Just lately, our son Harry (aged 3) has developed a sentence structure designed to add emphasis to a particular word or phrase.  He simply repeats the key element at the end.  For example:

"I want two sausages, two."

"I want to scoot to the playground, scoot."

...and of course...

"Emily did it, Emily."

It reminds me a bit of the French construction which places a personal pronoun at the start of a sentence for emphasis or clarity:

"Moi, j'aime cette maison."  (= 'I like this house)

It's unspeakably cute when Harry comes out with one of these (obviously I may be slightly biased, being his dad), but it's also very catchy, very.  His mother and I have taken to using the construction ourselves, as in:

"I'm just going to get the paper now, the paper."

"You've got a hole in your sock, a hole."

Let's hope for the sake of everyone around us that we manage to stop doing this when Harry does, Harry.

There's an interview on the BBC website today with former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

In it, she talks about the aftermath of the infamous expenses claim she made for two, ahem, adult films bought by her husband Richard.  Apparently he had to 'literally stay in the house with the curtains drawn for weeks on end'.

You'd think he'd be used to that.

During the brief history of this blog, I've mentioned the demise of a couple of languages: Livonian and Bo.  Today, though, I've learned about a new language which is growing fast: Globish.

Globish is a highly simplified version of English with a vocabulary of only 1500 words and much looser grammar.  It's used by non-native English speakers to communicate with each other, mainly for business purposes.  And it's been formalised by a non-native English speaker: Jean-Paul Nerrière, a former IBM executive from France.

It enables business people from, say, Korea, Sweden and Brazil to understand each other very well.  Funnily enough, though, people from Britain, Australia and the US cannot participate easily since their English is too subtle and complicated to be understood.

Even a word like 'kitchen' would not be understood by Globish speakers; they would say 'the room where you cook food'.  Similarly, 'siblings' would be replaced by 'the other children of my mother and father'.

Globish is already so widespread and so powerful that Nerrière has predicted that "(it) will limit the influence of the English language dramatically".  I'm not sure that's true; I'd have thought that English is so rich, so widespread and has such history that it will more than hold its own.  The languages most at risk of serious damage are more likely to be the likes of Livonian and Bo.

But then, I'm no expert.  If you want the opinion of someone who is, Robert McCrum (Associate Editor of the Observer) has just published a book on the phenomenon.

Every day at his pre-school, our son Harry has to take in an object beginning with the letter of the week.  Sometimes it's been a bit of a struggle to find something new - especially recently, when we've had X and Z to contend with - so it was quite a relief when we finally completed the alphabet last week.

Only to discover that we're now starting with A again.  Grrr.

Today he took in a book called 'Arnie the Accidental Hero', about a timid armadillo.  'That'll do,' I thought.  'In fact, that's quite a good one.'

Except that when I picked him up, one of the helpers informed me that Harry called it an 'armadildo'.

Still, at least he seems to be doing well with his French.  The other day he told me he knew the word for 'sweets', and to prove it he ran around shouting: 'J'aime les bumbums!  J'aime les bumbums!'

We're so proud.

The General Election campaign is now well under way and the three main parties have been busy trying to get their messages across.  On occasions, though, they haven't done it with much subtlety.  Each leader has taken to repeating a particular word again and again and again to drive it home.

When launching the Labour manifesto, Gordon Brown used the word 'future' no less than seventeen times.

David Cameron said 'change' thirteen times in a Conservative party political broadcast.

And I counted eighteen instances of 'fair' in a Lib Dem broadcast presented by Nick Clegg.

Now these words may provide a decent summary of each party's position.  Labour's 'future' says 'don't think too much about what we've done in the past'.  The Tories' 'change' says 'we're not them'.  And 'fair' is the Lib Dems' way of suggesting a balanced position in the centre.

But to keep repeating these words suggests, I think, a patronising attitude towards the public which you would think politicians would want to avoid after the expenses scandal.  It's as if they think we are so stupid that we will see their parties in a certain way if they say a certain word often enough.

It's like Kellogg's trying to convince us that Bran Flakes are tasty with their 'tasty, tasty, very very tasty' jingle.

And that didn't work.

Er... f*cked if I can see anything.

I spotted this job ad on the Drum website over the weekend.  Looks like the successful candidate can't start soon enough...

Our son Harry (3½) is showing a lot of interest in words at the moment, so we got the set of plastic letters out yesterday.

I spelled out 'K-E-V-I-N' and asked him what it said.

"Umm... I don't know," he replied.

I pointed to myself to give him a clue.

"Is it 'Daddy'?" he asked.

"No, it's what you sometimes call me when you're being a bit cheeky."

A pause.

"Ah, I know!  'Noodle Doodle'!"

The Labour Party has just unveiled its slogan for the election campaign:

                                                "A future fair for all"

Last one on the dodgems is a loser!  Hope I win a goldfish!

Apologies for the lack of posts lately; I've been rather busy, though with painting more than writing.  (The kitchen and the front room, rather than portraits or abstracts.)

This should bring us up to date, though...

• I didn't win the Columnist of the Year award which I mentioned a couple of posts ago.  (You may have guessed as much; after all, I'd have been on here gloating about it before now if I had been victorious.)  Still, I did get a Highly Commended certificate.  And the chap who won was apparently a regular columnist for the Independent for fifteen years, which suggests that he knows what he's doing.

• Another language has gone the way of Livonian: the language of Bo, on the Andaman Islands in the Bay of Bengal.  Another sad linguistic event - but I did smile at one of the comments added to the Guardian's report:

                  "Damn, I've just bought the Bo Linguaphone CDs."

• I learned (a year after the event!) that Birmingham City Council has banned the use of apostrophes on all its signs.  The reasons they gave for this move were that their staff were spending too long dealing with complaints from the public about poor punctuation, and that it would cost too much to make all the signs correct.  Doing away with the apostrophe altogether was seen as the simplest solution.

That's Birmingham's prerogative (or rather, thats Birminghams prerogative), but it really can't be condoned.  As John Richards, founder of the Apostrophe Protection Society, commented:

                  "This is setting a terrible example.  It seems retrograde, dumbing down really.  All over Birmingham, and in other cities, teachers are trying to teach children correct grammar and punctuation.  Now children will go around Birmingham and see utter chaos... If you don't have apostrophes, is there any point in full-stops, or semi-colons, or question marks?  Is there any point in punctuation at all?"

(Yes, there's an Apostrophe Protection Society.  No, I'm not a member.)

The MSN news site invited people to send in pictures of signs with poor grammar or spelling; here's my favourite from the submissions, taken inside a branch of Borders:

• Last weekend, the Guardian and Observer published guides to better relationships.  Part one included an interview with Dr John Gottman, a leading counsellor of couples, in which he described how analysis of language can give clues as to the state of the relationship:

                  "Generally you can pick it up... I remember one woman who said: 'I think a woman needs two lovers, one who will repair things around the house and another to satisfy her sexually.  Unfortunately Norman is not good at either of them!'  Now it was pretty easy to tell that she was contemptuous of her husband, because she said so directly."

Sure about that, Sherlock?

• There's been a big fuss this week about a Twitter message allegedly sent by Labour MP David Wright, which said: "ivenevervotedtory because you can put lipstick on a scum-sucking pig, but it's still a scum-sucking pig..."

The Tories have taken particular exception to the phrase 'scum-sucking' (which Wright claims was inserted in his tweet by someone else), but the use of 'pig' seems to have been overlooked.

Isn't that a bit like being called fat and stupid, and responding with 'Here, I'm not fat!'?

It was reported this week that a long-established Canadian magazine is changing its name because its e-mails and newsletters keep getting blocked by Internet spam filters.

Its name: 'The Beaver'.

I wonder whether my favourite ornithology magazine, Cocks and Tits Monthly, will follow suit.

(Sorry, couldn't resist that.)

I'm pleased to report that I'm up for an award for my use of language.

I've been shortlisted for Columnist of the Year in the EDF Energy East of England Media Awards, for my football articles on the MyFootballWriter website.

All right, so it's not a Pulitzer prize.  And the awards ceremony next month is taking place at a hotel near Stansted airport rather than Grosvenor House or the Royal Albert Hall.  But it's rather pleasing all the same.

I'm not sure whether I'll be able to get to the ceremony, though.  It's being held on a Thursday lunchtime, so I'd have to keep our son out of his pre-school that day and take him along with me.  Somehow I don't think a boozy media lunch is a suitable environment for a three-year-old - let alone an unsociable 48-year-old.

I'll let you know what I decide.

One of the first jokes I can remember Harry Hill telling - and still one of my favourites - is this one:

'My father used to say, "Always fight fire with fire".  And that's why they drummed him out of the fire brigade.'

The clever twist on a common expression, leading to an absurd image, just tickled me.  As if anyone in the fire brigade would actually do that!

But then I spotted this recruitment ad for the London Fire Brigade in yesterday's Guardian...

According to a report on the BBC site this week, many youngsters are being held back in the jobs market because they don't know when they should and shouldn't speak in slang...

Interviewer:  Ah, Mr Johnson.  Do take a seat.

Candidate:  What's good, guy?

Interviewer:  Er... the morning's good.  Good morning to you.

Candidate:  Safe, safe.

Interviewer:  Right.  So, you're interested in a job here?

Candidate:  Standard.  I'd bum it blue.

Interviewer:  Excellent - I think.  But why our company in particular?

Candidate:  'S proper nang, innit?

Interviewer:  Sorry?

Candidate:  Mint, da bomb, buzzin'.

Interviewer:  Actually I can hear a buzzing.  What is that?

(The candidate takes a ringing mobile phone out of his pocket.)

Candidate:  Check the ringtone, guy.  Sick, yeah?

Interviewer:  I'm sick of it already.  Would you mind turning it off?

Candidate:  Seen, seen.  Don't be vexed.

Interviewer:  Thank you.  Now, I understand that you had a spell of work experience but left before completing it.  Could you tell me a little more about that?

Candidate:  It was well long, man.  The boss was sooo dry.  Thought I was a fudge, the munter.

Interviewer:  Right.  Well, I'm pleased to say you've got the job.

Candidate:  For real?

Interviewer:  Ha!  Owned!  No, you haven't.

Candidate:  I'm ghost...

I've come across some pretty horrendous examples of marketing-speak in a few advertising briefs I've been given lately.  I was going to include them in a post about how people often fall back on jargon to cover a lack of clear or original thinking, but then decided it would be wiser not to.  If the people who wrote those briefs were to recognise the examples, they might not put any more work my way.

Fortunately, however, advertising luminary Dave Trott has just written on this very subject in his excellent blog, so I can direct you towards that instead.

I particularly like the example he gives in a comment appended to the post, which makes the point that jargon can be used in a crafty way to reassure habitual jargon-users that you 'get' them:

In a pitch, Mike Greenlees once said to a client, "In order to increase stock-turn you need to optimise your on-shelf margins."

We won the pitch.

Later I asked Mike what it meant.

He said, "Well if they make it cheaper people will buy more."

I asked him why he didn't just say that.

He said, "Because then they would have thought I knew nothing about marketing."

Two quick things:

Back in January, I mentioned a school in Sheffield which decided to call itself 'a place for learning' because the governors felt that the word 'school' has negative connotations.  Things just got even worse.  My wife spotted an ad in the current TES for a 'learning manager'.  That's right - they're after a teacher.

And way back in September of last year, I quoted Guardian columnist Charlie Brooker talking about how hard and unpleasant he finds it to write.  The Guardian site now has a video of him expanding further on this subject.  It's entertaining, enlightening... and rather reassuring.

However hard I've found it to write on occasions, I've never sat in my underpants in floods of tears.

It's been a couple of months now since our daughter Emily (5) decided it was time to move up from CBeebies to CBBC.  There have already been linguistic consequences; for example, our son Harry (3) had to spend some time on the naughty step yesterday for constantly shouting 'You suck!', which he's picked up from some programme or other.

And the relief at escaping such CBeebies horrors as Big Cook, Little Cook and In the Night Garden didn't last long.  CBBC has plenty of annoying programmes of its own.  Fortunately, however, Emily and Harry's favourite is actually watchable.  I'd even go so far as to say it's quite good - and the language used in the programme is one of the most enjoyable aspects.

Raven is a game show, but quite different to most of the ones served up on children's TV.  There are no shouty presenters, flashing lights, loud music or gunge tanks.  Instead, the show has a medieval Celtic setting with the contestants playing the parts of young warriors undertaking a series of challenges in a quest to prove their mettle.  The language has an archaic, almost epic feel throughout; here are the words which open the programme:

"Evil still lurks in this sinister and foreboding land.  Danger is omnipresent as the vile servants of Nevar patrol every forest and river in search of my brave warriors.  But we will hunt them and their malevolent master down and destroy his wickedness once and for all.  I must strive to return this land to its true path and bring light to the darkness..."

Even the children's names are changed.  They are given 'warrior' names like Satnav and Nobrot (well, maybe not quite like that) to fit in with the tone and setting.

I should imagine it's a lot of fun to write that show.  It feels as though the writers and the actor who plays Raven enjoy the language they use, anyway.

I wonder whether the actor continues to speak that way when he goes home in the evenings, though?  I think I would, for a laugh.

Our five-year-old daughter Emily spent the weekend working on a project about owls.

Looking over her shoulder to see how she was getting on, I noticed one subhead that I couldn't understand at all; it read 'Owls isit'.  I was pretty sure that this wasn't meant to be an owl-related version of the old advertising slogan 'Coke is it', so I asked her what it said.

'Oh, Dad,' she sighed scornfully.  'It says "Owls' Eyesight".'

Hmm.  I still have some reservations about this phonics system they use in primary schools nowadays.

Not that this was the only linguistic mistake I spotted on Saturday.  I bought a new saucepan from Sainsbury's and spotted this on the packaging:

'Twice as stronger'?  I can't decide whether the proof reader had poor grammar or poor isit.

Although I haven't yet reached the stage where I check the obituaries in the paper every day to make sure I'm not dead, there was one in the Guardian which caught my eye this week: a piece about New York Times columnist William Safire, who died on Monday.

I hadn't heard of him before - and from what I've read since, I wouldn't have had much time for his political views - but he was apparently a respected figure in linguistics in the States, defending the correct use of English and mocking poor usage.  To this end, he compiled a witty list of rules for writing (or 'Fumblerules'), which I'm happy to reproduce here...

• Remember to never split an infinitive.
• The passive voice should never be used.
• Do not put statements in the negative form.
• Verbs have to agree with their subjects.
• Proofread carefully to see if you words out.
• If you reread your work, you can find on rereading a great deal of repetition can be by rereading and editing.
• A writer must not shift your point of view.
• And don't start a sentence with a conjunction. (Remember, too, a preposition is a terrible word to end a sentence with.)
• Don't overuse exclamation marks!!
• Place pronouns as close as possible, especially in long sentences, as of 10 or more words, to their antecedents.
• Writing carefully, dangling participles must be avoided.
• If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
• Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors.
• Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
• Everyone should be careful to use a singular pronoun with singular nouns in their writing.
• Always pick on the correct idiom.
• The adverb always follows the verb.
• Last but not least, avoid cliches like the plague; seek viable alternatives.

Our daughter Emily's primary school held an Inventions Week last year.  During the week, there was a competition in which entrants had to create a device which would make a teacher's life easier.

With only a modicum of parental help (ahem), Em won second prize with her 'class controller' - a remote control which the teacher could use to modify the children's behaviour.  (Buttons included 'volume', tidy up', 'sit down' etc.)  We did consider a robot which could read and mark pupil's work, before discounting this as a preposterous notion...

...but now it seems that it's about to happen.  The Times Educational Supplement reports today that a UK exam board is to start using computers to 'read' and assess English essays from next month.  There is even speculation that automated marking of essays will be extended to GCSEs and A-levels; the research director at another exam board is quoted as saying that this is a question of 'when, not if'.

This seems a crazy notion to me.  How can a computer, however advanced, pick up on the subtle nuances of a piece of writing?  How can it fully appreciate an elegant turn of phrase, a clever double-meaning, a particularly appropriate metaphor or references to other works and quotations?  It might be able to detect poor spelling or grammar, but that's about it.

For example, if a computer were to 'read' the book I've just finished (Instructions for Living Someone Else's Life by Mil Millington), it might well spot the errors which the proofreader missed, such as 'it'd had truly become something that made her spirits sag...' (p.238) or 'alternations'  (p.233).  However, it wouldn't enjoy bits like:

'Etiquette and the mechanics of temporal shifts had him trapped in a pincer movement.  As, come to that, did Katrina's legs.' (p.224)

'...a groan like a creaky door rolled about in the dark alcove inside his head where his throat and nose met secretly to plot phlegm.'  (p.229)

As the English lecturer quoted in the TES article remarks, students will end up writing for the computer instead of for people - which will be absolutely 001101010101000101110111011010101.

WE ALL KNOW, OF COURSE, THAT IT'S NOT JUST WHAT YOU SAY THAT MATTERS; IT'S HOW YOU SAY IT.

ALL THE SAME, IT WAS A SURPRISE TO LEARN THAT A WOMAN IN NEW ZEALAND HAS JUST LOST HER JOB FOR PERSISTENTLY SENDING E-MAILS IN BLOCK CAPITALS.  BY DOING SO, SHE CAME ACROSS AS AGGRESSIVE AND CONFRONTATIONAL AND CAUSED A LOT OF BAD FEELING AT HER PLACE OF WORK.

(Sorry, was I shouting just then?)

When you've finished revising or editing a piece of copy, it's very important to check the whole thing thoroughly to make sure that it reads as it should.

Otherwise you could end up with something like this headline, which appeared in some editions of the Daily Express this week:

Apparently the first version of the headline ran: 'Can Dec finally match Ant?'  It was decided to change this to 'Can Dec at last match Ant?' - but somehow the 'a' from 'at' was added to the 'nally' of 'finally' with the result above.

A couple of language-related things in the media today.

First - and following on from this recent post about making mistakes in French - there's a funny story on the BBC website about a British woman who was looking for a place to stay in a small French town.  She spotted a place called the 'Hôtel de Ville' - and not realising that this means 'Town Hall', went inside to enquire about a room.  Before doing so, she popped into the toilet.  When she came out, she found that the building had been closed and she was locked inside overnight.

(It wouldn't have happened in Germany.  Their word for 'town hall' is 'Rathaus', so the woman would hardly have wanted to spend a night there.)

The other item concerns 'Chinglish', or the ungrammatical and often incomprehensible English frequently found on signs in China.  The Telegraph reports that the embarrassed authorities in Shanghai are launching a campaign to get rid of all such signs before the World Expo takes place there next year.

It's a shame, really.  The signs are very entertaining, and at least the Chinese offer translations to visitors, which is more than we usually do in Britain.  You can see plenty of examples of Chinglish here, here and here - but these are some of my favourites:

- 'To take notice of safe. The slippery are very crafty.'  (A warning at a sloped entrance to a shopping mall)

- 'Please keep your legs'  (A sign next to an escalator.)

- 'Deformed man toilet'

- 'Please bump your head carefully'

- 'Building asks a smoked visitor in the outside smoking section that you cannot smoke in'

- 'I like your smile, but unlike you put your shoes on my face'  (A 'Keep off the grass' sign!)

Three linguistic observations from our (very enjoyable) holiday in France last week:

i)  Misspelled signs are not the preserve of English-speaking nations.  (This may sound obvious, but for some reason we tend to assume that all notices we see abroad have perfect spelling and grammar.)  On the journey home, we saw an electronic sign above the motorway which advised: 'Faites une pose toutes les 2 heures'.  I assume the person who posted this meant 'pause' rather than 'pose'; that is, they wanted us to take a break every two hours, rather than strike a pose in the manner of Madonna's Vogue.

ii)  I mentioned last August that the French often give their clothes shops English names which sound a bit funny to us.  Here's another one for the list: 'Gentleman Farmer'.  (It seems to be a chain; there were branches in both La Rochelle and Rouen.)  Strangely, the items in the shop windows didn't look like they'd be worn by either gentlemen or farmers.

iii)  The fast food chain 'Quick' is quick in the same way that fun runs are fun and the German Democratic Republic was democratic.

My word of the week, if not month, if not year:

'Boustrophedon'.

It means the writing of alternate lines in opposite directions - left to right, then right to left and so on.  (A bit like the numbers on a snakes and ladders board.)

I came across the word for the first time in the Guardian puzzle section last Saturday.  How could I have lived for over forty-ahem years without ever discovering it before?

There was a Select Committee meeting at the Houses of Parliament last week on the subject of official language - or to be more specific, the confusing jargon which is frequently employed by politicians.

You can watch the meeting here, though I should warn you that it goes on for well over an hour.  Oh, and there's no sound for the first minute or two while people are taking their seats.  But there are enough interesting thoughts in there to make it worth a look.  A few to look out for:

16 mins  The Chair of the Committee quotes a George Orwell remark from 1946 which suggests that a chaotic political situation may be improved by addressing the language people use.  In other words, if politicians speak and write more clearly, the rest will follow.

25 mins  David Crystal, Professor of Linguistics at Bangor University, suggests that the period when formal grammar was no longer taught in schools may have something to do with the readiness of the current generation of politicians and civil servants to fall back on meaningless stock phrases.

34 mins  The Chair offers the theory that MPs have picked up much of their jargon through travelling in first class on trains and overhearing the conversations of management consultants - though with this perk likely to disappear in the wake of the expenses scandal, they may soon be less exposed to consultant-speak.

36 mins  Professor Crystal speculates that new media - Twitter, blogs and the like - are likely to influence political language.  In particular, the need for brevity on Twitter (where Tweets can be no longer than 140 characters) may have the effect of sharpening what politicians say.

54 mins  One of the MPs on the Committee cites an example of a particular word being given a meaning different from most people's understanding of it; he points out that the word 'entitlements' in Gordon Brown's recent document 'Building Britain's Future' does not seem to mean 'things to which people have a right'.

(Usually, of course, it's phrases rather than individual words which have meanings at odds which what the words suggest.  Simon Hoggart, the Guardian's political sketch-writer, comments on the phrase 'Care in the Community' early in the meeting [12 mins]: 'We're all in favour of care, we're all in favour of community... in fact, as we know, it means poor mad women exposing themselves in Victoria Gardens.')

There were a few aspects of political language which, to my surprise, weren't covered.  I thought that its use to deliberately confuse or mislead the public might be a major concern.  Coded statements (e.g. 'I have no plans to do so' meaning 'I fully intend to do so') weren't mentioned.  And the word 'redacted' - the term used to describe the heavily blacked-out expense claims of MPs published recently - wasn't used once.

But it was still a worthwhile conversation, and one which needs to be repeated at regular intervals.  After all, there will be politician-speak as long as there are politicians.

Oh, hello.  I'm just taking a break from watching webisodes of my favourite docusoap and listening to reggaeton to write this brief entry, which I've earmarked to let you know - be you friend or frenemy - that the American publisher Merriam-Webster has just released a list of new words and phrases which have made it into its 2009 dictionary.

Our old friend 'staycation' is in there - but I can't say I've ever heard of any of the others, let alone used them.

Right, I'm off for a shawarma at the cafe round the corner.  (I am a green-collared locavore, after all.)

Oh dear, oh dear.

It's just been announced that the Russian gas company Gazprom has set up a joint venture with a Nigerian company called NNPC.

The name of this joint venture?  'Nigaz'.

It's hard to think of a worse possible name.  Perhaps if Weetabix set up a new company in conjuction with Marks & Spencer, it could be called 'WeeMarks'.  (Something that might be tackled by 'BudgeMarks', a merger between Budgens and M&S.)

Or how about a company formed by a major news provider and a mobile phone network: 'CNNT-Mobile'?

No, I think Nigaz still outdoes them all.

The new Government publication Support for Spelling is now telling primary schools that the age-old 'i before e except after c' rule should no longer be taught since it is, apparently, irrelevant and confusing.

Unbeleivable.

It's only just over a month now until our family holiday in France, and already I'm starting to tense up about the inevitable problems with the language.

It's not that I can't speak French; I read it at Cambridge, after all.  The problems stem from frustration that I've allowed my French to fall into such a state of rusty disrepair.  I find it almost impossible to understand what's being said on the TV and radio - though I generally find that my ears begin to become attuned just as it's time to return home.  Even if I manage to follow the beginning of a news report, a word or phrase will inevitably come up which I realise I used to know but can't now recall.  By the time I've finally remembered it or (more likely) looked it up, the programme has moved on to another item.

It's hard to see at present when I might ever have the time or opportunity to regain any sort of fluency.  Though even if I had the time, I fear that my brain has now lost the adhesive qualities it once had.  It's a sign of age which I find much more alarming than any physical deterioration; words simply don't stick as they used to.

It's not just French.  I've had a 'Learn Spanish' course for some time - the fact that it comes with cassette tapes should give you an idea of just how long - but I just can't retain any vocabulary or grammar beyond the end of any session.  And there are a number of English words whose meanings I've looked up countless times, only to forget them almost immediately.  Venal and venial, for example.  And all sorts of grammatical terms such as synecdoche and metonymy.

On a more positive note, I can at least be reasonably confident that in France I won't make any howlers as bad as those described in this article on the BBC website.

There are some good (though possibly apocryphal) anecdotes in there.  I particularly like the story about the man wandering around looking for the rail station, asking: 'Où est la guerre?'

My favourite such story isn't included.  It concerns an Englishman lighting a cigarette in a French train carriage back in the days when this was allowed.  Thinking it only polite to offer one to the one other occupant of the compartment, he leans forward and says: 'Pardon, monsieur.  Êtes-vous un fumier?'

'Un fumier', in case you didn't know, means 'a dungheap'.

This week's top three slips of the tongue from the children:

3)  Emily (5): 'My hair keeps sticking up, it's all ecstatic'.

2)  Me (48):  'What sort of ice cream would you like, Harry?'

     Harry: 'Umm... manila'.

1)  Emily again: 'Dad, what's the Fucky Chicken?'

     Me (after spitting tea all over the floor): 'It's Funky Chicken, Emily.  F-u-n-k-y.  Don't say that other word, it's very rude.'

     Emily: 'Oh.  (pause)  What's 'fucky', then?'

My wife's sister and her family stayed with us last night.  They're on their way to France for a brief camping holiday, and broke up their long journey by stopping here.

I've never fancied camping myself - and by coincidence, I came across a beautiful description of the unpleasant aspects of it in the Guardian today.  The words were spoken by the late Matthew Crosby, a boy with Down's syndrome who is the subject of a new memoir by his mother Anne:

"Nasty peeing by tree, eated smoke, plates muddy, sitted on grass, no television, both socks wetted all time."

Wonderful.

It was the Eurovision Song Contest last night (or last week, if you include the semi-finals they have now).  For the first time in ages, the UK finished in the top five - not, I think, because the song was an improvement on previous years (it wasn't), but because the voting system was changed to reduce political and regional voting.

In previous years, it's been clear that we have few friends in the rest of Europe prepared to direct any points in our direction.  Yet, somewhat paradoxically, most of the other countries' entries sing in English.  Why do they do this?  Because English is seen as the international language of pop?  Or because the acts see the contest as their big chance of breaking through in the English-speaking countries of the world, especially the US?  I don't know; I'm just suggesting possibilities.

Last year, there was huge controversy in France over the fact that Sébastien Tellier's entry Divine was almost entirely in English.  ('When one has the honour of being selected to represent France, one sings in French,' a government minister complained.)  If Tellier's intention was to speak to the English market, the bizarre lyrics undermined it.  A brief sample:

          Oh oh oh
          I… I'm alone in life to say
          I love the Chivers anyway
          'Cause Chivers look divine
          Look away
          They try to find the Milky Way
          They love to drink it every day

No, I've no idea who or what the Chivers might be.

The use of English lyrics often sounds a little odd in other countries' entries.  You can't help feeling it would have been a good idea to get a native speaker to give them the once over before they were finalised.  Here's an extract from I Wanna, the Latvian winner from 2002:

          Today you think you are the winner
          Today you think you are the king
          You make me sweat in my emotions

I've been sweaty in lots of places in my time, but never in my emotions.

Back to this year's contest, though, because there was one entry where you could see exactly why the contestants had elected to sing in English.  The Georgian song was called We Don't Wanna Put In - a thinly veiled attack on Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.  The chorus goes:

          We don't wanna put in the negative move
          It's killing the groove
          I'm trying to shoot in some disco tonight
          Boogie with you

The words 'I'm trying to shoot in' sound very much like 'I'm trying to shoot him' - and the female singers accompany them by miming a gunshot to the head in the song's video.

However, Eurovision organisers ruled that the song infringed the contest's rules against making political statements - and rather than amend the lyrics, Georgia decided to withdraw.

It was probably a wise move; singing about wanting to shoot Putin when the contest was held in Moscow would not have been advisable.

Oh, I do like a good bit of gobbledegook now and then - not least because it serves as reassurance that there'll always be a need for copywriters who can write clearly.

Last week, the Isle of Wight council published a document on its adult learning programme, intended to help people improve their powers of communication.  Unfortunately, the document serves only to prove that those who produced it are in dire need of such help themselves.

For example, the council's Train to Gain programme is said to have been "well received within the Isle of Wight council with recent pilot with leisure staff leading to the future expectation of this would be to have this project open to all departments of the council and have people directly referred through self-referral and the PDR cycle".

There's also the news that the quality improvement plan has been revised "to focus and cross referenced to the new Framework For Excellence so we are working towards meeting future expectation enabling a more workable and live document which has met with the approval of the LLSC".

'PDR' and 'LLSC' are just two of the baffling acronyms used in the document - others include CAF, CFL, CPD, FLLN, FLIF, IAG, JISC, NCFE, NIACE, NLDC, NOCN, OCN, PCDL, QIP, SMT and WFL.  (None of them is even as memorable as SPLINK.)

Apparently a rewrite is already under way.

It's not quite a spoonerism, but our son Harry (aged 2) asked for a surprising spoonful this morning.

Me:      Harry, what do you want for breakfast?

Harry: Umm... Christ Pispies, please.

Now there's a name for a cereal.  Wonder if that's what the photographer Andres Serrano has in his bowl every day?

Not sure whether this is an illustration of the imprecise nature of language or just another example of me being a bit thick, but anyway...

My five-year-old daughter Emily asked me a question a couple of days ago.

Emily:  Dad, where's Madagascar?

Me:  It's a large island off the east coast of southern Africa.

Emily:  (rolling eyes) No, I mean the DVD...

It's been reported that Sainsbury's has given a new name to the fish pollack after research showed that customers were too embarrassed to ask for it.

Who on earth did they talk to when they carried out their survey?  Are there really people out there who blush at saying 'pollack', presumably because it sounds a bit like 'bollock'?  I don't suppose the respondents ask for calamari at the fish counter either, since 'tentacles' sounds a bit like 'testicles'.

But what new name has Sainsbury's given to the fish?

Colin.

This is supposed to be pronounced in the French style (i.e. 'co-lan' rather than 'co-lynn'), but it's still going to look as though the staff have started giving the produce pet names.

Wonder if they'll call the monkfish Harry next...

As a parent of two young children, I'm obviously aware that the language you use with them is hugely important in shaping their development; not just for their self-expression, but for their self-confidence.  However, I was completely taken aback by a revelation in this week's fascinating edition of Horizon on BBC1.

In the programme, David Baddiel went in search of the best way to maximise his children's potential for both success and happiness.  He interviewed Professor Carol Dweck of Stanford University, whose research has shown that parents can often ruin their children's chances by using three little words.

The words?  'You're...so...'

'Stupid?' I thought.  No.  'Clever'.

She explained it thus:

'Our research shows that it makes children think, "Oh, I have to be intelligent all the time.  That's what they value me for".  They stop taking on challenges, they hide their mistakes - so many people think we're building confidence, we're showing our regard for them when we praise their intelligence, but I have found it's just the opposite.'

This parenting lark really is a minefield.

First, a few follow-ups to some topics we've already covered.

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It was while researching Bald that I first came across the Livonian language.  Specifically, I discovered this Livonian proverb: 'The bald pate speaks most of hair'.

Now it turns out that Livonian is all but dead.  This week, Unesco published a list of the world's endangered languages - all 2,500 of them.  500 of these are 'critically endangered'; 199 have fewer than ten native speakers.  And Livonian, which was the mother tongue of thousands until the Nazi occupation of the eastern Baltic and subsequent Soviet annexation, is now the mother tongue of just one person.  He or she has no one else who grew up with the language to converse with.

The demise of a language is just as regrettable as the disappearance of an animal species.  As Christopher Moseley, editor-in-chief of the Unesco survey, put it:

'...each language is a uniquely structured world of thought, with its own associations, metaphors, ways of thinking, vocabulary, sound system and grammar - all working together in a marvellous architectural structure which is so fragile that it could easily be lost forever.'

It seems there are a variety of reasons for the dwindling and disappearance of languages.  Most often, it is the large-scale movement of people from the country to the city, leaving their regional tongue behind.  It can also be the impact of what have been termed 'killer' languages such as English or Spanish; major languages which simply steamroller the smaller ones.

In both of these cases, there is a failure to recognise the value of these small languages.  And I think I may have been guilty of this myself.

When the proverb mentioned above appeared in Bald, I gave the origin as 'Latvia' rather than mentioning Livonian.  Now it's true that the language was spoken in a region of Latvia.  And I'm certainly not taking full responsibility for its death.  But all the same, I'm feeling a bit bad today that I wasn't more specific about the source.

A couple of things this week.

On Monday evening, an edition of Panorama on BBC1 presented by (slightly surprisingly) Frank Skinner looked at the issue of swearing on television.  According to a poll conducted for the programme, 55% of the public believe that it is currently at an 'unacceptable' level.

At first, I was surprised by how high this figure was; can so many really be so easily offended?  Two such people were interviewed - a senior writer on the Daily Telegraph and the director of Mediawatch (the organisation originally started by Mary Whitehouse) - but they hardly seemed representative of the general population.  They were the sort of middle-aged types whom one cannot imagine ever having been younger - and in the case of the latter gentleman, it is effectively his job to look for things to be offended by.

It would have been useful to know the exact wording of the question used in the poll.  Could it be that people are simply bored with 'bad' language rather than outraged by it, and think there's too much of it for that reason?  I often find swearing on TV tiresome - for example, when it's used in a conscious attempt to be 'edgy' or is so frequent that it becomes an irritating verbal tic - but I'm not offended by it.

Swearing can be powerful and expressive; the English language is blessed with some wonderfully meaty Anglo-Saxon words.  It can be very, very funny.  But it has to be used judiciously or it loses its power and effect.

It's rarely said, but this is the real reason why children should be told off for swearing and why adults shouldn't swear in front of them.  It's not because the words are intrinsically bad, but because getting into the habit of swearing all the time is likely to reduce their powers of expression.  They don't have the experience to know how and when to use them, and the overused and wrongly used words lose their power.

Not that this issue came up at the language-related talk at my daughter's primary school which I attended on Wednesday evening.  It was a presentation on phonics - the relatively new technique being used by the school to teach the children how to read and write - and the purpose was to give parents advice on how to give help and support at home.

Some of the advice was rather surprising.  For example, we were told that we shouldn't:

-  use letter names.  We should only refer to their sounds to avoid causing confusion;

-  mention vowels.  The children won't understand what they are;

-  say 'puh', 'tuh', 'muh' and 'nuh' for p, t, m and h.  The sounds are 'ppp', 'ttt', 'mmm' and 'nnn';

-  refer to 'curly /k/' and 'kicking /k/' for c and k.  They are simply different ways of writing the /k/ sound;

-  talk about the 'magic e' which modifies the sound of the preceding vowel when it comes at the end of a word (e.g. cub/cube).  This isn't taught any more.

I certainly don't disapprove of these new guidelines, you understand; the school is apparently enjoying great success with the phonics method already.  But these new tricks will take a bit of getting used to by this old dog.

During the question and answer session at the end of the talk, I was tempted to ask whether it's still acceptable to correct a child's mistakes with a sharp rap over the knuckles with a stick, but I'm afraid my nerve failed me...

It occurs to me that I haven't given an update on our two-year-old son's developing use of language since... well, this one.

All of the words in that list have now (slightly sadly) been replaced by the proper ones - except for one.  For some reason, Harry still can't say 'lorry'.  He doesn't say 'lolly' any more, though; his latest attempt comes out as 'wally', which caused some embarrassment recently.

I was pushing him in his buggy past a supermarket in Teddington, outside which a delivery lorry was parked.  The very large and very burly driver was standing next to it on the pavement, having a quick fag - and as we passed him, Harry pointed up and said loudly: 'Look!  Big wally!'

We moved on with markedly increased speed...

With my wife being a teacher, I have some knowledge of the often peculiar terminology used in education today.  Pay scales are called 'spines'.  Teachers have to cross 'thresholds' of achievement.  And recently my attention was drawn to the commitment of one particular school to 'celebrate stuckness'.  (Apparently this means that when a child says they don't understand something, the teacher should see this as a great opportunity to help and make progress - though I can't shake the vision of balloons and streamers falling from the ceiling and a marching band trooping through the classroom whenever a blank-looking pupil says, 'I don't get it, miss'.)

At the same time, I've worked in advertising long enough to be more than familiar with the idea of rebranding.  (The biggest rebranding exercise going on at the moment is the insurance giant Norwich Union changing its name to Aviva.  One press ad announcing the change has the headline: 'From a small corner of England to the 4 corners of the world'.  Norwich a small corner indeed.  Bloody cheek.)

Anyway... even though I'm aware of both of these things, I was still taken aback by the news that a primary school in Sheffield doesn't want to call itself a school any more as its governors feel that the word has 'negative connotations'.  Instead, it will be called 'a place for learning'.

Yes, that should help - just as changing Windscale's name to Sellafield and referring to civilian casualties of war as 'collateral damage' made everyone feel much more positive about them.

Anyway, you'll have to excuse me now as I've got to pop out to the supermarket in the car to get some sausages for tea.  Or - given that cars, supermarkets and sausages have negative connotations for (respectively) causing pollution, damaging the trade of local shops and adding to the nation's obesity problem - perhaps I should say that I'm going to take the box for travelling to the big building for buying to get some oinktubes for frying.