OUR KIND OF ENGLISH: We search for greener, not just green pastures
We must hasten to apologize, on behalf of our final gatekeeper who handled last Sunday’s edition of this column, for the unfinished headline (thanks to a technical error) which went thus: “Those ‘with serving for”. This columnist’s version was: “Those ‘with serving for rape’ should remain in jail: HK-B”.
The incoherence was borrowed from Page 10 of the Sunday tabloid closely associated with this columnist, in which the scribbler, reporting the views of Dr HK-B, a leading human rights activist, had written:
“Dr HK-B said she was used to seeing presidents giving parole to elderly inmates and commuting sentences of those who were about to finish their jail terms, but not THOSE WITH SERVING FOR MURDER AND RAPE.”
In our attempt to redeem the sentence, we offered this rewrite, in part: “but not TO THOSE IMPRISONED FOR MURDER AND RAPE.”
Now on Saturday, Dec 16, a columnist, in the middle of Para 6 of his piece on a key local hotelier, DGM, writes: “Daudi continued, although the Germans were simply GRINING”
Grining? Nope, the word is GRINNING (double “n”) which means “smiling widely”.
Our rewrite of the last portion of the sentence: “DGM is absolutely worthy OF BEING (not “to be”) illustrated key players in providing TASTY (not taste), healthy and nutritional food.”
On Page 7 of the same edition, another columnist is hailing the onset of the festive season which, however, is likely to be dampened by the current financial crunch that seems to have affected most Wabongo. In his intro, he says:
“It’s time to worship God and the Goddess of their land”
A goddess is female god (small ‘g’) in certain cultures, though we cannot be sure we’ve any goddesses in ours. In Greek mythology, goddesses feature aplenty, like Aphrodite, the goddess of fertility, love, and beauty; Athena, the goddess of war and Demeter, the goddess of harvest.
Since gods, unlike God the Almighty, are departmentalised, and if they exist in Bongo societies, then we should not talk of Tanzanians and “their goddess”; we should talk of “the goddesses (many) of their land”
The columnist says in Para 3: “Chaggas leave their homes in search of GREEN pastures”
A-a! All pastures—including those in Chaggaland— are green by their very nature, which means, when Kilimanjaro’s industrious sons and daughter emigrate to seek better fortune elsewhere, we say they’ve gone for GREENER (not green) pastures.
Ah, this treacherous language called English!
