Rotten English, Ed. Dohra Ahmad

In an old linguists' joke, the definition of a language is "a dialect with an army and a navy". Most linguists' jokes are best forgotten, but I thought of it again when I picked up this broad and meticulous collection of writing from around the world. In her introduction, Dohra Ahmad struggles to find a definition that best explains what links the poems, stories and essays she has brought together here. "Vernacular" once referred to the language of a house slave, she says. "Dialect" sounds too derogatory. Ultimately, she takes her title from Ken Saro-Wiwa's 1985 novel, Soza Boy: A Novel In Rotten English, and offers a collection that shows English as fresher, fuller, more vibrant and less rotten than it has been since Shakespeare was making up words in 1593.

Ahmad's selection turns out to be a catholic and generous one. She has kept to English for reasons of space, but points out that she could have included literature in adapted French, Spanish – or any other imperial language. There are gaps – why no Welsh writers, or Arabic? But this eclectic book is intriguing for what has been included, not what has been left out. Where else would you find Robert Burns's "Auld Lang Syne" (1786) alongside Irvine Welsh's "Granny's Old Junk" (1994)? Or Rudyard Kipling's "Tommy" (1892) next to Linton Kwesi Johnson's " Inglan Is A Bitch" (1980)? Once you do find them, it seems it's about time we did put them together.

Don't the latter two poems have quite a lot in common? "I went into a theatre as sober as could be,/ They gave a drunk civilian room, but adn't none for me;/ They sent me to the gallery or round the music 'alls,/ But when it comes to fightin', Lord! they'll shove me in the stalls!" " Dem a have a lickle facktri up inna Brackly/ inna disya facktri all dem dhu is pack crackry/ fi di laas fifteen years dem get mi laybah/ now awftah fifteen years mi fall out a fayvah."

In many cases, this is angry language. In all of them, it is the language of the outsider – the language that doesn't make the rules. Nor does it make the news, pointed out the Glasgow poet Tom Leonard, whose collection Intimate Voices won the Scottish Book of the Year award in 1984 – and was banned from Central Region school libraries in the same year. Try reading his brilliant "Unrelated Incidents No. 3", without moving your lips: "this is thi/ six a clock/ news thi/ man said */ thi reason/ a talk wia/ BBC accent/ iz coz yi/ widny wahnt/ mi ti talk/ aboot thi/ trooth wia/ voice lik/ wanna yoo/ scruff if/ a toktaboot thi trooth lik wanna yoo scruff yi widny thingk it wuz troo... this is the six a clock nyooz. belt up. "

The surprising thing is how easily the reading brain can fly from Glasgow to Missouri to Jamaica and on to New Zealand. Do we all have these rhythms in us, somewhere? As Ahmad points out, this is art, not transcription, and the music of the language shines through in every piece. But many of these spring from the aural tradition, and they benefit from reading aloud. The Barbadian poet Kamau Braithwaite explains, in a lecture entitled " Opening Up the Canon". Written, British English, he argues, is put together in pentameters. Caribbean English is the language of Calypso; it flows in dactyls. Compare the following: "To be or not to be, that is the question." "The stone had skidded arc'd and bloomed into islands/ Cuba San Domingo/ Jamaica Puerto Rico." One is the language of stone castles and northern rain; the other the sound of a tropical sea.

The beautiful thing about these stories and extracts - and that makes you want to track down the authors' work and read more - is that these are people who use English as a wonderful toy. They stretch it, bend it, stick bits on it and sing into it to comic, shocking or moving effect. The combined effect is that of a miscellaneous collection of artefacts picked only for their own sake.

Rules were made to be broken, as the best writers have always known. " Living language grows like living things," wrote the Nigerian writer Gabriel Okara, "and English is far from a dead language." Ain't that the trooth.

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