ICT 4 ELT Portals

Runyonese: Damon Runyon & His English

Compiled and annotated by
Jaroslav Švarz
SOŠ a SOU řemesel,
Kutná Hora.

A portal that may help those who love to read in English – teachers or advanced students ? to discover one very interesting journalist and a writer.

This portal is dedicated to the American journalist, columnist and short stories writer Damon Runyon and to his unique way of using the English language, especially implanting the slang into the art of short story-telling.

• Britannica Concise

  http://concise.britannica.com/ebc/article-9377310

  Here you will find basic biography of Damon Runyon with many links to follow. This is a neat encyclopaedia entry.

• Wikipedia

  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damon_Runyon/

  A very thorough biographical data and information about the work either by or inspired by Damon Runyon.

• Damon Runyon Biography

  http://www.such10.de/Damon_Runyon_Biography.htm

  German portal (English speaking?) that leads to many other pages dedicated to Damon Runyon.

• Runyon Family Crest

  http://www.houseofnames.com/xq/asp.fc/qx/runyon-family-crest.htm

  Here we have a very interesting web site introducing the family crests and descents. This one in particular deals, of course, with Damon Runyon and his ancestry.

• Pegasos

  http://www.kirjasto.sci.fi/runyon.htm

  Very well organized site similar to wikipedia.

• Daniel R. Schwarz

  http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/drs6/

  Daniel R. Schwarz – Published Books

  http://www.people.cornell.edu/pages/drs6/quotes.html

  People scrutinize everything, other people included. So, there are professors dealing professionally with the influence authors have had on the language, society, and the way of approaching reality. Here is one, accidentally with the same surname as mine (?), vivisecting Damon Runyon and his language. Good for him. He knows his onions, he knows the American academy milieu, and he knows Damon Runyon's influence therein. If you get hooked on ?Runyonese?, you will find this very interesting indeed!

• Death Pays a Social Call

  http://www.informalmusic.com/Runyon/death.html

  A story by Damon Runyon. Talk about happy ending.

• Short Fiction & Web Pages

  http://elektron.its.tudelft.nl/~bintalal/Runyon/index.htm

  This is a web page with several short stories by Damon Runyon.

• Guys And Dolls Samples

  http://www.soukh.cz/anj/Guys%20And%20Dolls%20Samples/

  I have looked for the ?previews? from the Guys And Dolls book all over the Internet. There are no official sites that would do that. I mean even the Hollywood aces show previews. So, there, I have used short one or two paragraph excerpts to show what kind of language is available in the book. The link to the on-line store is provided as well, in case you'd like to buy the book.

• Sense of Humour

  http://home6.inet.tele.dk/butler/roholtweb/humourcloze1.htm

  A page created by Damon Runyon's fan, I gather, who likes to play with the English language. Try them, try them, you're gonna see you like them…

• Formal Grammars of English

  http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~martin/SLP/Updates/10.pdf

  To be more serious, this PDF document deals scientifically with the language. A very short but nonetheless interesting paragraph chooses Damon Runyon as an example. Press CTRL + F key and type in "Runyon". The target passage will be found.

• Runyonslang

  http://www.moorsmagazine.com/onzinbak/slang.html

  Now, this is a good work done by a very diligent reader who loves English. Well elaborated on dictionary of Runyonese slang. Great!!! You have to, like it or not, buy the book or books and see the words used in context. And what's more, you may even find some liking to these stories.

• Slang and the Dictionary

  http://www.kcl.ac.uk/content/1/c4/45/10/Slang%20and%20the%20Dictionary.doc

  A very good approach to slang. Take it or read it. It helps both ways. If you are into slang, that is.

• Creative Quotations

  http://www.creativequotations.com/one/1452.htm

  Become famous. They'll quote you. Take it from me. I quote myself all the time.

• Creative Quotations

  http://www.iclassics.com/featureArticle?contentId=3264

  Now, once a guy pulls off a job well done, they come and make musicals, plays, films, play station rubbish, T-shirts, coffee cups… Here, however, is a good piece of work described.

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My only recommendation is: if you like English in all its forms, you should know Guys and Dolls. It may seem to be one story written thirty times over. And, for all I know, it might be but the language of the mob, the street of the 1930s New York, Philly, Boston etc. is well recorded and reported here. Give it a shot!