Michael Rosen's Verse
Following a visit to Britain, a Martian reports back to the leader on the subject of slang and dialect
It's not crabs who are crabby
No one says 'lav'
A baby's often the babby
And they keep saying chav.
I thought parky means you're parked
They said I was barking
They got narked when I barked
Which doesn't mean narking.
The nippers didn't nip
It's not buffers who are buff
Chipper isn't 'more chip'
She's never down the duff
An odd-jobber can have clobber
You can clobber an odd-jobber
An odd-jobber can be clobbered
But your clobber's not jobbered
You can have a take-over and a make-over
A take-away but not a make-away
You could get away with a take-over
You can have a take-off and a get-away
Or make off with a take-away
The make-over could be tacky
The take-off could be wacky
Which would make you wacko
That's barking. Not barko.
There's no barko, there is 'baccy'
Which isn't barking, it's tobacco
I said tobarko? They said, tobacco
Tobarko, tobacco; tobacco, tobarko,
Let's call the whole thing off...
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Bestselling children's writer and poet Michael Rosen has written a specially commissioned verse about the myriad forms our current vernacular takes. 
Dermot Murnaghan has spent most of his career in broadcast journalism. Before joining the BBC, he spent more than a decade fronting ITV's national news bulletins from London. He joined the BBC in the Autumn of 2002, becoming Breakfast's main presenter immediately