English's an important language
It brought us "TV", "ice" and "sandwich"
It's spoken widely across the world
About a billion people, I've been told
But will the English that you know
Get you wherever you may go?
There's the rub, you see, each country speaks
An English with its perks and tricks
First, there are accents, lilts and cants
And countryside-allusive rants
And office-talk, and psychobabble
And slang, and English used in drabbles
There's also problem of the origin
French borrowings and London pidgin
And varied stock of foreign traces
And baffling exception cases
And even for a Yankee son and British father
It's hard sometimes to understand each other
That's why it's really hard to summon
Why it's considered to be "common"
So, when you're asked "What kind of English are you using?"
It gets frustrating and confusing
You throw your hands up high and say
"Whose English is it anyway?!"