OUR KIND OF ENGLISH: Project under ‘financial AUSPICIOUS’ from Agra helps ‘BENEFICIARY youth’

In the course of going through scripts of writers who consult us so that we give their work what Waswahili call jicho la pili (literally, second eye), we often note that some of them are guilty of utter recklessness.

We’ve stated in this column severally, that many writers, including those who earn their daily bread toiling to inform, educate and entertain, believe that all they need is to provide a draft!

They, in effect, heap unto the editor’s desk the chore of processing their pieces to something readable. That’s not right and, worse still, it’s risky. Why? Your work could end up in the hands of an editor or proofreader who’s too tired to note mistakes that aren’t expected from “an adult like you”.

So, treat your work like you’re its Alfa and Omega. Read and reread it like there’re won’t be any jicho la pili to sort out the goofs which, with just a little more patience, could be sorted out by you. End of lecturing (bah!), and so, we’ll proceed to our key duty of dishing out to our readers linguistic gems collected over the past week.

Here we go… One of the stories on Page 3 of the huge and colourful broadsheet of Friday, July 11 is entitled ‘Minister inaugurates royal international clinic at BHM’.

In Para 3, the scribbler purports to report on what Health minister Jenista Mhagama said during a ceremony in Dodoma associated with a new health facility. He writes: “Speaking during the launch EVENT, minister Mhagama urged zonal hospitals across the country to establish similar international clinics…” To qualify “launch” with “event” is most unnecessary because the former word presupposes an act or event of starting off something.

You therefore don’t need to tell your audience the launch was an event, for that’s obvious! On Page 5, there’s a story whose headline is, ‘AMDT to support smallholder youth farmers in five regions,’ and therein, an official is quoted saying: “The project which operates under the financial AUSPICIOUS from Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) focuses TO facilitate the BENEFICIARY youth and YOUNG women engaged THAT aspiring to be ENGAGED in agribusiness…” Phew! Just like we warned in our “lecturing” while opening this column: “…your work could end up in the hands of an editor or proofreader who’s too tired to note your mistakes”.

Let’s now attempt to decipher what our scribbling colleague purports to be what an official said: “The project which operates under the AUSPICES OF Alliance for Green Revolution in Africa (Agra) focuses ON FACILITATING the YOUTH aspiring to ENGAGE in agribusiness…” (Note: Saying “youth and young women” is nonsensical because “the YOUTH” refers to “young males and females” as a group).

Page 6 of the broadsheet has a photo whose caption reads: “Former Muheza District Commissioner Zainab Abdallah hands over office documents to her successor Ayubu Sebabili ON earlier this week.” “On” earlier this week? Nope! Why? The preposition “on” has been wrongly used. We use “on” when mentioning a day (or days) of the week, like when we say, “ON Tuesday” or “ON Thursday and Friday.”

Last Friday, we spent a substantial space citing sentences that depict unnecessary usage of adjectives and adverbs in reports—especially news reports. Let’s cite more cases showing what we consider useless qualifiers that we note on Page 6 of the above-mentioned broadsheet:

• The National Traffic Police Commander…has issued a FIRM warning to drivers…who violate transport regulations…stating that such practices are…STRICTLY prohibited by law.

• Overloading passengers beyond a vehicle’s capacity is COMPLETELY prohibited. Adverbs “strictly” and “completely,” plus the adjective “firm,” should have been dropped without diminishing the value of what has been reported. Ah, this treacherous language called English!