Slang and its slow progress into standard English is fine. Some words we use today as standard English started as slang, some words have different meanings today than they had 50 years ago. Will the kids of today still speak like this when they grow up? I'm sure some of the ones who do could well end up jobless. Parents just have to take it on the chin and accept it as a phase. If their grandparents were to hear them speaking like that they'd wonder what the hell had happened to them. They are totally at odds with their surroundings and upbringing. The thing that I do have an issue with is the number of 'typical' English kids who now seem to speak with these bizarre accents as standard. So long as you have strong foundations, you are free to improvise." "Whether we like it or not, the way we talk affects the way people see us and this can have very serious consequences. Talking about slang also reinforces a sense of appropriacy, much in the same way as political correctness has made people more sensitive to how language can hurt and discriminate, says Mr Thorne.Īnd all of us should learn how important it is to spot when slang is inappropriate, says Mr Zephaniah. So if banning slang is not the solution, might the key be to understand it better? Now there are very few constraints - in media, TV soaps, rap lyrics - it's much more in your face." Even in the punk era in the 1970s and 80s, newspapers wouldn't print slang. "This kind of language has always been there, but it's been liberated. Slang has not become more prevalent, simply more public, he says. It's not just to communicate information, it's in order to include people into your group and exclude people out of your group." "All groups - it doesn't matter whether they are soldiers, policeman, criminals or whatever - always generate to some extent their own language. Slang is also a natural human tendency, says Mr Thorne. The English language no longer simply belongs to the English, it's multicultural." Television is part Latin, part Greek, yet we think of it as one word. "Zoo came from France, pyjamas from India, shampoo comes from Urdu. Don't understand their slang? You're not meant to
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