Can you haiku? Yes, you can!

So, what is your English? It’s Japanese English month and so we must haiku! You may or may not have noticed (we are trying not to go on about it too much) that we are running a campaign that asks the question: What’s your English? This month we’re asking you to answer this question in beats of 5, 7, 5. We’ll post your haiku here on our blog and the best one will take up a lofty position on our dictionary homepage – and here we’re talking a lot of views.

________

Your haiku …

Born in Australia.
Left. Raised American.
Now I speak English.
(Mireille, UK)

What English? Mine is
Welsh, that lilts, bach, recalling
Soft hills and blue streams
(Sue, UK)

I’m in love with words
so many ways to say that
I dig my English
(Beth, UK)

In Xanadu did
Kubla Khan a stately
Pleasure-dome decree
(Shane, Canadian)

From Irish Scotts roots
Elocution lessons learned
All traces now gone
(Caroline, UK)

Seffa is lekka
But teaching in ‘merican
made it go squiff, bru
(Laine, South African)

Struggling to find
Through language, culture and life
Somewhere that is home
(Claire, Australian/American/English)

American TV
Lived Scouse, Geordie and Spanish.
Talk mostly rubbish!
(Sharon, UK & Colombia)

The gift of the gab:
An Irish-English blessing,
Blathering blarney.
(Stan, Ireland)

When I say ‘Go well!’
I feel the wide skies, long roads
Of the Mother Land.
(Louisa, South Africa)

Read between the lines?
Not in Danglish dude. We speak
From need. Three beats left.
(Anders, Denmark)

My mother’s mother
Tongue fostered in Ireland, now
My daughter’s daughter’s
(Greg, UK)

Scottish tongues,
spilled blood, steeped in the glens,
slanged out beyond recoil.
(Karen Cardwell)

English is the way
I roll in a cradle of
Empire state of mind
(Escargo)

On returning home,
Dark green after Sicily.
In the fields, cows sleep.
(Barbara, Manchester,UK)

All those dappled tongues
Resolve to a new season
Green spring or white winter?
(Ian, UK)

Poetic and true,
Yet grand, round, prosaic too
Churchill’s friend, and ours.
(Ian, UK)

All our Englishes
End of term relinquishes
A diaspora
(Greg, UK)

My English: a stew
of Norf London, Yiddish;
the rich taste of roots
(Caroline, UK)

Romanian start.
At home in California
Breathing in English
(Cristina, US)

Learned ze French English
Moved to the US of A
Back home I teach it
(Eric, France)

Spoken English meets
academic English in
the clients we serve.
(Ka Riley)

English in Brazil,
as well as its rich culture,
mixes everything.
(Renato Gil)

Like a potluck mixed,
English never thaws the hot
Malaysian-lah.
(ZZ)

Cricket with Blowers,
Aggers, Boycott and Benaud.
Rugby’s Maclaren’s.
(David)

Each rustle, each creak
Every swish, whoosh and hum builds
A home in my ear
(Kirsten)

Huge condors fly high
Hairy brown llamas go free
The Andes is this …
(AnA, Argentina)

Winter leaves
as we leave
step by step
no death but change
(Juan Ramón)

I simply tell ’em
A skebenga’s a skelm
In my tongue’s rough realm
(Nick, UK)

Your English is nice
It forever blows blossoms
Of thought through the air
(Kevin)

My English is mine
Made to order for modern times
It’s one of a kind
(Daniel Hougham, Canadian in Hiroshima, Japan)

It isn’t mine
The moon appeared on the sky…
I beg your pardon on my style
(Anna Kalinia, Russia)

I’d never reach the west,
If an ant told in a whisper…
The power of language
(Anna Kalinia, Russia)

Thank you for sending your haiku! You can find out the winner of the competition on this blog page and on the dictionary home page.

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