Billy de Bard for de Yoof of Today, Innit?

Whenever I'm back to Britain I feel like Rip van Winkle ... until my niece Lauren takes me under her wing to update me on the most recent developments in British culture. (From Big Brother to Little Britain, at least.) And I also have to play catch-up on the English language as spoken by her and her friends if I don't want to be left behind.

I learned, for example, that a very fanciable bloke is described as "fit" (as in "He's well fit.") and anything rather disgusting is "minging", so I've developed at least a nodding acquaintance with Yoof-Speak.

Which is just as well because it seems that the works of Shakespeare, or at least 15 abridged plays anyway, have been translated into it - the work of satirist Martin Baum, who has compiled To Be Or Not To Be, Innit: A Yoof-Speak Guide to Shakespeare, Benjie Goodheart on the Guardian blog reports. :

Using the sloppy syntax and enunciation of some youngsters that is the bugbear of older generations, Shakespeare's tragedy Hamlet, for example, becomes 'Amlet. And his famous line "To be, or not to be?" becomes "To be or not to be, innit?"; the state of Denmark is no longer "rotten" but "minging". The Two Gentlemen of Verona have become "geezas" and Romeo, one of the star-crossed lovers of Romeo and Juliet, now pines for his "fit bitch Jules". "Verona was de turf of de feuding Montagues and de Capulet families," according to the synopsis of the classic story of young love spurned in the language of the street. "And coz they was always brawling and stuff, de prince of Verona told them to cool it or else they was gonna get well mashed if they carried on larging it with each other."

The purists will probably scream blue murder. Baum thinks the bard might say "Am I bovvered?" (a la Catherine Tate). I think this sounds rather fun.

I'll send Lauren a copy!