‘Insist the need’ to do something? Nope; you insist ON the need to do something

When you use more words than necessary to convey an otherwise simple message, there’s a likelihood of shooting yourself in the foot.

Yes, like saying something that doesn’t make sense, illogical. Let us look at a couple of paragraphs of a story that appears in the Saturday, May 3 edition of the huge tabloid from Nairobi that commands a sizeable readership in Bongo.

In his story entitled ‘MP’s many wars and how Kasipul became hotbed of violence, chaos’, the scribbler writes in Paras 2-3: “The constituency, which was created in 2010, was hived from Kasipul Kibondo Constituency following a boundary review with its first MP being OM.

“When he took over, there was ‘STILL’ EXCITEMENT ABOUT the constituency and ‘THEREFORE’ little violence was witnessed.”

The scribbler is suggesting—unwittingly, maybe— that when there’s excitement at a place, we should automatically expect no violence, a suggestion that’s doubtable!

I’ll attempt to mend what I view as syntactical goofing by deleting the words I highlight with single quotes. “When he took over, there was EXCITEMENT ABOUT the constituency AND (not therefore) LITTLE VIOLENCE was witnessed.”

Back to Bongo where we pick up a Saturday, May 3 copy of our senior-most broadsheet whose Page 3 has a story with the headline, ‘Tanzania calls for predictable, grant-based climate funding’. Somewhere in his story, the scribbler writes in attribution to what a senior Government official said: “On young PEOPLE participation, Engineer Luhemeja insisted THE need for intergenerational knowledge transfer.”

Let’s not fuss over the goofing and instead offer corrections targeting on what’s highlighted by capitals.

“On young PEOPLE’S (not people) participation, Engineer Luhemeja insisted ON THE need (not ‘insist the need’) for intergenerational knowledge transfer.”

The scribbler further purports to quote the senior official as saying: “A FLOCK with no calf is dead.” My dictionary defines “flock” as a number of birds of one kind feeding, resting or travelling together. Furthermore, the dictionary defines “calf” as a young cow, or the young of various other large mammals such as elephants and whales. Now a group of cows, says the same dictionary, is called a HERD.

It means, if the engineer had expressed himself in English (instead of Kiswahili which was used during the interview), we’re confident he’d have correctly said, “A HERD with no calf is dead.”

Onward to Page 4 where there’s this story with the headline, ‘Resident jailed 30 for rape’, whose Para 7 reads thus, “It was STATED that the 15-year-old student…was taken TO HOUSE of the accused PERSON in Kwimba District, Mwanza Region to LIVE ‘WITH’ as husband and wife.”

Stated that…? Before a judge, we ALLEGE, not state this or that. How about “…was taken to house?” No! The scribbler should’ve written: “…was taken to THE house…” And, when you say “the accused,” there’s no need to qualify that with “person,” more so if we’ve already mentioned him in connection with an allegation. And the last bit should read: “…taken to THE house of the ACCUSED in Kwimba…to live TOGETHER as husband and wife”.

Finally, we’ll take a look at Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of Monday, May 5, in which PAGE 1 has a story with the headline penned this way, ‘Plant set to manufacture 120 DURABLE concrete poles, daily’.

There’re two matters that would disturb any language critic here. One, the comma between POLES and DAILY has been inserted purposelessly—most unnecessarily! Two, telling readers that a factory will manufacture concrete (electric) poles that are “durable” depicts we of the Fourth Estate as smart alecks who consider our readers numskulls—persons to whom we should tell even that which obvious!

Ah, this treacherous language called English!