I Love English!

While lying awake last night, I got to thinking about my love affair with the English language. Growing up in Montreal, I was equally at home in English and French and our family's private language, Frengjabi. I could sorta, kinda communicate in Punjabi, but never really comfortably.

Most people think that French is a beautiful language and it is! Truly it is the language of love and all you women out there who have never had a man make verbal love to you in French, you are missing a treat. And, no, it doesn't seem to work the other way around.

For sublime poetry, Punjabi is unequaled. Although my Punjabi fails me this day, still the sound and the cadence of Sri Guru Granth Sahib pierces straight into the soul, elevating one's being to the sublime.

All that said, for communication, I love English. I love its devil-may-care attitude toward itself, the way it never takes itself too seriously. ( [English teachers] take it seriously, but that's another matter. No Henry Higgins I, I am pure 'Enry 'Iggins.) This is a robust tongue in need of no language police to protect its purity, for it has no purity to protect.

For those of you learning English as a second language or those still learning the fundamentals, nothing takes the place of knowing the proper use of the language and, certainly, it is absolutely necessary to have full mastery of standard English, its grammar and structure.

(Now that I have partially placated any English teachers who may be reading this. I proceed to the important stuff.)

But once that mastery is achieved, the fun begins. English should come with instructions saying, " Please fold, spindle and mutilate; I can take it and come out the better for it." I love to try new things with English. One of my favourites - English teachers, get out those red pens - is to verb nouns. These two people flanking me as I write now turban every day.

Amrit always has, but Suni just started after they got married. (See how smoothly that flows and how perfectly understandable it is?)

It is one thing however to do this on purpose and another to do it out of carelessness or ignorance. There are a couple of mistakes that really grate on me. People, hear me! 'It's' means it is. 'It's' always means it is. 'It's' is not a possessive. The possessive form is its (no apostrophe). Its possessive form is 'its.' Clear? Likewise 'you're' means you are, a contraction. 'Your' is the possessive form. 'Your' never means you are. Of course, in nonstandard English ur can mean either. I'm not sure this is an improvement, as some meaning is lost.

I think my least favourite word is 'enthused.' It makes me cringe right from my cramping toes to the crown of my head. It sounds ugly, rhymes with ooooooooozed. I am not opposed to back formations, but I am opposed to gratuitous ugliness.

I can also dangle participles and modifiers like a champ, but I usually edit them out, unless I find them amusing. (While running to the store to shoplift some more Sudafed, my boiling pot of meth exploded, contaminating the whole neighbourhood.)

Here, as I close, I mention a new favourite piece of nonstandard English I came across a couple days ago. Eleanor Bloom, listen up! I CAN HAS MORR COKE PLZ, follow the link; you won't be sorry!

And now, for those of you who have actually gotten this far, some real fun with English:

Metaphors

Every year, English teachers from across the country can submit actual analogies and metaphors found in high school essays. Here are some examples:

1. Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master.

2. His thoughts tumbled in his head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free.

3. He spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a
pinhole in it.

4. She grew on him like she was a colony of e-coli, and he was room-temperature Canadian beef.

5. She had a deep, throaty, genuine laugh, like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up.

6. Her vocabulary was as bad as, like, whatever.

7. He was as tall as a six-foot, three-inch tree.

8. The revelation that his marriage of 30 years had disintegrated because of his wife's infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM machine.

9. The little boat gently drifted across the pond exactly the way a bowling ball wouldn't.

10. McBride fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like

11. From the attic came an unearthly howl. The whole scene had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 7:00 P.M. Instead of 7:30.

12. Her hair glistened in the rain like a nose hair after a sneeze.

13. The hailstones leaped from the pavement, just likemaggots when you fry them in hot grease.

14. Long separated by cruel fate, the star-crossed lovers raced across the grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Cleveland at 6:36 P.M. Traveling at 55 mph, the other from Topeka at 4:19 P.M., at a speed of 35 mph.

15. They lived in a typical suburban neighborhood with picket fences that resembled Nancy Kerrigan's teeth.

16. John and Mary had never met. They were like two humming-birds, which had also never met.

17. He fell for her like his heart was a mob informant, and she was the East River

18. Even in his last years, Granddad had a mind like a steel trap; only it was one that had been left out so long and it had rusted shut.

19. Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do.

20. The plan was simple, like my brother-in-law Phil. But unlike Phil, this plan just might work.

21. The young fighter had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a day.

22. He was as lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, but a real duck that was actually lame, maybe from stepping on a land mine or something.

23. The ballerina rose gracefully en pointe and extended one slender leg behind her, like a dog at a fire hydrant.

24. It was an American tradition, like fathers chasing kids around with power tools.

25. He was deeply in love. When she spoke, he thought he heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up