.

American

All Americans are obese and the only thing which matches their girth is the size of their arrogance. Their country is the centre of the world and therefore they have no interest in where anything else is (unless they need to bomb it). This, as with most things, will be accomplished in the loudest, brashest manner possible. History lessons need only go back three generations and culture is the act of placing a fifty in a stripper’s bra while in Vegas. Everyone carries a Magnum handgun and shoot outs are a part of everyday life at the ‘mall’ (or, more frequently, school).

Australian

Australians spend their days sitting on the porch of their self-constructed shack in the outback, drinking Castlemaine XXXX and cooking BBQs from kangaroo meat. They all wear cowboys hats, refer to men as mate and women as Sheila. Every conversation begins with “g’day” and they all have constant sunburn.

Canadian

Canadians are the northern cousins of Americans, but detest any reference to that fact. The quickest way to be punched by a Canadian is to ask whereabouts in America he’s from. To ensure this doesn’t happen Canadians will sew a maple leaf onto every item of clothing they own. Mainly, they live in the snow with Huskies, moose, mounties and that bloke from the 90s TV show Due South.

Columbian

A Columbian is either a farmer, a soldier (for whichever dictator is in power at the time) or a producer of copious amounts of drugs. Cocaine is the recreation of choice and, coincidentally, the country’s major exportation industry. The Government officially denies this last fact but makes only a superficial effort to battle it (preferring instead to stay in and party).

Dutch

The Dutch all live in Amsterdam and spend their days walking backwards and forwards between the brothels and coffee shops, smoking enough cannabis to ensure they never get upset about anything. When was the last time you saw the Dutch go to war?

English

The English have bad teeth and, probably for that reason, a stiff upper lip. They’re overly polite which is why they stomach warm beer when they’re not drinking tea. Phrases such as “good day old chap” and “tally ho” are flung around with careless abandon, usually by people in bowler hats. They are miserable because it always rains. Spain is a sophisticated holiday destination and they’ll return home bright red from sunburn with a straw donkey en tow.

French

Mainly, all the French eat is bread, cheese and garlic which means, with the best will in the world, they’re going to stink a bit. Occasionally they eat snails and frogs too. They are seldom seen without a beret or a striped top and are not very good when it comes to fighting wars. They are quite good at hiding in basements from Germans though. It is also well known that French women are hairier than the men.

Germans

The national uniform of choice is lederhosen, which is an excuse to wear leather shorts and a little hat (ala Robin Hood). Germans have absolutely no sense of humour. They are also uncompromising in their efficiency, which is why humour is outlawed – you can’t be getting shit done if you’re too busy making jokes about it.

Italian

The Italians are a sophisticated race of sun-tanned Mediterranean playboys. They spend their time consuming large amount of pasta and driving exotic sports cars. They are, however, even worse at war than the French. Their tanks have one forward gear, five reverse gears and come equipped with a white flag instead of a gun. Governments change hands on a bi-weekly basis and everyone knows someone in the Mafia.

Irish

The Irish are constantly pissed. The national dish is Guinness and every Irishman has a leprechaun living in his garden, amongst a bed of four leaf clovers. There is an Irish bar on the corner of every street in every city in the world.

Indonesian

Indonesia is a country north of Australia and south of China which consists of more than a trillion islands. If you go there it is 99% jungle and there is no civilisation prevalent. Chances are you’ll be captured by a tribe, paraded before the Chief and then cooked in a pot with some vegetables for lunch.

Japanese

All Japanese men are suited businessmen and all women are Geisha. The staple Japanese meal is anything which includes uncooked fish, washed down with sake. All men are descendants of at least one fearsome samurai warrior and can wield a katana better than you can a fork. Although appearing reserved, the average Japanese enjoys nothing better than relaxing with some octopus-raping-a-schoolgirl themed comics and a large dose of crazy game shows involving people falling from great heights into pits of eels. Every piece of technology in the world is designed here.

Mexican

All Mexicans are drug dealers or illegal immigrants trying to cross the border into America. They are generally foiled because they are easy to spot, dressed in ponchos and massive sombreros. If you live in Los Angeles every second person is Mexican and you’ll be derided as racist if you cannot speak Spanish.

Russian

You can easily spot a Russian because he will be wearing a fur hat (called a ushanka – See? You’ve learned something). The hammer and sickle motif is purely optional but he’ll probably be carrying a glass of vodka too. They are still bitter about the end of the cold war and anyone who doesn’t work for the KGB has to queue two weeks for a loaf of bread.

Saudi Arabian

Everyone in Saudi is an oil sheik who owns a fleet of Rolls Royces and a larger fleet of white robes. Women dress in black, like ninjas. They all live in giant palaces and camel racing is the national pastime (alongside being extremely rich).

Scottish

The Scottish only just lose out in the pissed stakes to the Irish. They’re not picky enough to stick to a single ale though. They have a penchant for skirts and throwing large tree trunks around. They speak with an accent no-one outside of Scotland can understand and are always cold and wet. In Scotland, it rains even more than in England.

Somalian

All Somalians are pirates, just like Captain Jack Sparrow, only with less swords and more AK47s. Every vessel which passes within a light year of the African nation gets stolen and only returned upon payment of a significant ransom. Apparently oil tankers aren’t difficult to hide and the combined might of a dozen countries and their navies are outwitted almost every time by some farmers-cum-hustlers in rubber dinghies. 

Thai

Thailand is the home of some of the most beautiful beaches and stunning scenery in the world. Its population consists entirely of transsexual lady-boys and the only reason people visit is to sleep with underage children. It’s also the only country in the world which thought Gary Glitter was ‘an alright bloke’. Drugs are so frowned upon that if you’re caught with anything stronger than a cigarette you’ll be beheaded on the spot while your companions can look forward to a pleasant stay in somewhere known as the Bangkok Hilton.

Welsh

The Welsh communicate in a language no-one understands which, by all accounts, involves spitting on the other person as much as possible to get your point across. The entire country is a series of mountains which provide the home for eleventy billion sheep, the primary source of company on those long, cold nights.

DIY

Who thought that building things around your own home was a good idea? That’s what builders are for (the clue is in the name). I wouldn’t try and build an engine for my car, I’ll leave that to the professionals. Generally when there is a living to be made doing something it’s because lots of people don’t possess the necessary skill to do it themselves. That’s me; the most hopeless person ever to have attempted anything vaguely DIY related.

I’m staggeringly impatient. This is the first drawback. The second, and major, drawback is that I just do not possess the aptitude for it. Don’t get me wrong, I recognise my DIY limits more than anyone so I only take on the simplest of tasks but I often manage to underestimate even those. This invariably results in a cacophony of unrepeatable language. The start of a DIY attempt commonly coincides with my wife making sure she’s at the other end of the house or, better still, in a different county.

In my last house I put up some CD shelves. There were three holes for securing each shelf to the wall and I left one overnight (half filled) to ensure it was properly attached. Next morning it was fine, so I filled it with the remaining CDs. When I came down the following morning the shelf lay in the middle of the floor, surrounded by scattered CDs. I swore a bit. Now, I’m a man who believes in overkill. If I can’t open something I generally result to brute force, normally with the biggest hammer I can find. No word of a lie, I once tried to get a car stereo in place with a hammer (which is ironic given that kids probably use one to remove them under torchlight). Anyway, plainly a hammer wouldn’t work in this case so what I actually did was make nine more holes in the shelf and attached it to the wall with twelve screws and half a tube of No More Nails (just to be sure). The only thing that’ll get that shelf off the wall is a wrecking ball so I hope the bloke who bought the house likes CDs.

I’ve made the mistake a few times of underestimating a painting task. That’s easy right? You lob the paint on the wall and job done. For the last room I painted I even bought the ‘one coat’ stuff to speed the process up (did I mention I’m impatient?). When they named it ‘one coat’, I want to know who did the counting. I mean, it’s not a big number (that’s kind of the point). Did they lose count or was someone in the marketing department dyslexic? It must have been a marketing thing because ‘three coats if you’re lucky’ doesn’t have the same ring to it.

Buying any kind of furniture which requires assembly is normally a nightmare too. First off, at least two screws will be missing. I built a bench for the garden and I swear they did it on purpose. Not only were the screws missing but they were such an obscure size that I had to visit three DIY shops before I found the correct sized ones. Once you overcome the component shortage you’re then left to deal with instructions which look like they were drawn on tracing paper with crayons by a five year old. In the dark. The printers then remove a couple of stages from the process and you’re left wondering how the cabinet you’re building went from comprising of sixteen separate sections to the finished article in a single, seamless step.

Then there are the DIY shops, catering to the belief that the every day bloke can build himself a two storey extension over the course of a long weekend. There are two types of people in DIY shops; those who stroll around confidently (they’re there to buy a three mill flange-nut hexagonal converter and know its application intimately) and then there’s me. I’m the clueless bloke, repeating my steps down the same aisles (looking just as confused and lost as the three previous forays past the array of spanners).

I’ve said all this but, of course, you’re not a man without a good tool kit (no double entendre intended). It is acceptable to enter a DIY store and gaze longingly at chainsaws with motors powerful enough to run a yacht. A psychologist would probably be interested in what compels me to look at the scythes, axes and hammers while wondering which ones could genuinely be used in a new Friday 13th movie. I’m not going to ask though. My point is a man without a tool kit is... well, he’s a girl. It doesn’t matter if you can use it or not but when someone asks if you have a three quarter inch wrench you need to be able to give a positive response. It’s the law.