You know........

The use of language has always fascinated me. We are born without it but relatively quickly we start communicating with those who speak the same language and what's amazing is the vast number of languages, dialects and accents that exist and show little sign of becoming obsolete despite the 'shrinking' of the world through the access to technology. Languages get modified and through shared words, eg 'iPad', do show some signs of convergence but attempts to introduce universal languages , like Esperanto, have failed miserably.

My early experimentation with language, or rather accent, came at the age of thirteen when I moved with my parents from London, UK, where I was born, to Manchester, UK, which was where my father had taken on a new job. Changing schools at that age is never easy for any child and isn't helped if you don't speak the same as your peers. I tolerated the jibes about my southern accent for a while but gradually, over a period of a couple of years, I changed my accent to an almost perfect Mancunian drawl. If I'd chosen an acting career, I might have got a part in Coronation Street! At the age of eighteen, higher education took me to the south of England. I retained my accent for a while, which some members of the opposite sex seemed to find attractive! But gradually I reverted to my native tongue. To this day, I don't have difficulty mimicking any UK regional accent and I am usually able to determine which part of the UK someone comes from by listening to his or her accent.

So what my early years taught me was just how easy it is to modify the way we speak. In fact children who move to a different country at a young age usually have no difficulty speaking a completely different language very quickly. If only it was that easy when you get older. I now live in Turkey and I soon realised that I wouldn't learn Turkish just by exchanging pleasantries with the local shopkeepers, so I decided to embark on one-to-one lessons. It's hard! I console myself by assuming it is difficult to teach a new language to an old brain but I am not sure that's true, particularly when I see old brains learning new languages and many more picking up trendy lingo - which brings me on to 'You know....'

Throughout the ages there have been trendy words and phrases. 'No way', 'look' and 'huge' are examples and most recently 'you know'. I am not going to name names but 'you know' is prevalent amongst UK and US politicians although certainly not exclusive to political circles. Here's how it might be used:

"You know society needs strong leadership at times like this and you know a good leader needs a vision. You know visions don't grow on trees and the electorate deserves better........"

As illustrated, 'you knows' can sometimes be used more frequently than full stops! The Urban Dictionary has a rather graphic way of defining 'you know':

"Something that jackasses say EVERY FUCKING OTHER WORD! You know! You know! You know! No I don't know cocksucker, why don't you fucking tell me!"

Picking up trendy words and phrases by mature people shows how adaptable the brain is at ages when you might think it would be more set in its ways. So there's hope for me yet with my aspiration to learn Turkish! But YOU KNOW as my Turkish improves there is a danger YOU KNOW that I might YOU KNOW get out of touch with trendy English lingo and thus lose a source of knowledge for future blogs....... YOU KNOW!! :-)