OUR KIND OF ENGLISH: He isn’t the SEATING Prez now, he’s the SITTING...

Few people seem to care about punctuation. In some one of this columnist’s WhatsApp groups, it’s not uncommon to come across a text comprising 100-plus words that’s devoid of capital letters, commas, question marks, full stops, etc. Strange!

Last Saturday, there was this Q& A article in a leading Kiswahili daily in which most of the questions ended without the question mark. It’s like the scribbler (and her subeditor) believed the mark was optional. Wrong!

Speech writers of our leaders seem not to know that “Hamjambo” (short for “hamna jambo”), when offered as a greeting, is a question, literally meaning “Don’t you have any problem?” The question mark there is mandatory—Hamjambo?

Having thus lectured—sorry—let’s now proceed with sharing linguistic gems collected over the recent past. Here we go…

A reader who confides he’s wholly dedicated to the tabloid closely associated with this columnist, one JK of Dar, WhatsApped us a photo he took of the caption for export figures graphics for the Fri, Oct 11 edition. It reads: “Traditional exports –composed of agricultural PRODUCES—now become number five…” He points out that the noun “produce” has no plural. We agree.

Another reader, one WM, drew our attention to the caption for the photo showing participants of an event, one of the numerous ones that took place to honour Tanzania’s Founding Father who died in 1999. It reads: “Foreign Affairs and East African Cooperation Minister Palamagamba Kabudi speaks at a symposium to commemorate the 20th anniversary SINCE the death of Mwalimu Julius Nyerere…”

Mr WM pointed out that we don’t say “…the 20th anniversary since… rather, it’s the 20th anniversary OF the death of …” We agree.

On Page 2, there’s quotation attributed to Prof Kabudi in a story that begins on Page 1 entitled, ‘Kabudi joins presidential term limit debate at Nyerere fora,’ (sic). We reproduce the quotation in part: “…people should not confuse the decision of one person as a secret plot by the SEATING president.” A-a! The good prof was referring to Dr John Magufuli who’s the SITTING—not the seating—president.

Come Sat, Oct 12, and Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet ran, on Page 1, a story entitled, ‘Stop criminal acts, JPM warns’, in which the scribbler writes: “President John Magufuli yesterday issued a stern warning to SOME refugees who have been engaging in criminal activities …ordering them to stop...”

Nothing grammatically or syntactically awry here, but we would rather the adjective “some” was dropped, for it gives the wrong impression Dr Magufuli’s warning was directed to just a few refugees “who have been engaging in criminal activities.” The thing is: ALL crime oriented refugees (not just some) must beware!

Finally, another gem from the same broadsheet, thanks to a Page 20 headline reading thus: ‘Stars JET IN Kigali sans Yondani’. Our checks show we need to say “jet OFF FOR (not jet in) Kigali. And by the way, why not simply, “Stars FLY TO Kigali…” Simple is best!

Ah, this treacherous language called English!

Send your photos and linguistic gems to email [email protected] or WhatsApp on Tel No 0688315580.