will the French
please stop stealing words
from Pretty Olde English?
we can’t but fix a secret meeting
and choose a rendezvous
and we discover the French have already
stolen every secret including the word rendezvous!
Oh, the French, when will
they stop this pilfering of English vocabulary?
I buy some trinkets and stuff for my beau
and they tell me my beau has been taken by the French –
and to add insult to injury
(those thieves!)
they’ve stolen all the stuff too!
Oh, there’s no stopping the French.
I can’t even sit to dine and say
“Bon appetit!”
and they steal my words,
and they run off with the dessert…
and would you believe it?
those cunning French,
they even steal the restaurant and its décor!
Oh, the evil French, will they never stop this? -
stealing from fecund English, so simple and innocent…
You see, even the Great Poet John Keats
he starts his poem in English
La Belle Dame sans Merci
and no sooner had he written the title,
the French stole the very words! -
and so ******* was our Romantic John Keats,
he wrote the poem itself
in what he hoped could never be Frenched!
Ah, the French…would you please stealing
words from our Fair Damsel English….
And the Chindians too!
Chindians?
you know,
the Chinese and the Indians together!
(Yes, it’s a new word,
shows how inventive English is.)
Well, the Chinese have done it with
a smile and a kowtow! –
there you go, while you bow or cringe,
the Chinese steal the kowtow;
and before our very own eyes
today even in our modern world
the Chinese steal words like Dao, Zen, taofu,
chi, and feng shui;
and the Indians, not to be beaten,
and perhaps with a vengeance
to deal a fatal blow to the Raj,
they steal words like: nirvana, pundits, yoga,
juggernaut, pepper and curry
And of course
there are many more tribes and nations
in this merry global **** of Gloriana English
and there’s just nothing Britannia can do about it!
Oh, what’s the world coming to
when our Plain Jane English is molested like this;
and so I do my part
the Dark Knight coming to her rescue -
perhaps this earnest appeal in verse
will touch the hearts of the beasts and dragons
and they’ll keep their claws away
from our Fair Helpless Dame English
