OUR KIND OF ENGLISH: Moro the ‘maker’ of SA fighters? No, it’s the mecca!
GENTLY? Well, this sign to the men’s washroom was captured by a Dar reader who was recently in Singida. He kindly WhatsApped it to us. He said he failed to check out and verify what the signwriter painted above the door to the women’s washroom. However, he believes some artist was assigned to paint the GENTS. Trust signwriters! PHOTO | READER H. RAJAB
We’re still celebrating the regional event of Sat, Aug 17 - Sun 17, the 39th Sadc Summit in Dar, which was crowned by our Prez taking over—on behalf the United Republic—the chair of the 16-nation grouping.
Right across the media landscape in Tanzania (we won’t use the moniker Bongo today), scribblers did a splendid job.
Our pressmen and women didn’t only cover the event news-wise; they also dug into archives and came up with features that took readers down the memory lane. TZ’s sacrifice in the fight for southern Africa’s liberation was recapped. Big up, members of the TZ Fourth Estate!
We’re still wallowing in the Summit joy, so we won’t pour cold water at anyone by fully revealing where we sourced our gems, the way we normally do.
Let’s start with a Sat, Aug 19 story attributed to the SA Prez who, ahead of the Summit, visited Mazimbu in Morogoro, where freedom fighters trained before heading back home to fight apartheid. He was effusively grateful to TZ, and a scribbling colleague reported His Excellency’s sentiments thus: “He referred to Mazimbu and Morogoro as the MAKER of the liberation struggle for South Africa and most of other Southern African countries.”
The word “maker” is repeated three times in the same context, which means the scribbler and his gate keepers were sure it was okay! But it wasn’t! Why, this was simply a case mixing up words that sound alike while their spelling and meaning are totally different. What the SA leader actually said was that Morogoro is the “mecca” of the Southern African liberation struggle…
You might associate the word to Mecca in Saudi Arabia, the Muslim’s holy city where believers are obliged to visit at least once in one’s lifetime to pay homage to the birthplace of Prophet Muhammad. With the lower case “m”, this destination’s name has come to mean, and we quote from our dictionary, “where many people like to visit, especially for a particular reason.” Our example: Mt Kilimanjaro is the mecca (not maker) of tourists from across the world.
And then, purporting to quote the SA leader further thanking Tanzanians, our colleague writes: “You made us free, we dearly thank you INTERNALLY…” The capped word, we’re certain, is supposed to be ETERNALLY, meaning forever or without end.
In its supplement, the lead article’s headline, whose wording is repeated numerously as a page head, reads, “From baby steps to INTERGRATION”. The word we capitalise, of course, should be “INTEGRATION” (note that we drop R before the G). Many of us tend to pronounce /in-ta-gre-shen/ instead of /in te-gre-shen/, hence the common misspelling!
Come Mon, Aug 20, and Sadc reporting continued to reign, hence this front page story whose intro declares: “Tanzania is well positioned to influence more agenda items in the Sadc, thanks to Tanzanians reigning in the regional BLOCK’S four key institutions”.
Block? Nope, says a reader who contacted us. He says the word is BLOC. We agree.
Ah, this treacherous language called English!
