Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Spaking the proper Queen's gets ye understood

A very useful book has just come onto (into? by? through?) the market; "The Queen’s English: And How to Use It".

The author is Bernard Lamb, a geneticist at Imperial College London and president of the Queen’s English Society, an organisation whose target is the protection and preservation of what it calls the Queen’s English. This "Queen's", Mr Lamb is at pains to point out, is not "elitist" or "overly complex"- it is merely "authoritative, correct, clear English".

OK (and that's a sentence opening the QES Commandos would probably have "issues" with), what's the relevance to a Unionist blog?

Well, I did like the "feel" of Mr Lamb's answer to the following questions on the Prospero blog:
Do you think we should use the Queen’s English at all times?

Bernard Lamb: People should use it on all formal occasions. Whatever they use for their friends is fine, we’ve got no objection at all to local dialects and local accents, but if it is something for national use then the Queen’s English is the best.

Why is the Queen’s English the best and clearest form of English?

BL: It’s not some rarefied thing only to be used by the aristocracy or the monarchy. It’s standard, ordinary, correct English. It doesn’t have local variations that other people might not understand.

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