Highways, an expressway in Dar City? That’s fiction!
My basket of linguistic goodies is overly full today. I will, therefore, skip my usual introductory blah-blah and move straight into doing what this column is basically about, which is this: sharing recently picked up gems. So, here we go…
In Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of Friday, June 6, there is a Page 3 story entitled, ‘Zanzibar plans 9 development projects in FY 2021’.
Therein, the scribbler writes in Para 5, purporting to report on what a minister in the Zanzibar Government said while addressing the House of Reps in our Clove Isles:
“Speaking on factories to be IMPLEMENTED by the Public-Private Partnership, in the coming financial year, he said…”
There is a diction issue here! Factories, we aver, are NOT implemented, they are either BUILT or ESTABLISHED. You may also PUT them UP if you like.
On Page 5 of the same broadsheet, there is a story headlined, ‘Government implements projects seeking to curb challenges in road traffic’, in which the scribbler says in his intro:
“The Government is in final stages of implementing projects aimed at addressing road traffic in main HIGHWAYS in the country, especially in Dar es Salaam.”
Well, we have highways in the country alright, such as the Dar-Arusha highway, Dar-Tunduma Highway, but highways within Dar es Salaam City? That cannot be, because a highway, says the Oxford Dictionary, is “a main road, mainly connecting large towns.”
This Dar es Salaam City highways misnomer triggers a comment on the physical address of an important government-owned entity that is given as being located along the Nelson Mandela “Expressway” while the fact is, there isn’t a single expressway in our commercial capital! Why, says my trustworthy Oxford Dictionary:
“An expressway is a wide road, with at least two lanes, in each direction, where traffic can travel FAST for long distances between large towns; you can only enter and leave highways at special ramps.”
Indeed, a high ranking official with the Roads Fund Board once told this columnist that there is absolutely no expressway in Dar es Salaam City!
On Saturday, June 12, Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet ran a story on Page 2, headlined, ‘Over 160 illegal immigrants nabbed in Karagwe,’ and for the intro, the scribbler wrote:
“ABOUT 161 illegal immigrants were nabbed by the Immigration Department in Kagera Region….”
When referring to countable entities, you can’t talk of “about” 161, for that would mean the ONE (1) is divisible. Saying about 160 is okay, meaning, the precise number could possibly be 159 or 161.
And then, in our colleague’s story, readers are told in Para 3, that according to an immigration official in Kagera: “Out of the number, 150 were Burundians, 7 were Rwandese and 2 were Ugandans…” That is exactly 161, not about 161. I say Kudos to the headline writer who states that the seized immigrants were OVER 160.
Finally, something from the Thursday, June 10 edition of tabloid closely associated with this columnist,.
In a story entitled ‘You’ve still not met with us, Mbowe reminds Samia’, our scribbling colleague writes in Para 9:
“Mr Mbowe—who WAS a former Hai CONSTITUENCY Member of Parliament—said Chadema faced sabotage in the 202o elections.”
Hello! Mr Freeman Mbowe, who is still alive and kicking was not a former Hai MP, he IS a former Hai MP.
And then, when you say someone is an MP for Hai (or any such electoral area) it is tautological to further use the qualifier “constituency”.
Bearing in mind that journalese is about precision and word economy it is enough to say, for instance, that Mr Joseph Tadayo is the Mwanga MP (instead of…Mwanga Constituency MP).
Ah, this treacherous language called English!
