Category: English language

Clive Staples Lewis (1898-1963), or ‘Jack’ to friends and family, was born in Belfast. As a boy he was an avid reader and particularly enjoyed stories of Norse mythology and Crusading knights ~ he was to become professor of Medieval & Renaissance Literature at Cambridge University in 1954. This passion, along with his deep interest in the logical justification of Christian beliefs, were the enduring themes of his writing.

He began as a poet, publishing ‘Spirits in Bondage’ in 1919. After gaining three degrees at Oxford University he stayed on as a tutor in philosophy and did not leave until his appointment at Cambridge. During WW2 he gave a series of uplifting sermons on BBC radio which appealed to believers and non-believers alike. These made him a household name.

However, he is best known for the seven novels that make up the ‘Chronicles of Narnia’ and of these, the first is the most famous ~ ‘The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe’, published in 1950. Today they are sometimes unreasonably criticised for reflecting cultural attitudes of the time. That aside, Lewis’s work has been extremely influential in children’s fantasy literature and it is very popular in Christian evangelistic circles, selling 200 million copies in thirty languages.

(Image: Levan Ramishvili at Flickr.com / Public domain)

A Cockney used to be defined as someone ‘born within the sound of Bow Bells’ in the City of London, but this is no longer a residential area so it is now a general term for someone born in the East End of London. At the end of the Industrial Revolution in the 1840s the City was crowded with office blocks, warehouses, marketplaces and traders. Inevitably, communities formed and found ways to delineate themselves. Out of this came Cockney rhyming slang ~ a code designed to avoid saying the actual words you mean ~ particularly useful for in-jokes, fooling outsiders (including policemen) and tribal bonding.

Words chosen to be coded were mainly body parts, money, clothes, states of being and rude words. There were two main types of code. Both involve having a phrase which rhymes with the target word, e.g. Barnet fair -> hair. The first method would then drop all but the first word of the phrase ~ so, Barnet means hair. The second method simply keeps the whole phrase, e.g. trouble and strife -> wife. Some of these codes have entered the main language and are well-known around the country, e.g. “Let’s have a butcher’s” means “Let’s have a look” (butcher’s hook).

(Top image: Cory Doctorow at Flickr.com / CC BY-SA 2.0)

Father and son, Roger and Adam Hargreaves, created the Mr. Men and Little Miss series of children’s books. Roger (1935-88) was born in Yorkshire and always enjoyed drawing cartoons. In 1971 his son, Adam (born in 1963), famously asked him what a tickle looked like, which was the inspiration for the very first book ~ ‘Mr. Tickle’. Adam was destined to continue as author-illustrator of the brand after his father’s death.

The first Mr. Men books were so successful that just three years after they began, an animation series appeared on TV. The Little Miss books were launched in 1981 with ‘Little Miss Bossy’. Currently, there are ninety-one different characters and each one is named after a personality trait. The light-hearted story goes on to show the pros or cons of displaying this type of behaviour, often with the help of other Mr. Men or Little Miss characters.

The brand has seen sales of 100,000,000 books worldwide, with off-shoots such as comic strips, songs, advertising adaptations, merchandising, Google doodles and London Underground posters. Children’s literature has always had a moralising side, popular with parents, and a delightfully humorous side, loved by children, and the Mr. Men and Little Misses tick both of those boxes.

(Image: Allan Leonard at Flickr.com / CC BY NC 2.0)

An idiom is a phrase which should not be taken literally but whose meaning is alluded to by the mental picture it conjures up. Idioms can be very confusing for those who are learning English as a foreign language! The majority of idioms have their roots in history and old ways of doing things.

Cats have been domesticated in Britain since at least the 3rd century BC, according to archaeological finds, and today we share this land with more than eight million cats, many of them in multi-cat households. Inevitably, there are many idioms concerning cats. Here are just some of them:-

(Image: pixabay.com)

Geoffrey Chaucer (1342-1400) was a poet, translator and writer in his spare time. This is probably why his most famous work, ‘The Canterbury Tales’, was either never finished or was partially lost. It may also be the reason that it was written in English, rather than French as was the norm in those days for professional authors, since it was only the upper-class who could read.

Chaucer began his working career as a servant to an aristocratic family. From there he continued to climb the ranks of the royal circle and held some very responsible positions. His writing sideline attracted the attention of patrons such as the Duke of Lancaster, who also became his brother-in-law.

Chaucer is known as ‘the first English author’ and ‘The Canterbury Tales’ was one of the first books published by William Caxton with his new-fangled printing press in 1476. Only twenty-four of a possible sixty-two tales have been preserved and these are in the British Library. These are 15th century copies ~ nothing remains of the original manuscript in Chaucer’s own handwriting.

(Image: British Library at Wikimedia Commons / Public domain)

Samuel Johnson (1709-84) grew up in Staffordshire with a bookshop on the ground floor of his home, his father being a bookseller. As a sickly but precocious child, Samuel spent much of his time reading. He went on to create the revered ‘A Dictionary of the English Language’ in 1755, which stood as the ultimate authority on spelling, meaning, usage and pronunciation for the next 125 years.

It took nine years to produce, with the help of six assistants. The Earl of Chesterfield gave him the contract in 1746 and paid him £1,575. The Earl was thrilled with the eventual result. Not only did it give definitions but also more than 200,000 examples of correct use, borrowed from writers such as Shakespeare and Milton.

Johnson had started the project with the idea that it would “fix” the language, but by the end of the nine years he had come to realise that it is folly to imagine that any dictionary “can embalm [the] language and secure it from corruption and decay” (Johnson, quoted in Crystal, 2007). Nevertheless, Johnson’s dictionary was a major milestone in the English language and set a high standard for all future efforts.

(Image: Alex Brown on Flickr.com / CC BY 2.0)