OUR KIND OF ENGLISH: Police seize robbers following a TIP? No, a tip off!
Thurs, Nov 29 edition of the tabloid closely associated with this columnist has a story on Page 3 headlined, ‘Govt to pay for treatment of Tarime crash survivors’, in which the scribbler writes in her intro:
“The government has pledged to foot the bill of treating three survivors of the grisly CAR accident that claimed the lives of 16 people.”
CARS, as we know them, ordinarily carry a maximum of 5 occupants—the driver and 4 passengers. If two cars were involved, and we’ve 16 who died, plus three survivors, it means the vehicles were criminally overloaded!
However, the air is cleared when the scribbler reports further in Para 3: “The accident occurred at Kamaswa Village in Tarime District, when two commuter BUSES collided HEADS on before bursting into flames.”
Okay; now we know: the accident actually involved two BUSES (not cars) that collided HEAD (not heads) ON…. A car, says our dictionary, is a road vehicle with an engine and four wheels that carries a SMALL NUMBER of passengers. So, a minibus, normally designed to ferry 14 passengers, cannot be called a car! A neutral word is VEHICLE, and this could be a bus, a car or even a boat. We’re all familiar with MV this, MV that, with MV standing for “marine vehicle”.
On the same page, there’s another story entitled, ‘Police say six robbery suspects killed in Dar’. In Para 3, the scribbler says:
“The armed robbers were killed following a TIP that the robbers were preparing to launch an attack…” Nope! What the police received from their informer wasn’t a tip; it was a TIP OFF. A “tip” is something else—check it out, reader. And then, the Sat, Dec 1 edition of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet’s Page 3 lead story had this headline, ‘YOUTHS urged to check HIV status to curb spread’. We’ve said it here a zillion times before, that “youth” (without the suffix S) is what to say when referring to young people of both genders. “Youths” refers to young males only.
Therein, purporting to report what a minister said, the scribbler writes on: “He (the minister) said a RECENT study, which was conducted in 2016/2017 found that education on HIV…was low.”
We’ve a case of tautology here: “…recent study conducted in 2016/17…” If you’ve given the year of the study, why say further that it’s recent? If indeed 2016/17 is recent, why not allow your reader to make that conclusion himself?
Finally a reader, one MH of Segerea, Dar, drew our attention to a headline on Page 1 of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet (Wed, Dec 5) thus written: ‘CCM DEMEANS tension on Membe’. He considered the use of the verb “demean” intriguing. We’re intrigued too; for “demean” means to make people have LESS RESPECT for something/somebody. How does CCM make us “disrespect” tension? That beats our thinking! Upon reading Para 2 of the story, however, we managed to understand that the headliner chief actually meant to say “CCM DEFUSES tension on Membe”. Ah, this treacherous language called English!
