| Our K of English:Flood victims ‘occur’ in Dec, Govt ‘alleviates’ them plots | Send to a friend |
| Saturday, 21 January 2012 18:58 |
|
Having said that, let’s start by taking a look at a story that featured on a Thursday edition of the tabloid that is closely linked to this columnist, entitled “Township unhappy over alleviation of 300 hectares.” There must be something wrong here, said a reader who pointed to us the gem “alleviation of hectares”. “I am familiar with alleviation of poverty, but this one about hectares is totally alien to me,” said WK, a reader from Kinondoni. We went straight to the intro to see if it could unravel the mystery. It read thus: “Mirerani township authorities have protested against a move to allocate 300 hectares of land to one family…” Ah, so that was it! As we keep harping in this column, quite often, the outrageous copy that we often dispatch to the printer is not necessarily a product of our linguistic incompetence; it is, many a time, a consequence of sheer carelessness. A Chadema MP, Ms Regia Mtema passed away on January 13 and stories on how she died, obituaries and funeral preparations for the 32-year old legislator dominated the press until she was finally laid to rest on Wednesday, January 18. On Tuesday, Dar es Salaam residents, led by Premier Mizengo Pinda, were at the Karimjee grounds to bid farewell to the fallen MP ahead of her burial in Ifakara District. A tabloid that bears the name of a continent had the following for a headline on the burial of the departed politician: “Hundreds pay last RESPECT to Regia.” Well, the word is RESPECTS – plural – (not RESPECT). To “pay last respects” is an idiom that means to honour someone after their death, usually by going to their funeral. As we keep cautioning our scribbling colleagues in this space, idioms are not changed at anybody’s whim – they are static! There were quite a few other gems in the story, but we think the following three take the cake: * “Mr Mbowe thanked the government … for participating fully in comforting the family members and the material support IT IS CATERING FOR.” Most likely Chairman Mbowe talked about “material support the government was OFFERING/PROVIDING for the family (not simply “CATERING FOR” – whatever that means). * Purporting to quote Speaker Anne Makinda, the scribbler writes: “Regia lived with people who had different problems including DISABLES.” Persons with disabilities, whom, we’re certain, are the ones Hon Makinda was referring to, are referred to as ‘THE DISABLED”/DISABLED PERSONS (not “DISABLES”!) In the same edition, there was a page 3 story entitled “CBT donates Sh26 million to flood victims”, and the scribbler had this to say for his intro: “The Chinese Business Chamber of Tanzania had donated Sh26 million to FLOODS VICTIMS THAT OCCURRED in December last years.” No way, we say! Flood(s) VICTIMS did not occur; if anything, it were the floods that occurred. And by the way, when a noun takes the role of an adjective, we don’t pluralise it, so it’s ungrammatical to say, “floods victims”; it should be FLOOD victims. For instance, we say “flower garden” not “flowers garden”, “bus conductors” (not “bus conductors”), etc. And then, there was this story that appeared on page 4 of Bongo’s colourful broadsheet of Wednesday, January 18, entitled “Mob beats up villager over theft allegation”, in which the scribbler says in the intro: “A mob beat up Makono Goringo, a resident of Mariwanda Village in Bunda District, for allegedly possessing four HERD of cattle believed to have been stolen at a cattle auction in Bunda District.” Four herd of cattle? No, it is: four HEAD of cattle. Don’t ask us about the logic behind four “head” instead of “four heads” of cattle or, indeed, “four cattles” – we’re simply subscribers to the way the indigenous users of this treacherous language called English say it. * Feel free to send us your observations on any peculiar language use that feature in the Bongo English press, including The Citizen on Sunday. CAPTION: LIFE IS VELL HEARD! Tough, this one, isn’t it? Our reader, who captured this beauty along a Dar es Salaam street recently, is convinced the artist who painted the message on the body of this bajaj was tasked to write “LIFE IS VERY HARD” Trust signwriters! PHOTO| FRANCIS GREGORY Add this page to your favorite Social Bookmarking websites           |
Latest News
Most Read
Gallery
- Businesses plead with govt to reduce huge tax burden
- Facebook shares in further decline
- Investing in non-financial services for business growth
- Potential high in banking despite mounting rivalry
- Tanzania trade with emerging markets ‘significant’
- Cement maker to build Sh264bn kiln in bid to cut costs