Yes, Friends, do YOU find it hard to keep concentrating when your boss is "droning on" about Third Quarter Profits (or otherwise!!!) and all that 'malarkey' (!) ???? A lot of us do, I'm certain, just like local man Andy Fry, who was all over page 94 of the local Onion News for East Hampshire this morning - did you see the "splash" headlines - bet you did haha!!!!
And that hapless CEO obviously forgot the first rule of a CEO speech - to just "witter on" about the stock market, profits etc, for most of your allotted time, leaving any substantial company news like "firings", "layoffs" etc, for the last two minutes of your speech!
It's hardly rocket science, is it !!! Be fair !!!!!
However, recalling that Onion story, here in rural, semi-translucent Liphook, Hampshire, this morning, brings a fairly definite bit of a crooked smile to the faces of me and my wife Lois, as we get down to our proverbial "30 minutes of squelching", deep in the mud of nearby Old Man Lowsley's Farm on our daily walk today, to put it mildly!!!!
Lois and me after our "thirty minutes of squelching", deep in the mud
of nearby Old Man Lowsley's Farm, hyped up by our first sighting
this spring of a beautiful peacock butterfly [inset], a hopeful sign
The truth is, we could both of us give that hapless local CEO a few tips on how to write a speech today!
Lois has been quietly writing a presentation herself, over the past couple of days, a 30-minute online talk to her church's fellow female members, the so-called "sisters' class". And by 12 noon this morning, when we embark on our "squelching" (!), she had already given her presentation, which had generated a lot of interest and questions, she tells me.
(left) flashback to Saturday, when Lois was already well into the research for her
presentation, and (right) the hand-written script which she delivered online earlier today.
I never had any doubts that Lois's talk (about the woman with the alabaster box of ointment etc) would go down well. Lois is a natural, and very much her father's daughter: her dear late father Dennis, a lay preacher, was known to church members all over the English-speaking world for his carefully researched, beautifully written, and warm-hearted presentations, which he gave not just in Britain but also in Canada, the US, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc - you name it!
I am, "for my sins" (!), the leader of the local U3A "Intermediate History of the English Language for Old Codgers" group - a somewhat clumsy name for the group, but at least it "does what it says on the tin", as people say, which is some comfort !!!!
Yours Truly, for his "sins", leader of the local U3A "Intermediate History of
the English Language for Old Codgers" group, would you believe !!!!
Luckily there's at least one "obvious" point I can make - that, after the battle, the huge influx of French and Latin words that started flooding into our language, wouldn't have happened, and we'd be speaking a language basically "100% Anglo-Saxon with perhaps just a dash of Viking", as comedian Tony Hancock famously once called it, back in the 1950's.
It's noteworthy that Germany, a country which wasn't conquered by William, has an incredibly low percentage of "foreign" words, in it - only about 5%. Only Mandarin Chinese has a lower score, at a mere 1%.
What a crazy world we live in!!!!!
On the other hand, English is one of the worst languages in the world for having incorporated, like, a billion foreign, non-native words - more than a billion, probably (!) - mostly from French and Latin. The result is that, an incredible 75% or so of our words are non-native, ie neither Anglo-Saxon, nor Norse.
What madness, isn't it !!!!
But there was another consequence of William's victory, back in 1066, that perhaps isn't so well-known, a feature which I intend to highlight in my so-called "talk"....
You see, when William and his Norman nobles started taking over Britain after 1066, they weren't really very interested in their Anglo-Saxon peasants, as long as they kept out of the Normans' way, and (preferably) kept working (!). The English were the poor "sods" who were doing all the real work, while the Normans were ensconced in their castles, drinking and feasting day and night.
life in England during the Norman period: (left) the Normans in their castles,
feasting and talking French, while (right) the poor English were toiling in the fields
doing all the real work, but talking English while they did it, which was nice!
At least, however, the Normans, due to their lack of interest, left the peasants mostly to their own devices: the Normans just kept very much to themselves, continuing to talk French in their castles, enabling the English, toiling in the fields, to carry on talking English. The result was that the English language was free to develop and modernise much faster, with no "poncy" Normans telling them how they should, or should not, be speaking, which was some consolation.
But what a madness it all was !!!!!
So book your seat now for my forthcoming so-called "talk "! Tickets are selling fast! Members only haha!!!
Will this do?
[Oh just go to bed! - Ed]
22:00 We go to bed - zzzzzzz!!!!!
No comments:
Post a Comment