Scribe raps musicians who ‘copy and PEST’

Language instructors are often heard cautioning their charges: beware how you pronounce words, for it is apt to influence your spelling!

And wrong spelling can be damning, more so when a meaning other than the intended one comes to the fore; or just hilarious, when it elicits laughter. So, let’s repeat our usual advice: make the effort to read and re-read your work before you pass it on.

Now there was a certain story in a Kiswahili weekend tabloid that’s close to this columnist, in which the scribbler hit out at musicians who thrive on lifting other artiste’s songs.

Apparently keen on making herself clearer, our colleague chose to “lift” a popular English expression that defines copycatting. She wrote, and we quote: “…inasikitisha wasanii wetu kuendeleza mtindo wa “copy and PEST”

Oh, no! It is: copy and PASTE (pronounced pe-i-s-t). The word PEST, pronounced [p-e-s-t] is not a verb, so you can’t go about “pesting” things after copying them. It’s a noun that means an “annoying thing, person or animal. But you can, however, PESTER others, that is, annoy them.

The verb “paste” literally means “to stick something on something”. In information technology, it refers to removing a piece of text to a particular place in a computer document. These days, to “copy and paste” is a slang referring to “wholesale copying” of whatever nature, like we accuse some Bongo Flava artistes of doing.

More on how pronunciation messes us up. There was a case in the Sunday sister to Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of May 19. In her story entitled “Weakened MP collapses, admitted,” a scribbler, writing from Dodoma, had this to say:

“Chadema Special Seats MP…. yesterday collapsed for a FEW MINUTES in Dodoma when feeling dizzy”.

Collapse for few minutes? We doubt it. The verb “collapse”, when referring to a person, means to fall down (and usually become unconscious) especially because you are ill. It’s a one-off thing. You don’t collapse continually, on and on, for several minutes!

What our colleague meant to say, we aver, is that the lawmaker collapsed and remained UNCONSCIOUS for a few minutes.

In the para 4, she writes on:

“She fell down, compelling shocked fellow MPs to rush her for RAPID medical attention, to which she was subjected to two hours of treatment…”

Duh! Quite a mish-mash, this; and honestly, we don’t know how to improve it. We can only suggest that the word “rapid”, should be replaced by “IMMEDIATE”.

And then, in the Tuesday, May 28 edition of the daily close to this columnist, there was a page 4 story entitled “Sue media for defamation…” in which the scribbler wrote:

“Some newspapers … publish content that can easily lead to ILLEGAL VIOLENT acts.”

The word “illegal” here is defining “violent” which is unnecessary because violence is always illegal, isn’t it? Talk of tautology!

The scribbler should have simply said, “Some newspapers … publish content that can easily lead to VIOLENT acts (or simply… lead to VIOLENCE).

At times we say things that leave the reader confused, like the above-quoted scribbler when he says in another story entitled “EA for harmonised curricular”:

“Member states of the East African Community are contemplating the possibility of harmonizing the educational system so that student FORMATION will be based on the same standards.”

Can anyone tell us what “student formation” is all about, in the East African region or elsewhere? Let’s hear from you, reader.

Back to the sister Sunday edition of Bongo’s huge and colourful broadsheet of May 26. In a page 2 story entitled “Muhongo evokes Mwalimu’s spirit”, the scribbler says in para 4:

“As the nation waited in BAITED breath, Prof Muhongo continued to lecture Parliament ABOUT energy…”

Baited breath? You can’t have that one; the expression is “BATED breath”, which means in an “anxious or excited way”. Our example: “The 2012 Form 4 students who had been declared failures are waiting with BATED breath for the outcome of the revised grading.”

And, of course, we don’t lecture ABOUT something; we lecture ON i

Ah, this treacherous language called English!