Did you Know it's English Language Day Today?
Reading level: A2 Key
United Nations (UN) celebrates English Language Day, one of the six official language days (Arabic, Chinese, French, Russian & Spanish) every April 23, for the past ten years. The language days celebrate multilingualism and cultural diversity and promote equal use of all six official languages throughout the organisation.
Is it a coincidence that today is also both the birthday and date of death of William Shakespeare? You may have read his poems and sonnets in school or you may have also heard of the famous plays written by him; Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth – to know only a few .
Here’s one of his *Sonnets that you may remember;
*a sonnet is a rhyming poem that has 14 lines where each line has 10 syllables.
Sonnet 18
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate:
Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,
And summer’s lease hath all too short a date:
Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,
And often is his gold complexion dimmed;
And ever fair from fair sometime declines,
By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed:
But thy eternal summer shall not fade,
Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,
Nor shall death brag thou wader’st in his shade
When in eternal lines to time thou grow’st:
So long as men can breate or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
Happy English Language Day and Happy Birthday Mr Shakespeare.