It seems that English people are much more playful towards their language that we are toward ours. They have devised all kind of games that twist, bend and modify their language in the most unexpected, and often funny, ways. Reputed linguist David Crystal collects some of them in his book Language Play. He refers, for example, to a popular game on radio, Whose Line Is It Anyway. Here the aim is to construct a dialogue in which each person is limited to one sentence, and each sentence must be a question:
A: Are you ready to go out?
B: Do you doubt it?
A: How was I to know?
B: Haven’t you any imagination?
A: Are you trying to be rude?
B: Why should I be rude?
Or this one, in which two people must construct a dialogue, but this time each sentence should begin with a successive letter of the alphabet:
A: Are you ready?
B: Better believe it.
A: Can we get a taxi?
B: Do you think that’ll be easy?
A: Easy?
B: Finding taxis here is never easy.
A: Gosh!
No comments:
Post a Comment