Johnny and I were sitting
in the train when he drew my attention to one of the headlines in the
freebie that was lying about. It took me a few seconds to decipher that title.
Then it occurred to me that those kind
of titles were incomprehensible to many of the tourists who were travelling
with us in that London train.
Teaching my students how to write the topic and the main
idea sentence of a passage, I instruct them first to look at the title and the
subtitle of the article. We usually practice this skill on articles from
newspapers such as the New York Times and even The Guardian.
But this technique would never work with the Metro and the
Evening Standard, which are full of puns, idioms and slang. As they belong to the culture and the history
of the people who speak the language, puns and idioms are the hardest to learn
and to use correctly in a foreign language.
I was discussing with my students an article which appeared
in several newspapers in the US, the title of which was, “Would your child pick
up a gun? Don’t kid yourself.” Perhaps because of the gravity of the subject,
some editions refrained from including the pun.
It seems to me that, in contrast to most American publications, the
British freebies never resist a good pun.
When I first came to Britain in the late 70s I was fortunate
to meet the grandfather of an English friend. He was a real Cockney who used to
work on the Thames docks. He taught
me some Cockney rhyming slang: a beer
was “Pig’s ear” and a sister was “a skin and blister.” The issue became more
complicated when a beer was replaced with “pig’s,” and a sister with a
“skin.” I had to know the whole phrase
in order to decode the part which didn’t rhyme. Like Alice in Wonderland, I
felt confused. It was a though I was introduced to a secret language, which in
a way was what this Cockney rhyming slang was.
London is full with
tourists most of the year, and many of them have a good enough mastery of the
English language. But if they happen to
look at the freebies they would lose all
confidence in their language skills. Perhaps this is the sweet revenge of the
British, whose island is conquered every year by millions of foreigners: in
their own quiet and understating way they make sure that we remain outside.
Oh, and I almost forgot, so what does a fat cat do in the
BBC? She draws a fat-cat pay cheque of course.
http://www.cockneyrhymingslang.co.uk/
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