Start someone’s name with small letter? That’s infantile!
Do they still teach punctuation in our learning institutions? I ask this for a reason. In my daily exposures to the written word—in newspapers, SMSs, WhatsApp, brochures…you name it—I come across texts whose authors are clearly unaware of the use of the full stop, coma, colon, semicolon, quotation marks, capital/small letters, etc.
On February 13, I came across an otherwise good article in a respectable broadsheet whose one-sentence intro comprised 136 words! In the place of, say, a full stop, semicolon or dash, there was the comma, or nothing!
In the various WhatsApp groups I belong to, there are schooled adults who pen proper nouns, such as names of people and cities, beginning them with small letters. That is infantile. Primary school skill deficiency. But then, that is generally where we are!
Having thus lectured, let me proceed with delivering linguistic gems which my sources and I unearthed recently from the Bongo English press. So, here we go…
There is this story on Page 1 of the February 13 edition of a broadsheet, entitled, ‘Tanzania history subject to start July’, in which the scribbler says:
“Minister for Education…stated that the SUBJECT, which would be taught alongside the current history LESSON, would be taught in Swahili language…”
Our colleague uses the expression “history lesson” more than once in his story in a way that suggests he believes the words “subject” and “lesson” mean the same thing.
However, that is not true. Why, “lesson” is a period of time in which somebody is taught something, while “subject” refers to an area of knowledge studied in school, college etc.
Indeed, even in Kiswahili, we have kipindi which refers to “lesson”; then we have “somo” which refers to “subject”.
Then, the Saturday, March 13 edition of Bongo’s broad and colourful broadsheet ran on Page 3 a story with the headline, ‘Premier starts a two-day tour IN Mbeya Region’. In his intro, the scribbler says: ‘Prime Minister Kassim Majaliwa is tomorrow expected to start his two-day official tour IN Mbeya Region where he will launch several development projects…”
The PM on a tour in Mbeya..? Nope, we say “…tour OF Mbeya (not IN Mbeya)
Informing his readers about what the Mbeya Regional Commissioner Albert Chalamila said regarding what the PM programme would entail during his tour OF the region, the scribbler writes:
“Chalamila said apart from the investment guide, the Prime Minister will lay A foundation stone for the construction for a VETA college…” For any one structure, we can only have ONE foundation laid. Now this one which the PM laid is not A foundation stone; it is THE foundation stone.
Then, Page 2 of Bongo’s senior-most broadsheet of Saturday, March 13, had a story entitled, ‘Man held over abducting, death of neighbour’s baby’, in which the scribbler says in Para 5:
“The RPC said that there was a quarrel between the suspect and family (sic) of the baby on March 7, which LED TO SUSPECT TO TELL the mother that he would commit something that she would never forget IN LIFE.”
Instead of dissecting this hodgepodge of a sentence, we will simply offer a rewrite, so here we go:
“The RPC said that there was a quarrel between the suspect and THE family of the baby on March 7, AFTER WHICH THE SUSPECT TOLD the mother that he would commit something that she would never forget FOR THE REST OF HER LIFE.”
In Para 7, the scribbler writes: “A neighbour, who was identified as Mr Jumanne, said that was the first incident of such a kind and was dismayed AT the suspect TO revenge on parents by killing the baby.”
Let us provide a rewrite: “A neighbour…said that was the first incident of such a kind and was dismayed BY the SUSPECT’S MOVE TO revenge on parents by killing the baby.”
Ah, this treacherous language called English!
