Response to BBC's ‘Talk about English’, Part Two of “Politics, Language, and Slang

Last time in class, we continued with slang. We’ve listened to the second part of that BBC show ‘Talk about English’, “Politics, Language, and Slang. As you can guess from the title, this part of the show was focused on slang and politics. Question was: Should ‘’high profile’’ people use slang? First I have to explain this term ‘’high profile’’ people. Who are this people? High profile people would be, all the people that are famous or known by something, like celebrities, actors, presidents, politicians... We all agreed that after this explanation the real question is: Should politicians use slang? My answer is no. I remember my first conclusion about it in the class was: ‘’If politicians and high profile people use slang than who will speak proper or formal English?’’ Politicians already dress, eat, walk, smile and do everything formal, so they should also speak formal. It’s really lame to see them use slang phrases, because we all know they’re trying to appeal to young people. Ok, they can use slang in some occasions, for example, when they’re meeting citizens, but other than that they shouldn’t use slang at all. I also think that politicians have their own slang, because when they speak, no one understands them, mostly they don’t understand themselves, because someone wrote their speech for them. Other group of people who shouldn’t use slang are people that work on national TV stations, because in some way they represent formal English language

During the show we heard some examples of high profile people using slang. One of them caught our attention. It was Salman Rushdie, who said that ‘’veil sucks’’. I don’t have to tell you that this derogatory statement caused huge backlash in our class, as it did in the whole Islamic world. As a Muslim I was personally assaulted, because I’m planning to marry a girl who wears hijjab. ''Suck'' is a really strong word and it can’t be used in this contest, considering the fact that Salman said that veil sucks meaning that it sucks in general. If he said that he doesn’t like veil, and that he wouldn’t like his wife to wear veil it wouldn’t be so insulting because it wouldn’t be general, but this way it seems like he said, Muslim women all around the world, throw your veil away because I made universal conclusion that veil sucks. Who is he to judge Islam, and Islamic religion? Ok, everyone has a right to express his own opinion but this topic is too delicate to be discussed in this manner. Islam is the way of life, and by saying that veil sucks he insulted every women that wears veil because she wants it, and it’s like that in Islam, no one is forcing you to wear veil, it’s your obligation to wear veil, but only when you decide to wear it from your heart, not by force, as many people think. It would be the same if someone said that killing people is cool, ofcourse it’s not. This example showed us that in some cases slang can be very powerful and that it shouldn’t be used everywhere by everyone.

Slang

Slang is used really often now days, everywhere in the world. Why? Maybe it’s easier for the people to use slang because slang usually simplifies words, or makes them shorter. But, again why is slang so popular, especially among young people?

That were the questions that were supposed to be answered by the BBC show 'Talk about English','Politics, Language, and Slang', we listened in the class, but after listening that BBC show about slang, I must say I learned many new things about slang, that I didn't know before. I didn't know that in the beginning slang was a secret language. For me slang was always just a modified variant of the normal language. Thing that surprised me was, Cockney, which I thought was a dialect. But it turned out it's something completely different, it's almost like a code language, and it’s really hard to understand, even for the natives, that don’t live in London.

We’ve also listened to The Onion fake news, where we heard some commonly used slang expressions. These news showed us that slang can completely change the sense of the whole news. At the of the class we all agreed that slang is something that puts us in a different groups, depending which slang we use, because you can’t expect old people to understand the slang we use.

To sum up all of this I’ll use very popular form of slang, slang of the black people.
I says everyone shoulda use slang if they wants it, cause’ slang is just one of da forms of language.

A letter to Mr.Callum Robertson

Dear Mr. Robertson,
We are a group of students from University “ Džemal Bijedić” in Mostar who have listened to your show. We really liked the show because it was so interesting and you were talking about an issue that was connected to us.Since we have heard a lot of different opinions, we would like to give you our own comments.First thing that seemed interesting for us was the discussion about that supermarket sign “ 10 items or less”. We know that it is basically incorrect but since it is understandable to the majority we think that it is acceptable.The next thing that had our attention was the discussion about fluency and accuracy. Balance in everything is always needed so we think that balance between these two things is also needed. In the other hand, we think that accuracy can be learnt while fluency is something you were born with. How to make a balance? Easily. Accuracy you get by time and fluency is something you were born with, but you can make it better or worse by reading and expanding your vocabulary. So, you only have to learn by time to be accurate and read as much as possible you can.We also want to give our comment on what should the professors teach the students. They should teach them the correct and incorrect forms so that they could know the difference between them. With ‘incorrect forms’ we don’t think of totally wrong or made up forms but of the forms that are accepted and understandable for most people that speak English.In the end, we would like to say that we really love and enjoy listening to your show. We would like you to have as many as possible shows of this kind because they are very useful for students, especially for the ones that are non-natives.

Sincerely yours,Second year’s students of English language and literature

My experimental phase

I really had many experimental phases in my life. There was a collector phase (which still lasts), football phase, artist phase, poet phase, and 3 music phases. My first phase was a collector phase, and I think we all had this phase. When I was a kid I used to collect cartoon figures and sticker albums like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Mickey Mouse, He-Man...

Then when I was second grade of primary school I started collecting music magazines, and this lasted till second grade of high school. I spend too much money on these magazines, and all my relatives that live abroad, used to send me foreign magazines. In sixth grade I started to collect CD’s, by the time I was 18, I had around 200 CD, I would spend 100 KM on CD’s, everyone called me DJ, because I was a ‘’music database’’ for everyone, especially when I began to work in the internet club. Why did I say this phase still lasts, because now I collect tech stuff like mobile phones, memory sticks, digital cameras etc.., and I must say this is the most expensive phase I’ve ever had.

I also had a football phase, since my father played football for 30 years, he trained me, but soon I realized I'm not into football, and that phase ended. Then there was a poet and an artist phase, which also
didn't last long, again my 2 uncles were writers, and my father, brother, and uncle are artists, but these phases didn’t last long too. I can say I’m good with drawing, but I draw only when I need to.

Now, music phases. As I sad before, I had three phases connected with music, because my first experience with music happened when I was 4 or 5 years old. My brother who is 8 years older than me, really likes music, he has around 500 CD's, 200 records. So at the age of 5 I already knew songs by Pink Floyd, The Doors, Led Zeppelin, EKV, Azra.... My first music phase started when I was second grade of primary school, I liked this group called ET (Electro Team), their songs were half in Croation and half in English, ofcourse I knew all their songs by heart, I wanted to buy special outfits that they used to wear, just to be like them, I had all their LP’s, many posters etc. This phase ended when I was fifth grade, when I discovered Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, No Doubt, Hanson etc. At that time I used to listen everything I liked, but I had my two favorite groups, the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys, I’m so ashamed when I write this now. I had hundreds of posters, and all kinds of stuff with their picture or logo on it, again, my relatives from all around the world used to send me some material, and I traded with everyone who came from Germany, England or any other country. So I really had a lot of stuff. I dressed like BSB, and I had a hair style like Nick Carter, girls in school used to call me Nick. The funny thing was that I also listened to many other music types, back then and people were surprised, because of that. Fortunately this phase ended when I was eight grade. Why?

I discovered Hip Hop. Man, I was so into Hip Hop and all the music types that were connected with Hip Hop like Hip Hop Soul, R&B, Soul, Neo Soul, UK Garage (2 Step), and also some Raprock. It was all about Hip Hop in my life, clothes, hair styles, way of speaking, walking…. I had this friend Sanja, and I hooked her up to Hip Hop too. We were always together, rapping or dancing to hip hop, talking slang. We watched all the movies about Hip Hop culture, and we used to draw graffiti. We were always together, everyone thought that we were dating, but nothing ever happened between us, because I knew her since I was second grade, so she was almost like my sister. Since I live in a small town, people considered me a freak show, because of the baggy clothes, cornrows, skater and basketball shoes, hats, and caps. When I had the cornrows, people stared at me all the time. It was funny, I was the only one different in the whole school, all the other pupils looked the same. Me and Sanja also planned to perform Ready or not by the Fugees, on traditional summer New talents show in our town. I used to download beats from the internet, and we rapped to it. I remember when we watched the movie Save the last dance, we were mesmerized by the Hip Hop club Steps, ofcourse we watched many times to learn the moves, our dream was to make a Hip Hop party. I’m telling you it was all about Hip Hop, back then, Outkast, Fugees, Q-Tip, Common, Timbaland…I studied history of Hip Hop, I even did some classes in my school, because our music teacher didn’t know anything about Hip Hop, so she asked me to write a term paper about Hip Hop which she is going to use later on. I did that, and didn’t have to do anything else till the end of the year. Funny thing was that I didn’t smoke, drink alcohol, or swear, and I still liked Hip Hop, I just liked the music, and the culture of Hip Hop (graffiti, baggy clothes, hip hop dance..), I didn’t like stupid rappers, only those who had something smart to say, because in the beginning Hip Hop had completely different meaning and goal, than it has now. Now it’s all about how much money, girls and gold you got. In this movie called Brown Sugar, which was very important to me, you can see what I’m talking about. Main song in that movie was An ode to Hip Hop, song that I used to relate to, preformed by Erykah Badu, you can see the video at the end of this essay.

Looking back on all of these phases, I’m sure glad that’s something in the past. Experimental phase is something we all had, or still have in our lives it can happen to teens, and adults too. It’s the time when we experiment, when we’re trying to find ourselves. Experimetal phase can sometimes be dangerous, for example if you experiment with drugs, you can have serious consequences but mostly it’s harmless, and funny part of our life. I can’t really compare myself with Chaim, because my parents never banned me anything during my phases, they knew me, they knew I’ll never do anything bad. But I can compare myself with Chaim, at the time when I converted to Islam, although it’s not the same, because Islam is not a phase to me. I had the same problems he had, I had to hide my books about Islam, I had to hide when I prayed…until my parents find out about it. They didn't,understand Islam, they thought it was something crazy, but thanks to God, everything turned out right, and now they've accepted me as a muslim. To conclude I think that the purpose of an experimental phase is knowing yourself better. They say that picture is worth a thousand words, so here’s a photo of ‘’my phases’’ !(feel free to laugh :))


Love Of My Life - "An Ode To Hip-Hop" - More amazing video clips are a click away